Day 1: The Journey North

So I started out later than I had originally intended. Already strike 1. Strike 2 was motherfucking nature deciding this was the best day to shit out a fucking monsoon all over my drive. Seriously? Mothernature you are a twat. A twatty cunt rag. Despite the abysmal driving conditions I was making decent time, and really, that’s the important thing. WAS being the keyword because as I neared the asshole of a city known as Toronto, traffic decided it had enough of travelling at high speed and decided to take a goddamn nap on the QEW.  Hey Traffic, Fuck you!

About an hour and a half later I finally broke free of the bondage of traffic and foolishly thought to myself  “Smooth sailing from now on!”. Yeah fucking right.  Mother Nature, the cunty old hag, decided to double her rain output for the next 2 mother effing hours!  Undeterred by the biblical rainstorm all around me I decided to power through and maintain my speed of 110 Kmh.  Apparently I was the only one with this idea.  Crawling through a shitstorm of rain and wind at 70 is not my idea of a fun fucking drive. To add to my frustration, at this point all the decent radio stations became irritatingly staticy, leaving me with a choice between Roc Voisine or Norah Jones for the remainder of my voyage. I like both of these artists but only in small, intermittent doses.

Eventually the rain cleared in time for darkness to descend like an all consuming abyss. This isn’t city darkness. We’re talking a black, empty, tar-like darkness that sticks to the landscape. Having only vague directions and being a notorious self-doubter, I became panic stricken thinking for sure I had missed my turn off. And not just once. With each successful direction followed I was sure I fucked up the next one. Nerves shot, driving in unfamiliar and poorly marked land, I see lights flashing in the distance behind me. Instantly I thought “Well fuck. I must have blown by a cop.” So I slowed down and pulled over waiting for the redneck officer to give me a ticket for speeding in an unmarked road, being driven by ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOBODY! So there I sat with my head on the wheel, awaiting Officer Krupke. As the lights approached I looked up and reached across for my ID only to have a goddamn ambulance drive past me. Instead of relief that I wasn’t getting a ticket I hurled silent obscenities at the amblinace for not making it obvious that it wasn’t a cop because of course it was being vague about its identity to fuck with me. About an hour later I turned onto a gravel road and saw the first only highlight of the drive. My dad, parked at a fork in the road, waiting to guide me the last little bit to the lodge. Thank the fucking lord!

We arrived at the cottage and unloaded my gear. I was struck again by how absolutely black the night was. Literally I could not see 1 foot in front of my. Praise Allah for cellphone flashlight apps. At this point old shit tits mother nature thoguht “Oh good. He made it. Let me shower you with ice cold fuck tons of rain!”. Now safely sheltered inside the cottage we had some night beers and I regailed the masses with tales of my harrowing trek north. Around midnight we decided to call it a night. I settled into the creaky, pointy springed bed only to wake 3 hours later with an uncontrolable need to piss. In my under and flip flops I trudged to the outhouse and did my business in the dark. Before returning to the cottage I walked down to the water and ventured out on one of the docks. I looked up at the sky and was confronted with millions of stars up above. Far more than I remember seeing here when I was young. For the first time since I started out on Sunday afternoon I felt very peaceful. I went back to bed and slipped right back into a deep sleep for what i was sure was going to be a good long time.  Fucking dreamer.