I got up this morning and drove nine hours from Montreal to Fredericton in the god damn Cobramobile. I’m sitting at the Fredericton library right now.

All I ate today was bagels, but I ate a lot of them, and they were good.

Yesterday I drove from Toronto to Montreal and arrived in the golden part of the late afternoon. I was just cruising around Mile End looking at stuff. I saw a pigeon flapping through the air with an entire bagel in its beak. Due to the weight of the bagel, the pigeon was having a bit of trouble getting the required height to escape being hit by my car. It was a close one for that pigeon. Moral of the story: don’t get greedy unless you’re sure you can get away with it.

What a weekend, I’ll probably write all about it but for now this is just a quick note for the benefit of those of you who were wondering if I was actually going to make it.

I’ve got a couple books by Donald Barthelme that I’m going to sign out and take back to Gaspereau Forks. I used to love this guy when I was a teenager. Lots of writers I liked back then haven’t stuck with me very well (Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac, that guy who wrote Catch-22) whereas others I still find enjoyable to this day (William S. Burroughs). I wonder if Barthelme is still good. I have a feeling he is. Go read this: The First Thing The Baby Did Wrong. Here’s a whole pile of stuff. Here’s Wikipedia.

I wonder what’s going on in Fredericton tonight? I haven’t gotten more than four hours sleep the past couple of nights. If I were to lie down I’m sure I would be fast asleep in about, umm, 45 minutes. In other words maybe I’ll go lie down in my car, and drive back home.

I found a happy Vietnamese elf on Bloor Street West who fixed my car for $500 so I am homeward bound. Hitting Montreal tomorrow, and back to NB first thing Wednesday morning. THANK GOD

My cellphone has been non-functional since I left the Maritimes. In all the cities, all the people that I was to get in touch with had to communicate with me via telepathy. And for the most part it worked out just fine. Anyway my number works now so please call me, Montreal, I’m on the way.

You can also try this: 506-327-0104. I don’t care about putting this number on the internet because it’s just a temporary one for the next day or two. I would like to thank the technical support services of the Dan-Trish Coalition for this miracle of Aliant Mobility call-forwarding work-arounding.

Greetings from Toronto Ontario Hellhole Catastrophe Of My Life, Canada.

The back brakes disintegrated on my car. They say it would cost $1700 to fix them so I guess this is the end of the line for the Cobramobile.

Luckily VKNGS are in town playing. I called Nick this morning on his cell and woke him up to beg for a drive back East. So I’m going to hook up with VKNGS and we’ll make our way to the homeland. Just get me the hell out of Ontario.

I might just continue with them right straight back to Halifax. I can’t live in Gaspereau Forks anymore, not without a car and without any money.

What’s going to happen? Will I show up in Halifax with nothing but a bag of clothes and all my music gear, and try to rebuild my life from scratch?

Today has not been the high point of my life.

Thursday morning I’m driving to Montreal. I posted on a couple of messageboards looking for someone to come along on the roadtrip and couldn’t find a single person. Could someone point me to the messageboards where people like me hang out?

I feel like a tool going on these long trips all alone in a big empty sedan. Anyway that’s why I always pick up hitchhikers. Usually it’s Newfoundlanders with big hockey bags heading out west to work. Or else excitable French teenagers.

On Friday I’m off to Toronto. Going to play a show, do some recording and hang out for a few days. I have so much left to do to get ready for this trip… so of course writing on my blog suddenly seems like this great idea. Ah the joys of procrastination.

Toronto and Montreal, give me a holler. Going to Friendship Cove tomorrow to watch VKNGS play and on Friday night A/V plays at Sneaky Dee’s.

Sometimes I get all this excess energy, which is partly a result of thinking about too much stuff to be able to concentrate on anything, and partly a result of being cooped up indoors for too many winter days in a row.

So recently I’ve started running up and down the stairs in my house. I run up to the top of the stairs, turn around, run back down again… turn around, run back up… over and over for however long at a time. It feels very Sisyphean.

And whenever I’m running up and down the stairs, I listen to I Against I by the Bad Brains. Over and over.

Run up and down the stairs. I against I. Return to Heaven. Flip the record. Up and down. Sacred love. Re-ignition.

A few times I’ve run up and down the stairs while listening to “Animosity” by Corrosion Of Conformity. Kiss Of Death, “PARALYYYZED, ALONE AND FRIGHTENED.” That’s pretty good run-up-and-down-the-stairs music. But mostly it’s Bad Brains. I Against I. Really frickin’ loud.

It’s gotten to the point where anytime I hear the intro to I Against I, my body gets itself all tensed up…as if to say, ok get ready… now we’re gonna run up and down a bunch of stairs.

What I want to do is, I want to tape this record onto minidisk, and take my minidisk player and go visit the CN Tower.