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Fantabbitastic
Posted Thursday, 18 August 2005
Wellll.. Montreal was a blast; spent last night in the Old Port meeting Brunewz from W1K and being terribly French. Quebec has this weird French thing going on; apparently the local authorities have outlawed street-facing shop signs in English and in shops if you have English on your point of sale material, it has to be 1/3 of the size of the French version. Surreal. It's totally bilingual there; very reminiscent of South Africa - every person you meet is perfectly happy to chat to you whether you begin with "bonjour" or "hey, what's up [eh]?" After dinner Ty's neighbour Mark took us up the mountain for some spectacular city views and we took a few photographs; due to bad planning they're all on film so you'll have to wait.

Being an idiot I keep letting the film get hot. I know, I suck; leave me alone. Hopefully not hot enough to fog it (it's not IR or anything) but TIME WILL TELL, as they say. After a relaxing lie in this morning I battled the webcam into submission and finally, around noon, managed to get it going. Unfortunately, I must have bumped the power supply because about an hour out of town I noticed the laptop was off. When I checked, there was about half an hour's worth of photos missing.. sorry about that. Additionally, the cam has horrific banding in bright light in 640 mode; imagine high contrast pictures on an old passive LCD display and that's pretty close. Luckily, I pulled into a casino to have a play with it and figured out that the polariser from my camera cancelled this effect out completely - although of course the contrast went right up. I tore open a sock and used it to hold the polariser in front of the cam and then hit the road - the pics looked awesome with deep blue skies and silhouetted traffic.. I have great hopes.

About halfway down two blonde girls in an old Toyota caught up with me. Figuring they would get busted first, I sped up and followed them.. faster.. faster.. unbelievably for a crappy old Corolla, they were soon nailing 160km/h and, at a safe distance, I started weighing up whether the fuel bill was going to cancel out any advantage of arriving early. Unfortunately, my nuts started doing the thinking and I put some foot, racing alongside on the quiet stretches and following them down the fast lane when we caught traffic. Suddenly, they pulled off and, on a whim I followed them. At the lights, I buzzed the window.

"We ran out of gas!"

I really wasn't surprised. Amazingly, not only were they both headed for Toronto, they are working tonight at Bar One Eleven and, in perfect road-trip style, we agreed to meet up after they knock off. When I went to pay, I joked, "Yeah; get a head start and I'll catch you up!"

They dashed for the car and in a squeak of rubber they were gone. In the spirit of self- (and licence-) preservation, I let them go.

In all though it was a short journey and I've found myself with plenty of time to kill. I may download pictures and upload them but I'll probably hit that in the morning while I wait for the CN tower to open. Tonight I have no hotel booked, no rendezvous and no plan.. so I dropped into a quiet coffee shop and got chatting to the owner. He put me onto some hip hangouts and got the waitress to draw me a map - much better than buying one! I just have to decide whether to drive downtown and not drink or leave the car where it is and blow $10 each way on a cab..

..yeah; I know. It's a foregone conclusion.
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