Well Hello...

The widely anticipated return of the Strawberry Jam Band came to fruition (gettit? FRUITion?? huh? huh?)

Donned simply in a pair of boot-cut jeans, sneakers, a blue GAP polo shirt and my old NHLPA ballcap (worn for ironic and sardonic purposes) I stepped under the lights, my Gibson Boneyard guitar slung over shoulders.

I struck a chord. A deep, grungy 'A' chord and the masses** stopped and stared.

Lifting my right hand in the air I desperately wanted to scream "Hello Montr�al", but refrained, opting instead for a simple "Well Hello..."

...at which the masses** erupted** with thunderous** applause.

"We are the Strawberry Jam Band and we have come to play songs"

More thunderous** applause.

I dropped my head, lowered my stance and struck the opening chords of "all Right Now" by Free.

...and the Rocking of Montr�al had begun.

The voice stood up damn well.

The Guitar gleamed under the red lights and even with some drum surprises we got through our set of 24 songs rocking through the likes of 'Run to You', 'Hard To Handle', 'Sweet Emotion'; swaggering through the likes of 'Honky Tonk Woman', 'Jealous Again' and 'RoadHouse Blues'(our version has become somewhat synonymous with the SJB...) and moving the masses** with our own versions and arrangements of "Get By with a Little Help from my Friends" and "Wonderwall".

Highlights of the night were definately some of the harmonies, and the duelling guitar solos by Tony and moi during Roadhouse Blues. There are photos, which I have been informed that I shall have... so I shall post them as and when I get them this week!

...and just like that it was gone. *phoof*

It was midnight, I had packed up the guitar, shook the hands of my fellow bandmates and disappeared out the back door** to the awaiting limousine**.

For I was off to Terrebonne with J to her folks.

For I had been recruited to go fishing with my future step-dad-in-law. And his son-in-law. Way, Waaaaaaay up north. Where nobody goes.

It had only been a few of hours earlier that I had mentioned this fact to ex-roommate Barry, when he laughed and said to me:

"What? And this doesn't scare you... You're getting up at 4am"... Oh yeah. Did I mention that I was to get up at 4am? so NOT Rock and Roll. "You're getting up at 4am in the dark, driving 200kms with your soon-to-be-step-dad-in-law and his son-in-law and - going where nobody knows where you are, getting in a boat into the middle of the lake... and you're not nervous. I was watching an episode of the Sopranos when...."

Whoa, whoa, whao.

I get along with them just fine, right?

Don't I?

There isn't to be a disappearing. Is there?

A Vanishing??

Anyhoo...

I was rudely awoken at 3.55am after the grand total of 2hours and 55 minutes sleep. ACtually I was pretty surprised about how easily the wake up process was. Not so for Jen, who wasn't coming but said something along the lines of "Blechtaplockatthrammaaaaa" and the immediately slept.

Out into the cold dark (foreboding?) air we went. Into the car we climbed.

Then we backed up to the shed. Where Reg got out to go fetch the "spare battery" - you know... for the boat engine.

Hmmm. Spare battery. Heavy lead. Deep Lake.

We stopped to pick up Fran�ois. and headed up north stopping twice at Tim Hortons for coffee and muffins.

As we climed the Laurentian mountains we would hit patches of pea-soup fog...

Foreboding.

Finally - and after navigating some pretty dicey dirt roads we were lakeside.

It was beautiful. Not a sign of civilization around but the one road in - and the one road out.

We had barely spoken on the drive up there, just appreciative mumbles at the coffee and the fruit explosion muffins.

Hmmm. Explosion.

We unpacked all the gear and made our way down the precarious steps to the boats.

I noted that only one battery was being brought.

This was good.

I figured I was safe.

And so we pushed out onto the lake. The only noise was the sound of the Loons coo-ing across the lake and the breeze in the trees that rose sharply from each side.

The lake was warm and the water a turqoise blue with about 30ft of clarity...

And so we trundled around the lake, trawling our lures and worms, waiting.

And waiting.

For a bite.

Any bite.

The sun rose high in the sky, beating down on us, as we continued to trawl the lakes surface.

Three large hunting birds (I don't know if they were eagles or not - they seemed big enough to carry each one of us away) circled overhead, scanning the surface for fish.

Even they gave up.

Reg had brought his fishfinding sonar. An impressive piece of kit that showed us where the fish were. But it kinda surpised me that when we did find them, we didn't adjust our style of to go get them. I mean, the sonar was telling us that they were about 60ft down for the most part- an dthere were were continually trawling our lines at around 15ft?

I thought it best not to challenge until on dry land.

Besides, it was a beautiful day and we were on the water.

After 6 hours of this however, it started to get a little annoying.

I mean, fuck! We were going round and round this damn lake, looking at the sonar which was beeping and wailing when it saw fish (which were apparantly plentiful) and we weren't doing anything to go get them...

I did consider mutiny at one point.

I think the jet-lag of three hours sleep was beginning to kick in too which made it increasingly more difficult to hide my agitation.

It felt like every single animal was looking at us from the trees and laughing at us.

Even the damn loon that popped out of the water.

Finally - after 10 hours of this, we called it quits.

Of course, on the last tour of the lake, Reg got a bite and reeled in an 8" baby trout.

Wee thing didn't even put up eny kind of fight. It's as though he had been designated the pity fish for the day and had accepted his fate blindly.

So that was that. We took GREAT pleaure in telling the people who had just arrived that they were walking into the dead zone.

Still, I was still alive, if that's any comfort.

Not really.

Damn fish.

I do have one lasting picture. One of those "American Beauty" moments.

I detached the worm I had on the hook and threw him in the water. And then I watched him sink.

Down and down he went. Spiraling and twisting through the turqoise water... 5 feet...10 feet...15...in what seemed like slow motion to me. It was very captivating... Of course if a sodding great big fish had come and grabbed it, I swear I would have jumped in and chased the bastard.... but it didnt... it just disappeared into the depths.

We hurdled back to Terrebonne. Or Terror-bone as I like to call it in record time to see what conspiracies the women had come up with.

They said none, but I didn't believe them. There were far too many knowing glances.

Home at 11:30 were we. It had been a long - long day.

The alarm went off at 7.00am Sunday.

I denied it for as long as I could and finally realised why it had been set to go off at this ungodly hour.

I was off the Champ Car race on Ile St Helene.

And it was BUCKETING rain outside. I mean pouring.

I checked out the weather online and, of course, it was predicting whizzbangpops all day.

Freakin' A!

My favourite.

Still - this was a tradition. Myself and Chris T ahd been going for the past 3 years and the weather was not going to deter us.

But the wierd thing was that my eyes were wobbly. Couldn't focus. I had to blink about 7 times before I could read anything on the computer screen.

I put it down to fatigue but it was a bit disconcerting. After a gallon or so of water, it finally subsided. The red wine from the night before I presume had diluted and allowed me to see.

Again, I had to crawl over Jen to get out and she mentioned something along the lines of "gathworthlagoooomandeerel" before falling asleep again...

I crawled downstairs and packed my beer into my rucksack, picked up my foldaway chair and umbrella, donned my rain jacket and headed out.

Another tradition for this race is that I am always 2-3 hours late. I make the race - but miss the pre-races.

In order to rectify this, Chris had decided that he would pick me up at my place before dropping off a rental car and walking to metro. Escorting me there as it were.

Soon enough he arrived in his pimp-daddy big SUV and we were off to the races.

We had decided this year that we would just buy general admission tickets and find a space with a view. After the long trek to the famous Senna S, we found a spot at the Start line, overlooking the first two turns. Normally for F1, there is the mother of all grandstands there, but not so for Champ Car. More surprisingly, there were very few others there. So we pitched there an after a vain attempt to find a cup of coffee, we decided to crack open our first breakfast beer.

Bad freaking idea.

The lights just went out.

I was 20 feet away from the track while the Toyota Atlantic class race was going on sleeping like a baby at 10.00am.

Luckily the rain had abated and clouds had moved over somewhat. But there I was snoring like a bear as people oohed and aahed while race cars barrelled passed me...

I think Chris got embarrassed or something, because one swift punch to the upper arm ended my dreamy rapture.

"Dude. You may as well have been late"

...and stop dreaming of blow jobs in ditches

I SWEAR I wasn't!!

People were getting wise to our location. And even though we were placed about 4 feet from the fenceline, some dudes decided that they would try and stand directly in front of us. They seemed genuinely please to score the space too! Like we didn't exist...

They were whacked with my umbrella. And moved.

Cheeky bastards!

I figured the only way to keep myself awake would be to keep dinking and peeing.

Like a production line.

The ol' drink and pee.

By this stage, the track was dry - which really was a little disappointing; I wanted to see drivers piling down to turn one, a mass of water being thrown into the air. And most importantly...

...THE POTENTIAL FOR HORRIFIC ACCIDENTS.

But no - there was no water, and even after commenting about how wet the grass still was, that was all we had. The hope that one or two might slip onto the grass.

Kinda tragic really.

What was cool, was that we could heckle the drivers when they did their parade.

We told Paul Tracy that his bald head was blinding. We told Christiano Da Matta that he wasn't good enough for F1.

Yeah. The effect of the Breakfast and Brunch beer.

The race itself was kind of fun. These are big motor cars that go very fast.

The downside of the general admission tickets is that we don't have immediate access to a big screen to tell us what is going on or who is leading at any stage. Which is fine until the cars start to pit.

Then we realised that we had no clue what was going on or who was winning or losing or somewhere in between.

Just big fast motor cars that zoomed past every minute and a half or so.

The race ended as something of an anticlimax with everyone around us asking each other who had won. We made some assumptions, shrugged and decided that it was time to go pee.

Oh. Another tradition of Champ Car racing is that we ALWAYS run into an old work colleague of mine. He and his girlfriend, Sophie.

This is always unplanned, and out of the 50,000 or whatever people that are at the racetrack, we just run into them.

This was to be no different.

It also led to more beer.

Now as everybody knows: not enough sleep + muchos beero + too much sun = sleepy Procrasto.

When I finally walked in the door at 7.00pm, plonked myself down on the couch and promptly fell asleep, I was done.

Done like dinner.

Jen kicked me a couple of times and it was my turn to say something along the lines of "wetherblakolngbeeforoni" before crawling up and into the shower to wash off the sun, sweat and tiny little black strips of rubber from the race cars.

I know I was up and awake yesterday, but somewhere between the concious and unconcious.

I felt like Frodo when he put on the ring. I would move around unnoticed, but see and feel the suffering of all around me.

Today I'm back with the living.

Still buzzing with the weekend that was.

I think I'm going to design and make a ball cap or a T-shirt that says:

"Jammin' - Strawberry style."

...and it'll have a cartoon strawberry on it...

The kid's will lap them up...

You'd buy one, right?

Note: ** = deliberate exaggeration

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