I decided that keeping everyone in the dark of my glorious writing would be cruel and unusual punishment so i will now post my unfinished work on here so you do not have to wait any longer and with out further adoo my trip to vancouver part one. It is pretty long but worth every scent
Dale’s Trip to Vancouver.
Sunday July 11, 1:01 pm Aaron Leo St.Goddard and my self are up at the Verse and are on our way to Vancouver. Aaron finishes feeding his Tonka toy as I have so admiringly named the 2003 Matrix that he rented it is silver and weighs 1456 kg. Fishing through the insurance papers of the tin box I wonder to myself what kind of a colour is gray. You can tell that Aaron hates this car by how he affectionately calls it a piece of shit.
“We have to be in Vancouver by 4:30 so I can get return the car.” St.Goddard. I promise him that we will make it and that we will even have enough time for me to take some pictures of the trip. So we throw in some Coheed and Cambria and listen to it for a few songs.
Aaron does the annoying thing that people do when they want to share new music with you and they play you an amount that is too large for you to remember who was who and actually defeats the purpose of sharing new music because everything is meshed together in your memory.
The trip was going pretty much like clockwork as we chirped along at a modest 140 kMph. We freaked out whenever a Beautiful women would pass and we would make childish remarks on how we should get them to pull to the side of the road and marry them. And then out of no-where we hit construction. Just before hope we end up having to wait for an eternity or 36 minutes. And then we have to spend an additional 29 minutes driving at a speed varing between 33 and 35 kMph. During this time I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of landscape and me and Aaron. After construction hell Aaron points to the clock and screams “we’re never going to make it.”
While driving through the mountains after Hope I ask Aaron if he wants to play the penis game. He looks at me with half fear and half disgust in his eyes and meekly asks “what’s the penis game.”
“One person says penis and the next person has to say it louder. If you don’t you loose. It’s fun as shit because you just end up screaming penis at eachother.” I explain briefly and he agrees to play the game. We end up just having a screaming contest until we can taste blood in our mouths just outside of Abbottsford.
The rest of the car ride was uneventful and we didn’t make the 4:30 curfew for the Budget rental car but they were somewhat lenient and let it go. I then parted ways with Aaron and boarded the sky train to meet up with Derek Bolen who I would be staying with for my stint in Vancouver.
The funny thing about the Sky Train that I find is that there is always at least one person that stairs at you. It is difficult to guess at their motivations for the ocular intrusion but I always find that I don’t want to piss them off because they might be the psycho who flips out. So I always keep to myself but I give off the don’t fuck with me vibe.
The next day we decide that we are going to go to the beach. This is an event that excites me because I have always wanted to swim in the ocean. We decide that we will go to English Bay. I had originally wanted to go to wreck beach and agreed that we would go the day after warped tour. As me and Derek mozy down to the beach he twitters about the jellyfish that will sting me. He gently reminds me that to ease the sting of a jelly fish the most immediate relief is urine. I understand that he is only trying to scare me but the fact that there are pieces of dead jelly fish being washed up on shore with chunks of seaweed is disheartening. I must make this step.
I go in the water waiting for revelation. I have been told that the first time you swim in the ocean it can be a magical experience. Seeing the vast waters spread out before you with a blue horizon can make a human feel there rightful place among the cosmos. Instead of revelation I discovered that the water instead of being eye opening tastes like sweat. Swimming in the Ocean is like swimming in cold sweat.
On the eve of warp tour we quickly work out our plans on how we will travel form downtown Vancouver to UBCs Thinderbird stadium. Our plans are loose at best. Derek and his girlfriend Ashley Lock would go to work and meet me at warped tour after work I would get a ride with another friend who would pick me up after they retrieve an anonymous friend (he called in sick and apparently likes his job) from the sky train station. I have packed lightly for the trip and decide that all I need is a sweater, a small tape recorder for interviews and my camera.
While I am trying to go through the lineup the nice lady who was working security on my line informs me that my camera is actually professional grade and this means that I need a press pass. I already know that there is no way I can get a press pass so I ask for Britney Cowie’s keys so that I can throw my camera in her car.
30 feet away from the front gate I decide that I actually do need to get some pictures for the show. I duck into the nearby trees and employ a trick I learned through all my years of concert attending. I call the secret move “Stuff it in your ginch”. The security will never pat your Johnson. So if you have something that you require to get into the concert then tuck it into your under wear. The problem is the cameras size. Roughly speaking the dimensions in inches are 6x6x4. This will make it hard to walk up to the security officer and without him noticing that for one I am walking like a cow boy and have a huge bulge in my pants. Another obstacle is that there is an object about the size of two rubix cubes jammed in with ‘my boys’.
I manage to smuggle the camera in with no thanks to my friends who point and scream at how funny my “Square erection is”. Me and my ‘sick’ friend decide that we would look at all the booths and I find the mother of distinct Warped memorabilia a “Make your own button booth”. I make a be-line for the PETA booth and grab their sense over loading flyer with dead animals all over it and make a pin of a cow with its throat slit. I also made a pin of a sunset.
My total haul in merch is 11 compact discs, 1 t-shirt, 31 stickers,1 pair of sunglasses, 2 posters and 13 pins including the two I made myself. The rest of the concert consisted of me fawning over the half naked girls and all the badass bands. I met the Groovie Ghoulies and had my picture taken with them.
I also met Nardwar instead of trying to think of something intelligent to pester the man with I simply just posed with him.On a side note Nardwars sunglasses were held together at the arm hinge by a paperclip I haven’t decided if this annoyed me or joyed me. On one hand it could be considered as mocking the underprivileged because he can obviously afford to just buy a new pair. Reversely it could be said that he is just not attached to material possessions.
The rest of the day was fueled on a sugar high from fudgesicles and squelching guitars and melodic screaming vocals. I photographed numerous different bands. Everytime I took my camera out of my bag I chuckled “I’m not allowed to be doing this” to myself.
I went into the crowd for NOFX and slowly tried to push my way to the front. I got within three rows of the band when I had to turn back. The air inside a crowd of such swarming young bodies seems to be ten degrees warmer and every breath you take is filled with wretched rancid man essence. As the musky humidity entered my lungs I discovered that I was no longer the young punk who enjoyed mosh pits and that I would watch the rest of the show from the back.
As I was cursing myself for being such a wimp and was willing myself to head back into the fray I saw a young girl being carried out on a stretcher. That pretty much killed those intentions.
What will happen at the closing of dales trip. How will dale handle seeing an elderly woman with shaved genitalia and a fannypack and nothing else. Stay tuned for next week and oh I told you it was rough no complaining fuckers.
