slingin lingo in halifax

So rideshare turned into a ridescare, but in the end, Halifax wound up being a great time.

My original 'plan' --I say 'plan' because there really was never more than a few seconds of forethought that went into creating my itinerary -- when returning from my trip was to visit Montreal for a few days then book 'er off to Halifax and make a go at it.

After a couple days in Montreal though, with its ridiculous amounts of restaurants and things to do, I decided I'd stick around here, and make a little stop in Halifax to visit the Dog Whisperer and Caro.

I'm humiliated to say it, but the trip would mark the first time I'd ever been east of Montreal in Canada.

In other words, I'd be popping my Maritime cherry.

While online, searching for jobs and homes -- both of which I have found temporarily, as I write this -- I came across a couple rideshare offers to Halifax. The rideshares were scores cheaper and much more convenient than flying and busing respectively. One person responded hours later and after consenting to the fee, I was to be on the road to the East Coast by Friday 12p.m.

After a couple hiccups with insurance, we were on the road, heading out of the city around 2p.m. A girl from Montreal, whose family is from Lebanon, and another from Lebanon, rented the car, and I was along for the ride with another girl from Halifax, in Montreal working.

We punched the Dog Whisperer's Halifax address into the GPS and set off, on the supposedly 13.5 hour drive, which would get us into Halifax sometime around 3 a.m. The first few hours on the road were beautiful despite the rain, as the hills and horizon were splashed with colour as the leaves on the trees, before dying, gave off one last flash of life. There were oranges, yellows, and fiery red and pink to the horizon. It was almost mesmerizing at times. And maybe that was what distracted us, and was the reason we wound up at the U.S. Border, around 5 p.m.

How we missed the signs, the warnings, the lights, I don't know. But there we were, at a crossing of the world's largest 'unprotected' border, and deciding whether we should risk trying to get in. Apparently, the GPS gives you the quickest route, which in our case included a dip into Maine. We had no idea. And we had no passports.

We went up to the Canadian border guards and asked them what we should do. The lady said this GPS thing happened all the time and said we had about a three-hour detour back up to Quebec City. We asked: "Should we give it a shot?"

She responded: "You might as well."

So we drove up to the U.S. Border patrol, kind of laughing, fully expecting to be told to turn around and go back home. It quickly became apparent this would not be a short visit.

The lady at the window asked for our passports, and I was the only person able to produce one. The rest of the girls had a myriad of I.D.s -- student cards, credit cards, work I.D.s, drivers' licenses -- but no proofs of citizenship.

So the lady asked her supervisor what she should do and he comes out and grills us a little longer, learning that one of us is a Lebanese citizen, and is in Canada with a student VISA -- except she doesn't have it on her.

We learn that he is going to have to go through this long, drawn-out process to try to prove the citizenship of the three ladies in the car. 'Dammit,' I think. We ask if we can just turn around and pretend this all hadn't happened. He says no.

"You can't prove you are citizens of Canada. What if you drive over there and they say they don't want you?" he asks, looking at the Lebanese girl. "Then we have to deport you back to Lebanon."

Shit.

We look back to the Canadian side, not more than 20 metres away, and say, 'come on, they know us, we just spoke with them. They'll let us in. ' He says his job is on the line and it doesn't work that way.

We get dragged inside for questions, questions, questions. They take out all our bags -- or so the girls told me later. I had a bottle of Brennivin's from Iceland for the Dog Whisperer, and the lady took it out of my bag, I guess, held it up, thought a second, and then put it back in the bag (around all sorts of dirty socks and boxers) realizing perhaps the trouble of reporting it wasn't worth it.

Anyhow, we spent another 2.5 hours in purgatory, answering the same questions over and over. I'm rolling my eyes, frustrated that it's taken us nearly 6 hours to make our drive 30 minutes longer.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the three girls are given their refusal to entry papers, and we set back to the Canadian side. We are let in and then head back up to Quebec City. I kind of wrestle the driving away, and drive from 7:30 p.m. to Fredericton in the rain and fog and then pass out and wake up just outside Halifax, with the metallic taste of Red Bull and coffee stained onto my teeth and Red Bull burps making me gag.

We rolled into the city just before 10 a.m. -- 19 hours after leaving Montreal.

Good times.

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Had a grand old time with Dog Whisperer, Caro and Umiq though. They had a bed made up for me and I passed out like a baby after a quick meal.

On Saturday, we went out for sushi with some of the Dog Whisperer's dog-lover friends. I've never claimed to be a sushi man -- more of a California Roll guy -- but now, I'm in love with that stuff.

Later, we wound up at this rocking party at Gus' Pub.

It turned out it we were lucky enough to show up at a Hoser party, where everyone was dressed up in flannel shirts, toques and goofy mustaches. The party was thrown as a fundraiser for a college radio station and it was one of the coolest ideas I've ever heard of.

They got all these local bands to play these really cheesy 70s, 80s and 90s songs by Canadian artists. They ran the gamut from April Wine, to Trooper to Celine Dion -- performed by a girl from Ontario who knew half the words, over a Napoleon Dynamite score drum machine and synthesizer. It was example after example of embarrassing cultural exports. But I loved it. Then there was a group that played classic Neil, like 'Powderfinger.' It was fucking excellent.

I was a little choked there was no 'Boys in the Bright White Sports Car' by Trooper, but I guess there's next year. The night was supposed to be capped with 'Takin' Care of Business', and last year, I guess it ended with 'Tears are Not Enough,' -- Canada's version of 'We are the World.' (I used to know the words to the Tears are Not Enough -- French and English -- when I was a kid, because we seemed to watch it once a week in music class. "C'est l'amour qui nous r'assemble/d'ici a l'autre bout du monde/Let's show them Canada still cares/Ohhhhh! And you know-ooooo that we'll be thee-eee-eereee.") I would have killed a man to have been part of that sing-a-long.

The night was building up to the annual headlining contest: a Maple syrup chugging contest. I sincerely debated whether I should participate, but in the end, I made the wrong choice -- and decided against it. All the people I spoke to said the chug involved 1 or 2 L of maple syrup. I just didn't think I had it in me. To my shock though, it merely involved a cup of the non-too-viscous liquid, and nearly ten contestants shot it back, and we painfully watched it slowly slop down the sides of the cups.

Two people finished the syrup at the same time and so the contest went to a tiebreaker, where a guy beat a girl, shooting back a small glass of syrup.

The winner was treated like an Olympic champion for the rest of the night, with pats on the back and genuine adulation by all who crossed his path.

We ended the night with poutine and a donair that I can say was probably the best I've ever had. (The legend of the Halifax donair is true.)

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The next night, we went to a Thanksgiving dinner without turkey. It was a great night though, picking the brains of the guys from the band Caledonia about touring. It made me a little envious, because other than like a sports team, I couldn't imagine a cooler way to bond with friends than going on tour. (Especially after reading Adam's tour blog.)

We shared the Black Death (Brennivins) with anyone who cared to partake and met some former Yellowknifers, people that kayak down waterfalls for kicks and I was schooled on the supposed differences between Torontonians and Montrealers ("They're living with a five-year plan, while in Montreal, they have six-month leases.")

And me and the Dog Whisperer, after indulging in more Brennivins, tried to convince the band to come up for Folk on the Rocks.

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A few things dawned on me in Halifax.

First, after meeting people non-stop for nearly two months, I was getting sick of my little back story. It was almost like when you return home from school and you get the three stock questions. "What have you been up to? How much time do you have left? How long are you back for?" The first thing anyone ever asks you when traveling is "where are you from?" After answering the question many times every day, and getting the "it must be cold?" question right away, I began to tire of playing the game, so I would just say Yellowknife and then quickly ask that person another question.

But I figured out that answering that question and just letting the conversation flow naturally from there usually leads to an interesting time and, by blowing right over it, it kind of closes down the dialogue.

So I have stopped doing that.

And something else hit me while in Halifax. But I can't remember what it was anymore.

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We went down to a cove Sunday and saw seals and an oil rig being pulled to harbour by three tug boats and I held a starfish. And a full moon.

The Dog Whisperer made the comment that if you stuck a lighthouse beside Great Slave Lake it would look just like Peggy's Cove. At the cove we checked out, Duncan's Cove I believe, I kind of agreed. The Canadian Shield juts out from small bushes and just outside clusters of diminutive, skinny pine trees, with the neon-green lichen you'd expect to see North of 60.

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The drive home was much better. No U.S. border. We made it in under 12.5 hours.

Note: I am convinced that Jumpin' Jack Flash by the Stones is the greatest highway driving song ever written. Every time that opening riff started up, my foot got heavier.

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Overall, Halifax seems like a hell of a good time.