Week Nine - Sommink abaaat a 32 hour, none stop drive! “Go the distance”

Vancouver, Banff, Calgary, through Montana, Via Fargo (North Dicota), through Minnesota, Dyersville (Iowa), Dodgeville (Wisconsin)

Day 56 - Monday
11.05.2009

It was time to leave Vancouver and drive what we thought then was a long 9-hour drive to Banff. After our usual morning fuckeries and saying goodbye to Baby (by far the best thing here) we left at 1pm.
It was second hangover day and as some of you might appreciate the toxins were definitely still leaving our bodies. We had to make a toilet stop at least every 30 minutes. With that and getting lost one million times, it was turning out to be a rather long drive - we were anticipated much longer than the Google Maps’ suggested 9 hours.
Gem took the first 4 hours and then it was my turn. We were going to swap again but as it was getting dark and we were in the mountains Gem wasn’t that comfortable with those kind of driving conditions and I ended up driving for 9 hours. It didn’t feel like it though for some reason I was buzzed. This feeling turned into delirium and must have infected us both as we started giggling at nothing as if it was the funniest thing in the world. At one point I wanted a sandwich and to save time I asked Gem to hand me one so I didn’t have to stop driving. What she didn’t realise was that she had to put the sandwich meat in the cob to make it complete. What I didn’t realise was that this made Gem really uncomfortable (to handle and smell the meat.) I found this hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing - I am giggling about it as I write. When we finally did stop and I made the damn sandwich myself. Gem went out for a fag while I ripped off a bit of meat and left it for her viewing pleasure on the dashboard ready for her return. We both broke out in laughter; it’s the small things when you have little entertainment in such a confined space.

As for the rest of the drive, almost until the very end it was very cool. As we were so far up the mountains we were driving through cloud. It was a very surreal experience. One that I couldn’t (as hard as I tried) capture on film.
We also rocked the subwoofer with the classic sounds of Best of Cher and the Sister Act soundtrack - both brilliant and both perfect driving and howling music - something we both took full advantage of.

The driving conditions got worse when the sun well and truly went down. It was pitch black with obviously no street lights, it was really “foggy” with the cloud, there were no road markings in the middle or the edge of the road and then to top it all off, it started sleeting. It was fucking mad. A weaker-willed driver would have pulled over but of course I carried on with Cher and an 18-wheeler in front to guide me. I figured he’s bound to know where he’s going so I’ll stick behind him till it clears up.

By the time we reached Banff it was 2am, in total it was a 13 hour drive - our longest yet.


Day 57 - Tuesday
12.05.2009

We woke in our new room for the next few nights, at the HI Banff and heard our roomies stirring. It took less than a minute to learn they were a couple of British girls from Essex and Hertford over in Canada as exchange students living in London, Ontario and exploring a little of Canada before they finished their school year.
Their names were Sarah Rider and Emily Payne and to sum them up slightly, they were walking Gavin-and-Stacey and Little Britain-quoting machines - they were very funny and we got on with them straightaway.
We saw parallels between our two friendships and we decided they were the straight versions of us - they were always taking the piss out of each other (which people took to be offensive which of course wasn’t) they had stupid little in-jokes which only made sense to them, and they said cunt all the time - see, very similar.

We mentioned somewhere in our small talk that we were driving to Lake Louise and Sarah wasted no time in asking if they could tag along. We didn’t mind at all, they were cool and we love making new friends. By the end of the day we had made plans for them to hitch a lift with us to our next destination of Calgary to extend the fun.

When we got to Lake Louise I was expecting the beautiful blue water and clear skies with mountainous surroundings just like you see in the photographs. What I didn’t realise was that this just wasn’t the right season for that sort of weather. In fact it was the exact opposite. The lake was frozen and on its way to thawing out and there was so much fog in the air you struggled to see the mountains. This however was a different kind of picturesque and it was beautiful all the same. We took some snaps with the girls and then to complete the winter wonderland picture, it started to snow quite heavily. I think we’ve now seen every bit of weather imaginable on this trip.
Later that evening the hostel which had a pub in it (this being the same chain of hostel that you’re not usually even allowed to drink in!) was having a pub quiz so we thought why not? Sounds like a laugh.
Before the quiz we decided to cook up some tea and by “we” I mean Gem. I did help cut the bread though.
Once our bellies were definitely lined we headed down to the pub and drank until and throughout the quiz. You could see our levels of drunkenness as in the first round we came second and in the next round we came second to last!
Anyway we had fun and giggles and when the quiz was over, Sarah and Emily had spotted a couple of guys they thought were a bit of alright. Never usually shy the girls just couldn’t manage to introduce themselves. What is the best thing to do in this sort of situation? - well that’s to go and do it for them. Gem went off to chat to one and I sat chatting to Sarah and the barman she had an eye on and was very obvious with my comments. They could have killed us at first but as it worked a treat they had no reason to.
As for us we headed back to our room, pissed.


Day 58 - Wednesday
13.05.2009

So today was previously given the title of “Activities Day” as we had wanted to cram lots in and see lots of Banff. This however is all well and good only when you haven’t got a hangover. I felt fine but Gem, Sarah and Emily were not feeling good at all - Gem apparently had been throwing up all night, each time with her nose bleeding with every retch, mmmm healthy. What’s the best cure for this? A cooked brekkie. Unfortunately as Gem’s a fussy fucker errr I mean vegan, she could only enjoy jam and bread while Sarah and I tucked into a full English, American style.
We were going to go horse riding but the hangover pushed that over to tomorrow and instead we went for a slightly more relaxing activity of the natural springs.
We thought this would be beautiful, open springs in natural and mountainous surroundings. It wasn’t so much this as a glorified heated swimming pool with the slight obscured view of the mountains through lifeguard chairs and safety railings. It was nice but just like a really hot and large bath that you have to share with the ugly neighbours.

With that over with we went back to the hostel where everyone else continued with the delicate task of lying down and trying to rid themselves of their hangovers.
We did go for a while, that night go to the hostel bar again as they promised a jamming session and Gem hoped she could have a go on a drum kit. Alas it wasn’t meant to be as it was an electronic kit and she just wasn’t feeling it so we left and instead decided to watch the rest of the L Word - the two last ever episodes.
All I’m saying about this is that I love Bette more than ever and what the fuck? - enough said. We were so annoyed at the lack of ending that despite it snowing and being 2am we scrambled over to the car to pick up a nearby signal of wireless to Google any possible reasons for this ending. We found nothing that satisfied us - we shall have to discuss this at length on our return ladies.

Day 59 - Thursday
14.05.2009

We had made a plan and actually stuck to it - Sarah and I were to go horse riding while Gem and Emily were to go and sit at a Starbucks and drink their weight in coffee.
It was only an hour jaunt so nothing too taxing but it promised a trot over a running river so I was up for it.
My horse was called Cuba who throughout our many conversations to each other to encourage him to keep me away from low hanging trees, I nicknamed him Ciggy. Unfortunately for a while however I was calling him Cosmo until Sarah asked “Who’s Cosmo?” and I realised my sieve-like memory had failed me again.
The trek was cool and something different and unexpected. I was also at the back of the group so got to see each one of the horses individually have a poo - brillo. It was like car crash TV, I just couldn’t look away.

After that we all piled into the car and made our way to Calgary. Now it’s not that far from Banff to Calgary, only about an hour. Unfortunately it also took us a whole extra hour just to navigate through the city. At one point I was directed onto a very-poorly signposted tram only road and had no choice but to drive up it to get out the other end where a couple of police vans were sat. It’s safe to say I was a little stressy by this point.

After Emily had made us both look like girls with some rocking makeup we had a plan to go out get Mexican and then take the girls to a gay bar which was Emily’s first experience of one.
We did all of the above and the bar we ended up in was called Twisted Element. It was dead at first but did pick up and the drinks were cheap and so flowed quite frequently. I did try and get chatting to some locals to keep myself entertained as the girls smoked but these locals were either underage, shy or just plain mardy as they had no personality whatsoever.
The evening was filled with dancing and more drinking and writing on Sarah’s arms with our handy sharpie that we had brought out with us - I think our choice of graffiti was “X Girls Cum here” and “Sommink about Pussy” - hahahaha.
The girls ended up being massive fag hags with all of the guys loving them so we left them to it and headed back.


Day 60 - Friday
15.05.2009

We of course woke with a hangover and the daunting thought of our 16-hour drive that we had planned - twats.
We did some much-needed “soaking up” with some dirty food and then drove the girls to their hotel and said our goodbyes with plans to meet up again in London, Ontario in just a few days.
Gem took the first leg of the drive and I slept “it” off. We had figured out by this point that if we drove to Fargo (our chosen destination) that we would arrive at 7am as we were leaving at 3pm like idiots. We thought we’d see how long we could last and play it by ear.
We were still going strong by 12am when we hit the border back into the U.S and Montana State.
So, I’m thinking now that coming back into America at this time of night into any of Middle America is not the best planning. Around this border control I’m guessing not a lot happens so when a couple of English tourists turn up it gives the border control twats (as I named them) something to do. We were there for one hour and forty minutes while the prick with zero personality went through EVERY possession we had with a fine toothed comb. We weren’t allowed to be there for this but occasionally we saw him walk past the glass door with something else of ours in his hands. We basically had to trust that nothing would go missing. The word violated could not be used strongly enough.
Obviously he didn’t find anything and he let us leave in the early hours of the morning - what a prick. We are convinced he just did it as he was bored. What was creepy (as we found out later) was that he’d packed both of our bags back up and not just shoved everything in as he found it, but actually folded everything perfectly and rearranged our entire bags in a completely different way. Eurrrrrgh! What a loser. He probably had a good wank over it.
We had decided to stick it out and carry on to Fargo - why not, we could both drive and we took it in turns to sleep. After a bit of raccoon dodging, Gem took over and I passed out.


Day 61 - Saturday
16.05.2009

I awoke at 5am a few hours later and took over - surprisingly I was quite spritely. I saw the sunrise and it was beautiful.
We had reached Fargo - yay - and by this point we had been driving in turns for 20 hours. There was nothing in Fargo other than the place being made famous in the film so Gem wanted her pick with the sign and as it was 11am we thought there was no point sleeping the day away so it was then and there that we made the decision. This was to carry on driving to Dyersville, Iowa.
Other than a stop off for Maccy D’s refuelling in Alexandra, Minnesota and a fuck around with a Ronald McDonald statue this was a straight drive through and by the time we got there we had been driving for 32 hours continuously - fucking hell yeah!
It was safe to say we had some sleep to be catching up on.


Day 62 - Sunday
17.05.2009

We slept a little over checkout time - understandable really, however what we thought was only 15 minutes turned out to be an hour and fifteen minutes as we hadn’t realised there was a time change from Central to Eastern - woops.
We were in Dyersville, Iowa for a reason. We hadn’t just driven to the back end of beyond for nothing. Located in this small town in a lonely cornfield is one of the greatest film locations in the whole of the United States - the baseball field and home from Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams. “If you build it, he will come.” This was a massive film influence during my childhood and I still love it now - I was VERY excited!
It was amazing - a lot smaller than you would think but then film and imagination always make things seem larger. There was also no corn in the surrounding fields as it was the wrong time of year but that didn’t detract from how fucking cool it was. Everything was still exactly how it had been made by Hollywood and the family still lives in the house that lived there during filming. They actually take care of the upkeep of the field and preserve it all how you remember it from the film in 1988. The whole experience is free too as the owners don’t want to commercialise it and they encourage you to walk / run around, bring a bat and ball or have a sit on the bleachers where the cast sat.
I of course did it all. I ran around like a twat and posed with my baseball mitt and ball that I bought way back at the flea market in Daytona Beach.
The whole thing was brilliant and the sun was out too which made it even better - Dad, so wished you were there.
There was also a gift shop which of course had to be perused. I got myself a child’s baseball “Field of Dreams” t shirt which I adore (and makes me look like a complete dyke) and a banging souvenir book which tells you all about it for my enjoyment later - woo!
As ever we took many, many photos - I have shots of me as ‘Terrence Mann looking moody on the bleachers,’ ‘the daughter as she chokes on her hot dog and falls off her seat’ and ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson as he turns into Doc “Moonlight” Graham.’ How I can adapt myself to become a middle-aged black man, an 8-year old girl and a 21-year old newbie baseball player transforming into a 70-year old ghost all in the space of a few minutes I don’t know - I must be talented.

It was time to leave the field behind but take the dreams with us - see what I did there. We headed for Dodgeville and another location also made famous by a form of media - The House on The Rock, written about in the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Nothing I had ever heard about but Gem was very excited. Unfortunately we had arrived 15 minutes too late and they had stopped selling tickets. Not even our British charm could persuade them. We were supposed to drive to Chicago that night but as Gem wanted to see this place so bad we thought fuck it, let’s stay, after all, we’re here for a reason and why not indulge every whim.
We found a motel that was cheap in Dodgeville and on the way stumbled upon some shit at the side of the road. As Gem hopped out she scoped two badminton racquets which she acquired before we drove off in the hopes that we would be able to use them. As fate would have it our motel was right next to a field complete with picnic bench and a tree to climb. The sun was still out too so it was a really cool evening. We cracked open some beers and played some makeshift badminton with a tennis ball. This however turned into us spending more time trying to take self-timed shots of us playing than we actually spent playing. Never mind that was more than enough energy exerted.

That’s your lot.

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