Dr?ving

The place in my life where the road blurs reality

I’m sure you can tell, but I don’t necessarily plan these out; these entries into my life are hewn on the page - for your entertainment. Or because I have no filter. One or the other.

I like it that way; it keeps it interesting. What will my hyper-fixation be this week?

I feel a bit hungover. Coming from a sober person (yes, I am. My fatty liver says alcohol is bad for me. And I might have had a dependency), that is a strange comment. For me to write anyways.

I traveled from Calgary to Port Alice in a couple of days. It took a little over eighteen hours. To put things in context, my wife and I traveled from a city of 1.5 million to a coastal village of seven hundred and forty. We went from a place obsessed with wealth to one where I’m unsure how people can afford to live here.

Calgary was a lovely city, and I was surprised by that. The nicest part of it was the access to nature. Drive a half hour, and you’re in a provincial park surrounded by deep woods. Funny thing is - no one swims in the rivers there. I did - but now I’m wondering if I have been irradiated by whatever is coming off the tailing ponds in Northern Alberta (for those of you joining from non-Canada, Alberta has oil sands, which results in lakes and ponds being turned into dumps for heavy minerals and the likes). But I’m one of these weird new-age hippies that must dive into water if I see it. I might get cancer early. I’ll keep you posted.

Calgary has great bookshops. It made me realize that Vancouver doesn’t have a lot of secondhand bookstores. Astronomical rent will do that to a city - take away all the wonderful shops that smell of decaying paper. I bought myself a copy of Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery, mostly because I want to take the piss out of the ‘Indian Burial Ground’ trope with my next novel. PC is one of the books that hammers that idea into the collective unconscious. Makes you wonder what the social allegory for the Indian Burial Ground is. Anyways, back to the bookshops. I love browsing—so many ideas in one place. While attending the University of Victoria in my early twenties, I would go to their library and bemoan that I would die before I could read the collective knowledge humans had compiled. It still makes me a little nostalgic. I picked up Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones because it’s a hundred pages, and I can probably read it over a weekend. Got to love the trend of novels that you can slip into your back pocket. I live for them.

There’s a river that runs through Calgary. And yet the water tastes so filtered. Tailings ponds. I tell you.

Another fun thing about Calgary - it hit thirty-three degrees while we were there. I’m a big man, 6’3, and if you’ve ever seen a large dog suffer in intense heat - that’s me. I want it to end. Three days later, it did. And then the low was seven degrees.

I’m still confused.

So, we packed up and hit the road, returning to BC. The first leg was ten and a half hours. We were listening to Firestarter on audiobook. Bit of a Stephen King thing happening over here, but it is one author my wife and I can agree on.

We have a new car that has adaptive cruise control. Have you heard of this? You take your foot off the gas, and it does all the work, acceleration and braking. It is kind of like putting your confidence in a ghost, but that ghost is a chip that someone implanted in your car - and that chip might be taken over by A.I. that wants to murderize you (sorry, this A.I. intends to murder you dialogue we’ve been having is getting to me). So, around midnight, with a piece of a supermoon floating above me, barely able to see the road, with large trucks all around me, I put my faith in a chip and let it do the driving at 120kmh on one of Canada’s fastest highways. Oh, and there was a construction zone every five minutes.

Have I told you that I suffer from anxiety lately? Yes? Okay.

Anywho, we arrived in Vancouver a little after one. People drive like maniacs at that time of night. Also, Vancouver has too many luxury vehicles. Everyone drives a BMW, Porsche, or Audi.

Because we drove like maniacs, we get a day to recover. So, we enjoy our apartment in Vancouver. There are fireworks, and our little dog, Salem, has a night of fireworks-induced mania that causes her to scurry under our bed. She has only done that twice in her life - always during fireworks.

The next day we prepare to leave, go shopping, try and remember things we’ve forgotten this time (guess what, we forgot a lot of things again!) and flop into bed ready for that five o’clock wake-up time.

Getting to Vancouver Island can be tricky during the summer. If you don’t have a reservation on the Ferry to the Island - you’re stuck trying to figure out which Ferry will amount to the least waiting time. You hear horror stories: people waiting for seven sailings (seven hours) to get on.

We got up early to ensure that didn’t happen.

Vancouver has no traffic at five in the morning. Have you ever seen 28 Days Later? The zombie flick by Danny Boyle? Starring Cillian Murphy? The guy in Oppenheimer? Driving in Vancouver in the early morning reminded me of that movie. You never see the streets that empty.

In Port Alice, you do.

But, long story short, we managed to get on the first available ferry. We’re pros at this. We’ve been back and forth on that ferry a hundred times over the last couple of years.

I love North Vancouver Island. You drive out of Nanaimo, past the Comox Valley and Campbell River, and then you get to the wild part of the Island. It is heavily forested up here - Western Forest Products is actively logging everything. Despite that, it is lush and green, and you don’t get cell service - and it is my idea of where you want to go when you need a break.

We listened to Carrie on the way up. Firestarter lost our interest. The audiobook of Carrie has a beautiful intro by Stephen King and is narrated by Sissy Spacek. You’ll adore how she pronounces Desjardins—very Southern American - less French.

Anywho, trees and more trees and ocean, and here I am—a village on the edge of the Western world. The ocean is Patrice in colour. There isn’t much around. A community center. A grocery store. A liquor store. A coffee shop. A library (which has the craziest hours; Monday, Thursday, Saturday and the randomest times).

An excellent place to write if there ever was one.

We’ll be here for a month.

I think my hangover will be cured pretty quickly—time for another coffee.

Hope you’re well,

Martin J.