What I did in Vancouver (as best I remember) - Thursday

Thursday:
Dan had to work, so I was alone in his house until about quarter to 5. This was fine by me because it gave me chance to adjust to the timezone changes after my 24 hour journey the previous day. Dan had left me a key, so I decided to go and explore the area rather than keep myself cooped up all day. This wasn't as adventurous as it might sound, because of course I'd been there before and could vaguely remember the place.

I found the local shops and took the chance to grab my first Canadian meal... OK, so technically my Tim Horton's in Montreal was my first Canadian meal, but I mean in Vancouver. So anyway, it was at Quizno's... Yeah, they have those in England too, but not very many. I can think of just one in Manchester. I was served by a nice lady who immediately noticed my accent; turns out she's from Poland, so we had a friendly chat about Europe/Canada. I visited a few more shops and came back to Dan's house with some shower gel (which would see much use from all the other fly-ins to Dan's house later in the week), a bag of kettle chips (very nice), some toothpaste (how did I manage to pack my toothbrush but forget toothpaste?!) and a couple of combs (they came in a double pack, I didn't actually think I needed two). The combs ended up creating some memorable moments that week, funnily enough.

I spent the rest of the day playing Guitar Hero & Fire Pro Wrestling on Dan's Playstation, as well as writing my previous blog. When Dan came home, we played a few rounds of Guitar Hero, as he had aquired Justin's old guitar, so we could do face-offs and the like. The original plan for the evening had been to go to some carnival that was in town with a friend of Dan's girlfriend, but it seemed in doubt, as Xu herself (Dan's gf) was ill, so it would just be the three of us. In the end the outing was called off, but I didn't mind too much, as it meant we got to go to dinner with Justin and Scott.

So we took the long drive to Justin's house (the distances these people live from each other is quite weird, I think we drove for about 45 minutes which is the time it takes, I was told later in the week by Drew, to drive from one side of Rhode Island to another). When we got there, I was really happy to see Scott and Chuey again, and almost straight away it felt like I'd never left last year. We headed right out to a BBQ restaurant called Memphis Blues (which apparently is not thought kindly of by anyone called Steve) but had to wait about 15 minutes before we could get a table. When a waitress came outside to find a different party which had been waiting and couldn't find them, we were given their table.
"I think one of them was a veggie, so they might not be coming back," explained the waitress. Scott replied, with a mock tone of concern, "...you mean, in a wheelchair?"

Scott & humour 1, good taste and decency 0.

Before long the four of us were sharing a huge platter of various meat and southern style fixin's, and discussing the weekend ahead. I had been slated to wrestle Scott, but it turned out that Scott had broken his thumb in a match the weekend before at the hands of Mitch/Mitch Deppen/Mercury. After explaining why the original plan of Lenny D (Kyle) vs. his real life brother Chris Mason (Kevin) wasn't going to happen after all, the VCW boys booked me vs. Kyle. Not a bad booking considering he has about 2 matches a year, and I would be getting one of them.

We went back to Justin's house and I was introduced to the world's most bizarre hall/staircase, which was not carpeted but had a stone floor. Not just a flat even stone floor, but, like, little black pebbles. It was not a very comfortable walking experience but I was glad to be at least wearing socks... I wonder how many pairs of socks Justin and his family get through, though.

I watched the last episode of the half-season of LOST with Justin and Scott while Dan practiced playing guitar, him not being big into LOST. During the breaks, we watched parts of a video on YouTube featuring various opening scenes from CSI Miami, where the main character says something ridiculously cheesy while removing his shades, followed by the scream from "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. E.g. "You know what they say, Frank... (puts on shades) ...Speed kills." "YYEEEAAAOW!"


As soon as LOST was over, Dan had set up a game of Dream Phone, which he was very insistant that we should play. It seems the Dream Phone advert is a retro classic (), so yes, we played Dream Phone...! Dan meticulously laid out how the game worked and the rules, only for us to get 10 minutes into a game when he accidentally pressed the wrong button on the phone, resetting the game. GAH!

Eventually Dan came out victorious and we moved on to the much more manly game of Rock Band; if you've never heard of Rock Band, well, it's a simple concept... You take Guitar Hero and add a bass guitar, drums and a singer. It sounds OTT but trust me, it's a lot of fun when you have 4 people playing together.

This is where someone else who was there is going to have to fill in the blanks a bit. I'm sure we somehow ended up back at Dan's house, where Al, Rigor, Josh and Alex 2 (AMP from Iowa) were waiting for us, having just driven from Seattle. Josh and Rigor (or Steve, who doesn't like Memphis Blues) went back with Al and myself, Alex and Dan played more Guitar Hero. The highlight of this session was the discovery of how to completely ruin "When You Were Young" by The Killers by holding down the whammy bar all the way through the song.

i was going to write about my whole week but I went into a lot more detail than anticipated, so I'll cut it short here and maybe do a day per post.


UNTIL NEXT TIME...!