Home?

In the grand scheme of things my heart was never in Nanaimo. I always lived with the assumption that, no matter what, Victoria would always feel like home. I was wrong. I went back to Victoria last Monday and saw a bunch of people I hadn't seen in five years and went and saw my old houses and neighbourhoods. I realized that they weren't mine anymore. So here's the story frame-by-frame.

Monday June 5th 10:30 AM:

I board the greyhound south which I used to ride every second weekend when I would visit my mom throughout grades 11 and 12. I was excited to see some old friends and extremelly stoked to see the Bright Eyes show at the Royal Theatre. Driving through the outskirts of Victoria I took in the sights and locations from my childhood with vigour and excitement. I had finally come back where I belonged.

1:15 PM

Arrive in downtown Victoria; drinking in all the familiar sights and buildings. So excited for what's to come. My old best friend d'Arcy's dad picks me up and we go pick up my ticket and then run around doing some errands while d'Arcy is still at work. So we run around doing errands and whatnot and then decide to hit the Arby's in Mayfair mall where I randomly run into Leila who I apparently never told I was moving oops. That was five years ago. She basically assaults me as soon as she sees me which was nice :). We go pick up one of Dan's (d'Arcy's dad) prizes that he won on a radio call in show. I can't believe he's still as into those contests as he always was. We head out to Prospect Lake where d'Arcy's working on cleaning the moss off of a roof for his dad's company. I meet his buddies who also work for Dan's company. We head back to d'Arcy's place to wait out them finishing the house. Have a beer watch some Cold Mountain then head back to pick up d'Arcy. We all grab some booze head back to the pad and I have one beer and one barbequed burger before I gotta catch the bus downtown to the show.

7:00 PM

So I get downtown and I run into Chris Thompson and his gf standing out front of the Royal Theatre. I say hey and go look for a merch table of which there is none. Well I wait around and the opening band starts and turns out to be just one dude with a sampler making loops as he goes and building songs from them it was so cool. On one of the songs he was making a bunch of bird noises as a soundscape and he asked the audience if anyone could do a moose impression and he turned the mic to the audience and some dude yelled "MOOOOOOSSSEEEEEE!!!" and so for the rest of the song periodically there would be this big Moose call and a loop of everybody laughing afterward. Finally at the end of the song the dude sang MOOOOSSEEEEE into the mic and everybody cheered it was fucking great. So then Bright Eyes comes out and plays an amazing set. He played so many of my favs "Lover I Don't Have To Love", "Ship In A Bottle", "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)" I was so impessed with how they managed to replicate the music from Digital Ash In A Digital Urn with only a six piece band. The slide guitar player Mike Mogis was absolutely phenominal he also played lead guitar and Bass. I get out of the show head back to the bus stop and while I'm waiting for the Bus who walks by but MEGHAN!! I was like what are you doing here. Apparently she had been at the show too with her brother that's so cool. I hop off the bus a stop early and take a walk past the house I used to live in and I get this weird feeling looking at it and realizing how long it had been since I had lived there. I wander back to d'Arcy's and the whole walk feels like an odd case of deja vu. I look into a car window at my reflection and realize just how much I've changed since I moved away. This was no longer my neighbourhood. The playground of my youth had turned into a strange place. So I get to d'Arcy's and he's not there so Dan offers to drive me to Kevin's place who's another guy I went to school with. We see d'Arcy walking along the road and he says he's been at Maude Hunter's Pub and he was heading home. I tell him to get his ass back to the pub and have a beer with me. So we head in, and a beer turns out to be splitting two pitchers, I grab a Burger and fries. We walk home and crash out for the night.

8:30 AM Tuesday June 6th

In the morning d'Arcy leaves for work and I talk to Leila on MSN and she agrees to come over and pick me up so we head down to Cadboro Bay which is the beach I used to hang out at since I was like 10 years old. We walk along the ocean just talking about stuff that's happened to both of us in the past five years and where we're going in life. She's had a real rough time of it since I've been gone. Her dad committed suicide and she got involved with drug dealers and such. So we talk about stuff. I can't stop talking about Trish and how proud I am of all the stuff she's doing now. Leila asks me why were not still together if I care about her so much and I tell her the whole story and how much of an idiot I was and she tells me she's surprised I'd had two long term relationships over the five years considering I was always single in Vic and never commited to anything or anyone including her before I left. We grab some ice cream and sit down on the grass and talk some more. I think we were both so glad to see each other and so wierded out by it that things were kinda strange for a bit but it was still cool. She drives me downtown where I hit the Mountain Equipment Co-Op and buy a shirt some shades and a nalgene bottle. I head to Market Square where I hit Bead World and pick up some hemp and beads and a book on braiding hemp. I head to Sport Chek to see if my old buddy Nick is working.... he's not. I find out that my buddy Neil moved to Australia and my buddy Brian is now working construction after getting over a Cocaine habit. I eat lunch on the rooftop at The Sticky Wicket and almost buy a Wales National Team rugby jersey but it was really expensive so I declined. I grab the 4:45 greyhound home meet some charcters along the way and arrive home with some pretty great memories.

and upon getting home go on eBay and buy a Wales Rugby hat for $12.