Currently sitting in the Rose & Crown, the venue we’re playing Tues-Thurs. The Sens are winning game 2… despite no goals being scored yet.

Banff is beautiful and inspiring, much like Jasper but a little bigger of a town.
The venue is nice. Nice sound, nice atmosphere. Not too busy during the week but you can’t expect much considering.

The tour has been good so far. Still getting to know one another.
We’re staying in a ‘band house’, which is the upper level of a house leased to the venue for bands to stay in. We each get our own room and real beds (as opposed to hotel beds, and showers etc), which makes things a little comfier.
Did laundry today which was a whirlwind of fun, then spent a good portion of the day walking around outside, enjoying the lovely weather.

Some new pics up but nothing compared to the photographic mastery of paweldwulit.com

Until I think of something incredible to write about, peace & music to all.

25 hours in a van. Just arriving in Manitoba, the official trip time is confirmed at almost exactly 25 hours from Ottawa, Ontario to the Manitoban border. From here, our destination of Winnipeg is a mere 142 kilometres. This is certainly a good way to start a 3 month tour. If there were any questions about one another- driving habits, personal history, musical taste or the effects of consuming litres of caffeine by 4 in the morning –this is the way to reveal everyone’s true colours. That being said, the first big test of the tour is almost achieved and no one has yet to be ‘inadvertently’ left at the side of the road.

Arriving in Winnipeg around noon, we’ll have the rest of the day to explore the city, stretching atrophied limbs and relax leading up to our first gig of the tour: Tomorrow morning the JW Jones Blues Band will appear on CHUM Winnipeg’s Breakfast Television program, somewhere around 8am. For anyone with said broadcast services, please do check us out!

Sidenote: Apparently since the station is available on Digital Cable it can be seen throughout the country… In Ottawa the show is on Rogers channel 109 CTV Winnipeg…as far as I can tell.

Following the morning show we’ll have the rest of the day, again, to check out the wonderful city of Winnipeg. Though I have driven through it a few times in the past, I haven’t had the chance to really explore the home of… well I don’t know what they’re known for, hence the exploring. I will be sure to report back with all the wonderful things Winnipeg has to offer and whether or not the Decemberists are doing this town any justice with their song, “I hate Winnipeg”.

Packing a van is an interesting process. Three minds, ‘certainly better than one!’, you might say, struggle to realize their own approach and the personal pride of living through the Tetris generation. It took about an hour the first time. Our first unloading will involve paper and pen in order that we might remember how to get it all back in there in a hurry, since, as we all know, time is sleep. Having finally packed three months worth of equipment and luggage we set out to begin the longest drive of the longest tour any of us has been on.

And so here we are. 26 hours in a van and near accomplishing the first objective. Onward to Winnipeg.

Please check out an excellent submission by Dale Mugford, discussing some of the significant things you probably don’t know about the war currently going on in your backyard. [here]

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dale’s work, he is a social activist and writer from Ontario, Canada and also a former guest columnist for AntiWar.com.

You can visit his personal blog, The Digital Memoirs of An Old Soul, and if you have any web design needs, check out Brave New Code.

…it might be more accurate to say that photons and electrons are neither a particle or a wave — they’re undefined up until the very moment someone looks at them or performs an experiment [experiences the particles], thus forcing them to be either a particle or a wave.”

Sullen and bored the kids stay
And in this way they wish away each day
Stoned in the mall the kids play
And in this way they wish away each day

-Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree [Fear of a Blank Planet - 2007]

What a trip. And why did I come home? This is why:

The phone rang at about 10am this morning. I had just awoke and was enjoying some back-deck sunshine and cereal. What a combo. So I pick up the phone with childish anticipation that the caller might be someone I haven’t seen in a while inviting me to frolic around the market or some other exciting outdoor adventure whereas I might shed some of the semi-informal callous I have grown over the passed two weeks of talking business with a variety of different characters. To my dismay, however, it is not someone I know, nor anyone I really want to talk to. It is a phone solicitor!

For those looking to avoid such conversations:
The first sign that you are dealing with an idiot who will bumble over your personal credentials and then try to sell you something incredibly impersonal and unnecessary occurs as you pick up the phone to hear… nothing. Maybe a sniffling nose or a fumbling of papers, or better yet the lifting of the receiver as the caller realizes some idiot actually picked up their home phone between the hours of 9 - 5 and might not actually expect it to be phone solicitation.

Other signs affirm the dire situation as the caller attempts to pronounce your incredibly simple name and throws in a bunch of rediculous syllabic emphasis and long pauses seemingly just to make sure you’re thoroughly irritated before they ask you for your money, even though what they’re offering is ‘free’.

Today, Joe TeleAss didn’t even get that far. No he didn’t even get beyond the misreading of my personal and private information which is checked of course to ensure that he’s bothering the right person. While I am usually one to entertain frustrating situations like that by playing along or playing the fool, I simply couldn’t help but laugh and ask him to repeat himself when he said:

“Just to make sure I am talking to the right person, you are still living on ‘Non-Solicitor’?”