The Canadian Frightfest

March 8-11, 2009
Montreal, Quebec to Thompson, Manitoba...both in Canada. 3,000 miles off the beaten path.

We never got a chance to hang out in Montreal, as much as we wanted to beat up some fake French kids. We were too excited to get to the cave clubs up North that we'd heard so much about...man, we weren't disappointed.

The Versa held up really well under the pressure of driving a thousand miles a day. To appease her, we stayed mostly on the King's highways so she felt more royal. In fact, we mostly wanted to take the King's highways just so that we could intimidate the Canadian drivers and show them that we
A.) Are American, and therefore impervious to their witchcraft and northerly trickery,
B.) Are superior drivers, therefore not held to the "2 Mississippi" rule when it comes to following distance to the car in front of us....yeah...Versa Rule #1 is that if you can see the license plate of the car, you aren't driving close enough,
C.) holla'd at a bunch of hottie Canadian women. Canadian men were too busy hanging from Pine Trees in flannel watching hockey or making free doctor's appointments. SO YEAH, these were some of the bitties we hit up in Thunder Bay:

(courtesy discovervancouver.com)
As you can see, Ronny and I were spreading Spring Break cheer long before we hit the U.S.S.R.

The best part about the second day of the trip was that I knew where we were headed, and V-Ron didn't. I told her that kind of information was privileged to only those who know how to drive vehicles outfitted with a manual transmission. Since we were the only two bitches on the trip, that means I was the only one driving, and the only one knowing where we were headed:



HELLO???!! A town in Manitoba called Thompson? you KNOW we're hittin that shit up. The only bullshit part of the whole she-bang is that, according to GoogleMaps, there is no easy way to drive to Thompson.

Whaaa????!!!! How is that possible? Terrain is terrain, no matter how you look at it. And Canadian terrain is utterly driveable.


Manitobans were the best part about Manitoba. We rarely encountered any, so we assumed they were cool with/understanding of our discomfort with being around Canadians. Why can't more Canadians be as compassionate as the Manitobans???? And when we did have to interact face to face with them, they were still cool. In fact, when we checked into the Thompson Days Inn at around 8:45 pm, They didn't even charge us when I gave them my Visa Platinum CheckCard and they saw my last name. Probably because they'd never seen a credit card before, but we gave them the benefit of the doubt. I then insisted we stay in the royal suite, considering we'd been traveling on the King's Highway for most of the day anyway.

A few things about Thompson, MB, Canada:
1.) it is the third largest city in Manitoba with a WHOPPING 13,000 people.
2.) average temperature during the month of March is 20 degrees. YUMMY.
3.) IT'S REKNOWNED IN MUSIC and FOLKLORE!!!! The city was used in the Tragically Hip song "Thompson Girl". The song is set both in and north of Thompson, and is about the title character, a Thompson girl. One of the band members, rumor has it, dated a teacher from Thompson's daughter for a brief period, and thus the song was inspired.
WOW.

I went to the bathroom to change into my bathing suit before we headed down to the hotel pool, but when I came out I saw Veronica passed out on the bed. There was an empty bottle of Quaaluds next to her.
I sighed. I didn't realize how taxing the journey could be on her frail little Lithuanian body. So I tucked her in and then went down to the pool alone to play with some vacationing couple's kids.

we still have maybe 10,000 miles to travel before we get to St. Petersburg! That's 16,000 kilometers to you, Canucks.