Quote of the day:

“F**k you, pay me.”

– Dan’s answer to Tyson when asking to switch seats.

Sunday/Monday/Tuesday, November 13th/14th/15th, Nelson

We leave Vancouver Sunday morning after sleeping for 3 hours at our friend Christine’s. She is awesome and gives us homemade trail mix bars for the road. We decide to go back to the old homestead, in the Kootenays, where Dan and I became the stalwart gentleman we are today, reliable and savvy! We have 3 days to kill before we are in Saskatchewan so we spend them with our parents, a quick visit and re-charge for the impending doom that is the rest of the cross-tundra tour, which we are now calling the “Beers For Years” tour, 2011. After getting a good sleep, we spend monday in downtown Nelson with Dan’s dad, Dave Ball, a champion rocker, and we visit old friends and haunts, stop in at the local music store and we even walk-in to our old local radio station, The Bridge, to say hi. The boys end up doing a short interview without me, mostly because my parents live 20 minutes out of town and I had to borrow my mother’s car to get into town! I listen to it on the way in and the subject of Dan and I’s old band “Accident Scene” is brought up, an emo/pop-punk gem that is our teenage years. We even see our old friend and drummer from those days, Chris Killeen, and he is hilarious and handsome as ever.

Nelson is a beautiful town, even after all it’s seen over the years, and even after our favourite restaurant “Redfish Grill” saw a fire a couple years back. There’s a definite nostalgia that comes with re-entering the town you spent so much of your youth in, the icy and treacherous roads leading in and out where I’ve almost met my end more than a few times in the winter, The Royal and the now-closed David Thompson Cultural Centre that held so many classic punk rock matinees and also, where we recorded our first analog EP, the gyro park where we’d hang out and explore every summer listening to “Through Being Cool, the karaoke bar that eventually became our watering hole, even the old Chakho Mika Mall is still standing like a champion. It’s funny, we went to the A&W that Dan managed for a few years, back when he had triangular muttonchops and one pair of good, brown dickies, and the OCD reaction I see in him every time we enter an A&W, or any fast food establishment for that matter, became clear. Every time he orders something, he is extra polite, asks how the “flow” is going and mentions the band and how his “fast-food ship” was the tightest. And when we complain about the food, he just knows why it sucks: “It’s because it was put into the #6 slot instead of #3, so it was pre-made and waited longer because the drive-thru is backed up.” and, “The 2 for $5.00 “Fiesta” mama burger will only be around for another 3 weeks, it’s a promotional tool, so enjoy it while it lasts.” It is a phenomena I will enjoy for years to come. Much like this mounted plaque displaying the progression and preservation of Dan’s facial hair, or lack thereof.