Taking some time off in Montreal: You'll never guess who with...

July 7, 2016

I was very excited to arrive in Montreal. It was almost six years since my first visit, during the early days of my first, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at a journey around the world by bike. On that occasion I had arrived from the opposite direction, cycling from Halifax on the east coast to here, before then turning south towards Toronto. Arriving here from the west now was a significant moment, in more ways than one. I now knew for sure that what was ahead of me to Halifax was not insurmountable - it was a distance I had cycled before, and I also knew from experience that it would be more interesting than the long kilometres I had left behind me over the past few weeks.

But being a tangible distance from the end of Canada was not the only reason for my excitement to be in Montreal. There was also an opportunity to meet an old friend, and for the blog and the movie to be introduced to an exciting new character. Although a photo of him has been seen on this blog before I will be very impressed with any of you who are able to instantly recognise who I am talking about:

Perhaps a link to page one and page two of this journal will refresh your memories. And for further clarification, perhaps page fifty-one and page fifty-two will be worth a quick read (don’t bother with the petition, though, you’re far too late!)

That’s right. Daniel. The very man who declined, at the last minute, to join me on this great adventure, for a variety of extremely questionable reasons. Daniel, who lost the chance to be my loyal companion and hapless sidekick, the chance to be Snowy to my Tintin, chiefly because a) he had lost his glasses and b) his car had broken down.

“You don’t need a car to cycle around the world!!!” I had exclaimed “If anything, your car breaking down is a reason to cycle around the world!!” But Daniel’s mind was made up. He was to remain in Canada.

And after three long years, it was in Canada where I finally tracked the man down. He had been living here in Montreal for a couple of years, settling down with a girl, studying, doing those normal life things. I wondered what it would be like to see him again. Whether he would have any regrets. Most of all I looked forward to finally cycling with him, as he planned to find a bike and cycle with me for a few days up to Quebec City. A chance to glimpse what might have been, perhaps.

There was light rain in the morning as I cycled through the outskirts of the greater metropolitan area, past the overly ornate homes of wealthy people living in the suburbs, with the latest trend apparently being to add castle-like turrets to one’s house. Cycle paths continued to guide me, through the neighbouring Laval and over the bridge into Montreal, a city actually confined entirely upon a large island in the great Saint Laurence river. Here I came across by far the most bicycles I’d seen since Vancouver, on gridded streets somehow more reminiscent of Melbourne, Australia, than anywhere else I’d seen in Canada. I made my way to Daniel’s address and rang the bell.

Arriving at Daniel's apartment. Lots of bikes outside. None of them his.

I was pleased to see he had new glasses. At least he would not be able to use that as an excuse to get out of our ride to Quebec City together. We greeted one another and became reacquainted - we had not seen each other for four years, since I had hosted him at my place in Barcelona for a while through couchsurfing. I must confess that our entire friendship, I think, had been based on how well we had done at picking up two girls who had the fortune to sit next to us in Park Guell. They both had boyfriends and wouldn’t sleep with us, but that wasn’t the point, they had hung out with us, and that was enough to convince both myself and Daniel, I think, that the other would make a perfect wingman whilst traveling the world.

Unfortunately, of course, that had not been enough to stop Daniel from dropping out. As we walked that evening into downtown Montreal to see the big jazz festival that was taking place, we spoke about that. Ultimately, of course, the reason he hadn’t done the trip came down to money. In fact I’d asked people besides Daniel to come with me as well, and they’d all said that they couldn’t afford a trip like this (of course they may just have been being too polite to say it was actually about my smelly socks.) Even so, I was pleased to be able to tell Daniel that after three years on the road, 50,000 kilometres, 49 countries, four continents, and after paying for three cruises, I now had more money than when I started. He was impressed, but there were no regrets. By staying at home in Canada he’d met the love of his love, Lucy. Everything happens for a reason, and everything had worked out pretty well for both of us, in different ways.

The jazz festival was great. We watched two female street performers as they danced with fire and swallowed fire and generally did lots of entertaining things with fire. I asked Daniel where he thought they were from and he suggested Eastern Europe, perhaps Romania, and as I watched them I got carried away imaging their life stories. How interesting their lives must be, living as street performers, traveling the world breathing fire, and what had they come from, what had they grown-up with, and what had brought them here to the other side of the world? Then at the end of the performance one of them spoke to the crowd, in French, with a Quebec accent, and the fantasy was ruined.

We later watched a fantastically entertaining singer perform on one of several stages set up throughout the city centre for this free annual public festival. It was really great and as I watched I thought about who I was when I was last in Montreal, and how I had been on the road for six years now, and how things had changed, how I had changed. I used to do this kind of thing much more, it felt like a core part of traveling that I’d perhaps lost sight of, and I resolved to do more of it.

I’d arrived in Montreal on the Thursday, under the assumption that Daniel and I would be able to start cycling together on the Saturday. Unfortunately he informed me that he simply could not get out of working at the Syrian restaurant he was employed at over the weekend. But was sure he would have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday free, and I was of course welcome to stay with him and Lucy until then. That meant I had three whole days off in a row. It sounded wonderful, my tired body was ecstatic. The only downside was that it would make the task of getting to Halifax in time for my boat home a little more difficult. I would be putting myself back behind schedule, but for the chance to finally cycle with Daniel, I decided to take the risk.

On the first of my rest days I tried, unsuccessfully to find a new laptop. Fortunately, however, a corner of the screen of my broken one came miraculously back to life. It was the bottom right corner, and fortunately this coincided with the position of Facebook chat, so I would now be able to keep in touch with Dea without needing to invest in anything new. Once that was sorted out, I walked with Daniel up Montreal’s resident mountain, Mont Real. Up until this point Montreal had not really been as I remembered it, but the view we had over the city once we’d climbed up to the viewpoint brought everything back to me. It was a fine view, of a fine city.

A joint selfie with the sun in our eyes. I was getting quite proud of my beard!

A racoon who resided below the viewpoint, begging (and getting) food from the crowds of tourists

Another racoon, brazenly looking for food in front of everyone

"Dear Dea, I've had a great day with Daniel. We saw racoons."

The next day I walked alone around the city in the pouring rain. I wanted to go to a thrift store and find some National Geographics, or something, to read. The nearest one was many hours of walking away, but I decided it was worth it, and I would get to see the city on the way. I had underestimated the rain, however, and got completely soaked. Of course the thrift store had no National Geographics, nor anything else in English.

Sunday was a much better day. Daniel and I decided that we would make it our ‘sports day’, although we were not actually going to be doing any sports ourselves. It began first thing in the morning with a walk to the English pub where Lucy worked as a waitress, an ideal setting to sit and watch as Andy Murray clinched the Wimbledon tennis title against his Canadian opponent. The tennis was great, though I must say the establishment we were in looked absolutely nothing remotely like an English pub. They made up for that, however, by serving us complimentary strawberries and cream for the game.

Part two of our day involved going to a more pub-like pub to watch the Euro 2016 football final between France and Portugal. The Quebecois were absolutely getting behind the land of their ancestors, with the pub packed to the rafters with blue-shirted France supporters. Daniel and I squeezed in and soaked up the incredible atmosphere. I could hardly believe that there was a bar in France, or anywhere else, with a better atmosphere than this one. Anticipation of a French victory was palpable, and I couldn’t wait for the French team to score. The roof was literally going to be blown off the building. But sadly the French team did not score, Portugal won 1-0, Daniel went to work, and I had a quiet and anti-climactic night in alone.

Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 54,172 km (33,641 miles)

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