by Neil Peart
Sayin’?
Tomorrow I’ve got a lot of “service and resupply” sort of stuff to do, like post office, bookstore (get some new books to read, though I just picked up a new collection by Ray Guy), book a ferry to Nova Scotia (no cabins available on the last Argentia one, going Saturday, so it looks like back across the island to Port-aux-Basques), find out how much my freakin’ speeding ticket is and pay it, a few drugstore-type things, and all like that.
Just now I took a quick walk around town, down Duckworth and back up Water Street. It’s so warm out, with just a scattered raindrop here and there, and even on this Wednesday night, there’s life on these streets. Nice to see — if not to be part of. (A fine grammatical point there, with that “dangling participle.” Usually one can write around them, if one chooses to be pedantic, but that one’s a puzzler. Like the example I heard in an English play, where a mother complains about her son’s American girlfriend dangling her participles, and the son replies, “Yes, I know, Mother, and that is something up with which you will not put!”)
I had to grin when I turned down the steps at the courthouse, remembering your tale of “attempted suicide,” and your poor, unfortunate cell-mate — who you were going to take with you when you busted out of there [one of Brutus’s hilarious tales of his misspent youth, when he — well, I’d better let him tell that one someday].
Dude, you are still my Number One favorite person, even when you’re not here. You are still so here, sayin’?
I’m going to close this one off, so I can mail it tomorrow. Terry Williams tells me there’s a letter from you waiting at his house, so I’ll start a new one there. Or before, even.
You gettin’ sick of me yet, my little cloudberry?
Your faithful, Langue de Morue
I spent a day in St. John’s taking care of some errands, like the post office, booking my ferry from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, shopping in the used bookstore, visiting the museum, and calling about my speeding ticket (relieved to learn that, as a “foreigner,” I only had to pay a flat $75, and no demerit points).
Now that I could predict my arrival in Halifax with some confidence, I called Terry Williams to let him know. Since I was calling his cell phone, when a voice answered I said (in my best “radio voice”), “St. John’s is rocking!”
An unfamiliar voice said, “I’m sure it is . . . I’ll get my Dad for you.”
It was Terry’s 18-year-old son, Aaron, and I had to laugh at his quickness. Smart-aleck kid.
My friend Andrew was still trying to look out for me (even all the way from Los Angeles), and he made me call the wife of a friend he had worked with there, Alan Doyle, from the band Great Big Sea. Alan’s wife Joanne, brother Bernie, and his wife Lisa joined me for dinner at an Italian restaurant, La Dolce Vita, and they can best be described, like most Newfoundlanders, as “lovely people.”
Then the long ride back across Newfoundland, sticking to the Trans-Canada Highway this time, and on the long, open stretches I was tempted into letting out the K-12 a little once again — until I got another ticket, on the same stretch of road as the one I’d just paid. However, this time I knew the modest penalty, and didn’t care so much.
After an uneventful (but always enjoyable) ferry ride to Sydney, Nova Scotia, I rode on to Halifax and parked my motorcycle in Terry’s MG-filled garage. I had known Terry since my early 20s in St. Catharines, when we had both driven MGBs, and he had been a DJ at the local radio station. Though no longer “behind the mic,” Terry was still in the radio business, and he and his family had followed it from St. Catharines, to Hamilton, to Kingston, to Halifax, to Sudbury, to Winnipeg, to Toronto, then back to Halifax again. Fortunately, they liked it there.
I had known Terry’s wife, Christine, for nearly as long; she was a pert, spirited woman and shared Terry’s ebullient high spirits and great sense of humor. Aaron was quietly intelligent and polite (especially for an 18-year-old), and his older brother, Zak, was another treasure in the family. Born with Downs Syndrome, he had the characteristic sweetness and affectionate nature, and since he and I were the earliest risers in the household, we often shared the breakfast table with boxes of cereal and a comfortable, friendly silence. After a few mornings like that, one day he said, “Neil, I’m going to miss you all day at school today.” That made my heart smile.
On September 12th, I snuck through my 47th birthday without telling the Williamses about it until the next day, countering their dismay by explaining that I hadn’t wanted them to make a fuss, and that I had celebrated in my own way (by buying two boxes of my favorite candies, Bridge Mixture, and eating them while I drank a glass of whisky and read my book — that’s my kind of party). That wouldn’t do for them, though, and the next night they had a cake and sang to me.
Another present arrived for me that day — a FedEx envelope from Andrew with two Polaroids of a photo assistant he had been working with, Carrie. Just before I left home he had told me about her, and wanted me to come right out there to Los Angeles and meet her. But, having just got over one upsetting romantic experience, I wasn’t much interested in exploring another, so I just told him I would wait until I got there, then “we’ll see.” (She did look pretty in those Polaroids, though, long dark hair, slender figure, sexy smile.)
The K-12 went into the local dealer for new tires and a 10,000 kilometre checkup, and Terry drove me around on some errands of service and resupply — including a new pair of Rockports, my combination hiking-and-dinner shoes, as the old ones were starting to get rather disreputable for the latter purpose. (I once read that waiters judge you by your shoes.) I also booked a ferry from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Portland, Maine. I had decided to carry on to New York City, then ride back home to change motorcycles before I headed west again. The road was still the best place for a Ghost Rider to be.
After a pleasant few days with the Williamses, I said goodbye and rode the cleaned-and-serviced K-12 into downtown Halifax to meet with Lesley Choyce at the university where he taught (prolific author, poet, teacher, publisher, TV interviewer — he was a hard-working writer-man). Later that afternoon I rode out to his home at Lawrencetown Beach (where he surfed almost every day — he was also Canada’s surfing champion at one time) to meet his wife Terri, and look around their 200-year-old farmhouse, on which Lesley had also built some impressive additions. A renaissance surf poet, he was.
Their guest house was a small house trailer in the back yard, and after a fine dinner and some good music and conversation with Lesley (he made an interesting comment about my “special relationship” with books, “You take them into your life”), I enjoyed spending a night as “trailer trash,” with heavy rain pounding on the metal roof.
In the morning, I set off on the short journey to the ferry terminal at Yarmouth, then started a letter to Brutus.
Sept. 17, ’99 Yarmouth, N.S.
Hey there, Grossglöckner —
“Mi casa es en su boca.” Get it? My house is in your mouth.
Yarmouth, now ya get it? Geez.
Yep, ol’ Floyd [the hurricane] has decided I should hang in this town for awhile, cancelling my ferry due to high winds and waves (buncha wimps, if you ask me!), so I’ve been out scouting apartments, checking job availabilities, and pricing used pickups.
It’s a nice little town too, even measured by the exacting John Ellwood standards (he’s the one of us who looks after that sort of thing, of course; the Ghost Rider just rides, Chef Ellwood just cooks, Ellwood just parties, and the 14-year-old Gaia just moons over teen music and Love). We’ve got the requisite decent motel (Best Western “Mermaid”), restaurant (Captain Kelly’s), museum (mostly nautical stuff, as you might expect, though Gaia was moved to tears by a photograph of a dog sitting in front of a burned-down house where it had tried unsuccessfully to drag its unconscious master from his bed, and, eight hours later, still sat in front of the ruins of its life — we know how that dog felt, sayin’?), liquor store, and post office (neither of which we needed today, but th
ey’ve got to be there, eh?).
No doubt you’ll notice our new writing paper: rather thin, and a little small, but since 1988 I’ve been using the same Hilroy typing tablet as a travelling letter-writing kit, and you can’t buy a thing like that anymore, for obvious reasons of technological change. The key element is the front and back cover, to protect it in your bicycle or motorcycle panniers. I’ve kept it going the last few years by taping refills into it, but you can imagine it was getting a little travel-worn, and since it (and you) are often my dinner guests at the nicer sort of restaurants, well . . . it was getting to be a tad declassé.
The K-12 was also pampered with new tires, a 10,000-km service, and a new front rim (victim of a pothole in St. Anthony, near the Lightkeeper’s Café, though I only hit it at about 50 kph [31 mph]), which cost $800. I am growing ever more close to this bike — into it — and find myself wanting to ride it cross-country when I head west. But no, the GS is still the “one,” of course, and I miss the luggage capacity, the fuel capacity, the all-day comfort, and being able to carry my basic camping gear. Red Bay was a prime example of that kind of situation, but even here, the first place I called was booked up, and if the desk manager and I hadn’t decided to book me in for two nights last night (just in case), I might have been in trouble tonight, with dislocated people here from four ferries (today’s and tomorrow’s to Portland and Bar Harbor). However, after 12,000 kilometres [7,500 miles], it seems as though the K-12 and I finally understand each other. Even the delicate throttle response seems to be coming together, though I need another stretch of tight stuff, like the Cabot Trail, to be sure (maybe on the ride from New York City back to Quebec). No doubt my threat to trade it in on a new R-1150GS has been a factor!
So far, Floyd has proved less dramatic than expected (or hoped by me; I figured if my ferry was cancelled, I could at least get some adventure out of it, and was ready for the worst: Maglite and smokes on the bedside table). We only saw a little rain and moderate winds here, and according to the Weather Network, the media in New York are calling the hurricane “Fizzling Floyd.”
I spent much of the day reading Tim O’Brien’s Tomcat in Love, and it is great. So different from his others, funny and ironic, like some of Nabokov’s, using the “unreliable narrator” device.
This morning I finished a book of stories by David Guterson (author of Snow Falling on Cedars) which was also good, and along with my dented rim, which I left with Terry to send home for me (an $800 wall-hanging?), I left two collections of stories by Patrick O’Flaherty, one by Ray Guy, and Wolf Willow. Now I’m carrying another one of Stegner’s, The Spectator Bird, and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. So I’ve still got some reading to do.
Anyway, I’d better wrap this up and get it mailed —
Ghost Rider
That ferry crossing became something of a drama, not to say nightmare, though it was not really any kind of adventure — just a nuisance. The ferry was about eight hours late arriving the following day, and was already filled with passengers who had been on a weekend gambling jaunt. Already a day behind schedule, they were told they could stay aboard for the return sailing — along with all of us, who had booked those same cabins.
At a crowded, unhappy meeting in the ship’s bar, people were assigned the few remaining cabins in order of priority, from handicapped, to families, to couples, while those travelling alone were shoved together into small four-berth cabins far below deck. I shared with a drunken party-boy, Al, and a bus driver, Joe, but when I came back later that night (after waiting hours in line for dinner, and wandering on deck for awhile), Al was sleeping in the upper bunk and Joe was gone. When I saw Joe in the morning he told me Al had staggered in, thrown up, passed out and started snoring, so he had gone to sleep in his bus.
While waiting to disembark, I talked with a motorcyclist from New Hampshire, and when I told him I was headed for New York “to get some culture,” he sniffed and said, “I don’t know how much culture you’ll find in New York City!”
I got exactly the same response, word for word, from the female officer at the Customs and Immigration post in Portland. Then she asked me, “Have you ever been arrested?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been fingerprinted for any reason?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in the armed forces?”
“Um, no.”
Then she asked the strangest one of all, “Do you have a return ticket?”
I just pointed to the motorcycle, and she frowned and waved me away.
Then off through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, and a corner of New Jersey (six states in an afternoon — only in the East), and I was in the mean streets of New York City.
A hotel on Central Park South, with a view over the park and the “canyon walls” of Manhattan, a rowboat on the lake on a glorious September morning, a rainy day walking those buzzing Manhattan streets in a forest of umbrellas, visits to the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan (triggering some long-dormant “religious” responses to great art), a night out with the two friends who produced and directed my drum video, Rob and Paul (which included attending a Paul McCartney record-release party, a most strange episode), and a couple of long, talk-filled nights with my writer friend, Mark Riebling — which included forcing him to yield to the preferences of his girlfriend Mindy and me and attend the musical comedy Chicago. Mark’s Teutonic soul being somewhat lacking in what you might call “frivolity,” during the performance of this “all-singing, all-dancing” bit of fluff, I found myself smiling just to think of him sitting there. It was an entertaining bit of fluff, however, and Mark seemed to suffer it gracefully, if not gladly.
I had one awkward moment at the Paul McCartney party, the kind I always dreaded, when somebody recognized me and wanted an autograph. He was polite and well-spoken, perhaps a journalist (he said, “I didn’t expect to see you here,” which I could understand), but when it happened again a few minutes later, I began to feel nervous and uncomfortable, and got out of there as soon as I could.
Throughout my Ghost Rider travels I had only been recognized a few times, to my relief, but of course I was often “on guard,” especially when I saw someone looking at me a certain way. The “John E. Taylor” credit cards had forestalled any “name recognition,” which is actually more frequent for me — perhaps a result of being hidden at the back of the stage (or video) as “the drummer.”
On my first night in New York City, Mark Riebling and I had gone to the restaurant in Grand Central Station and sat at the big square bar facing the vast concourse and the star-speckled ceiling. I saw a patron on the other side talking to the bartender, who came over and asked, “Is one of you guys a drummer?” I felt justified in denying it, and later smiled to myself when I saw him studying my credit card carefully, then shaking his head at the other guy.
Despite 20 years or so of modest celebrity, I had never grown comfortable with such encounters, but now, after the terrible events in my private life, it seemed exactly twice as bad. Whoever I was, I was definitely not the person those people thought they knew.
I commented in my journal, “Upsetting more than ever these days — I’m not ‘that guy.’”
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact
LIMELIGHT, 1980
Chapter 15
RIDING THE JETSTREAM
Rising, falling at Force Ten
We twist the world and ride the wind
FORCE 10, 1987
In the pre-dawn darkness, just after 6:00, I loaded up the K-12 and rode through Central Park and over to the Henry Hudson Parkway, then up to the George Washington Bridge. On the way across, I stole brief glances back at the twilight mist over Manhattan, always an impressive sight. Riding along the Palisades Parkway, I looked across the river between dark green walls of
groomed hemlocks, pines, and hardwoods, as the red sun edged above the smoky tenements and warehouses.
Once the New York State Thruway had carried me out of the urban sprawl, I made an exit to the two-lane highway across the Catskills, then turned north on Highway 30, which winds all the way through the Adirondacks to the Quebec border. A bright sunny day, pleasantly cool, with little traffic on a near-perfect road of sweeping curves through the mountains, forests, and lakes. My soulscape again.
As soon as I crossed the border into Canada, however, the rains came, in proportions both “Floydian” and biblical. Caught by this unrelenting downpour on the little ferry from Hudson to Oka (my 10th ferry of that eastern circuit), I had to stand with my back to the onslaught, helmeted and half-rainsuited, pelted and dripping, looking at all the people warm and dry in their cars, until the other side where I could put on the rest of my raingear.
I arrived at the house on the lake wet through, deeply exhausted, and numb with cold. Still, only the last couple of hours of the journey had been miserable; the first eight hours were pretty much perfect.
(A metaphor for life. Mine, anyway.)
I awoke to another pre-dawn mist, this time steaming up from the lake, and another bright sunrise, this one yellow and gleaming through the trees, wearing their early autumn wardrobe of glory. When I stepped outside into the sudden chill and breathed that air, I was freshly amazed at how delicious it tasted.
I couldn’t help thinking, “Why do I go anywhere else?”
But I knew why, and I was only pausing there at all to change mounts, like a Pony Express rider. I still needed to be moving, and I still needed to be away from that house for awhile. Three days later, I loaded up the GS and hit the road again, not knowing how long or how far I was going. My only plan was to head west toward Vancouver and visit Danny, Janette, and Max again — and my new nephew, Nick, who had been born in June. The rest I would decide along the way. “Something will come up.”