Matt Hobbs

We’re now safe and sound back in Montreal after a (literally) whistle stop visit down to New York this weekend. Good fun but I have to say I’m looking forward to a night’s sleep of over four hours tonight!

The trip started at 7.15am on Saturday when we left Montreal. At 8.20am we entered the US and 2pm hit New York. Bit of shopping, drinks with Paula, then out to Williamsburg for our traditional dinner at the ever wonderful Sweetwater. Then down to Jess and Gerald’s to visit them and the hella-cute Auden. M crashed out at 2.30am while I went down to Union Pool to catch Gerald DJ in the back room. Splendid. Then 4.30am we were back upstairs to pass out.

9am Sunday I was up and awake, so went on a wander round the ‘burg taking some photos to test my new polarizing filter and compact flash card on a beautiful, bright sunny morning. Latte and a muffin in hand I woke M up, and we chatted with Jess, Gerald and Auden for a bit before heading off for a quick wander/shop down Bedford Avenue. With a pile of my favourite t-shirts from Artists and Fleas in hand, we ended up having Mexican brunch at Bonita – before driving the car back to the old apartment to pick up my last stuff (thanks Lisa!).

At this stage we were a bit off schedule, as I’d totally under-estimated the time needed to get 10 storage boxes full of books down four flights of creaky old stairs with my creaky old knees. Luckily my knees held out (unlike one of the boxes) and M performed miracles getting all the boxes into our car. Phew. So now it was onto the BQE where we ran straight into major traffic on the way down to Brooklyn Bridge on the way to see Stephen, Yi-Hsian and Kate down at the south end of the island (learning point: getting onto Brooklyn Bridge from the BQE is a pain, just take Williamsburg Bridge). Thankfully a parking space turned up just as we were about to give up and pay the $25 parking fee – for an hour… ug. So we headed upstairs and hung out chez Godfrey for a bit. Wish we’d had longer as Kate was being very cute indeed, unfortunately it was getting onto 7pm and we still had six hours of driving ahead of us. Arg.

Having said our goodbyes, we headed back onto the Henry Hudson Parkway off north. The sun was setting as we crossed into Jersey which was very pretty indeed, but worrying as I was already tired and we knew that sunday evening traffic on dark roads, plus over the mountains, would be quite draining. Thankfully we made it to the Canadian border by 1am, a bit late as we’d seen a lot of deer eating by the road so I was driving slower than I normally would just in case the deer felt suicidal. Unfortunately the border guard was not convinced of my travel plans, plus we’d overspent our dollar limit on shopping having not being in the US for over 48 hours (just). So we got to spend a stressful 45 minutes explaining my travel plans before they decided to let me in after paying some import duty. Phew. Borders are so stressful, especially when you’re sleep deprived and tired!

Finally we got back to Montreal about 2.15am, then we unloaded the car and I trogged the boxes up another two flights of stairs into the apartment. Yay, home! 3.30am I finally hit the pillow. Unfortunately at 8.30am my alarm went off as I had to move the car, so I bought us some coffees from up the road and drove M into work before taking the car back to the rental place. So now it’s 11.30, and any minute now I’m going to pass out and have a full eight hours of kip. Splendid.