Day 41: Crunch Day in Montreal

August 14, 2007 by Julie.

I’m skipping ahead past the glory that was the rest of VT, to be revisted in a bit. It was simply amazing. Like this random apple tree growing in a bit of grass between the sidewalk and North Street. My neighbor, Randa, back in Queens, told us before we left that we would eat Burlington up with a spoon. I think I ate it with my fingers.

Our wonderful hosts, Nathan and Chris were a beacon and a fount of information and good conversation. They even provided us with YERT’s very first movie of the entire trip, on a projector screen in their living room (no tv - yay!), complete with ice cream…

Nathan noted with some disappointment that I gave a nod to Whole Foods in my blogging but not to coops, which are the heart of local agriculture. I do believe with all my heart that coops and eating locally are THE WAY TO GO and will be the wave of the future. Burlington’s downtown grocery, CityMarket, happens to be, not only a coop, but, one of the largest cooperatives in the entire country - in a town of only 40,000! Consider the bar raised yet again, America.
I hope Nathan can rest assured knowing that we will be showcasing local farmers in tomorrow’s videopod of Rhode Island! (Thank you Nathan and Chris!)

We left Vermont wistfully, and took off for, well, Canada. Cause it’s the 51st state. Alright, we needed to bypass the Great Lakes to get to Michigan, so we popped out our passports and passed over the border with the stationguard’s blessing, stopping when a flurry of hot air balloons came to rest all around us - Ben jumped out and shot with the video camera. No idea what’s the carbon footprint of 30 hot air balloons but we were mesmerized as they all came down.

We hurried on to Montreal and then scrambled for hours trying to find a hotel. The room we were finally able to secure cost as much as all three of our previous hotel rooms combined but there was tennis in town so we felt lucky not to have to sleep in the car, and Mark slapped down the YERT card. Thankfully, the internet connection was fast, the bellhop brought an extra cot so all 3 of us had a bed, and we were able to enjoy a continental breakfast in the morning.

The next day I was immediately reminded that I am a woman. Nevermind the details, but suffice it to say I was in no mood for tooling around Montreal the next day which is exactly what Ben had his heart set on, and which was most unfortunate as it is a most walkable city, with some great architecture, and French besides. Can’t say it was a smashingly successful bit of tourism. Mark ended up by himself in the archeological museum and after some pathetic bit of tooling, and then lemonade, Ben deposited me back in the car in a crumply heap (next to Evans Court!) and left to go find Mark. He left me Rachel’s keys at my request, so that I could go find a bathroom. 3 hours west of Montreal in Kingston, Ontario it was after supper when I realized that I might have left the car keys in the bathroom of the little cafe back in Montreal..

*would like to say a huge thankyou and shout out to Pierre of Montreal who ran down the block several times to find the cafe, which was closed, and then get the name and address, who then alerted his fellow concierges about the missing keys, and then followed up and traced them the next day and who is mailing them to us presently by post. Oh we are loving you Pierre. Call us the next time you need a place to stay in the US, I’m not kidding. Who knows, we may have an actual home by then.

So. It’s Monday, crunch day, and Ben is putting together the pod by himself. again.
It really seems that we need to all 3 figure out how to do these together so that one person is not responsible for the thing. plus that way we will all start to have some creative input in the videos as well as the blogs…

I spent the day doing laundry and baking banana muffins, which is fine and necessary work i think…I don’t do it bc it is expected of me but bc i know what i am doing on both counts and basically I don’t trust the boys with the laundry or the bread. sorry, boys. love you, though.
Godspeed Ben through the night.

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