So this is my last post in Ontario for a while. Tomorrow I’m leaving for Calgary, my flight leaves YYZ Pearson at 7:10am, Westjet. Back to Alberta, I must admit! And I look forward to it. There are so many people I must visit while I’m out there, including George and Ulli Hertwig, Mair’s brother and his family, 4 Kow Foo, Mary Jane, the Okotoks EFree Church friends, and the Eden Valley reserve if I can manage it. Wow this is gonna be awesome. I’ll be posting stuff about my experience here for sure.

This has been an exercise in packing light: 2 carry-on, 2 check-in. 1 of my check-in will be my guitar, and the second my suitcase. Which means I have to really pack scaled back. I’ll have to put some extra stuff in the carry-ons, but I’ll need to buy some things when I arrive in Calgary, admittedly.

Here we go!

I just uploaded a new gallery of some good photos that I scanned of our trip to Sudbury. Check them out at the Photo Gallery, or directly here. I really enjoyed this trip and I really enjoy looking at the pictures again and again.

Just today I spent a huge fortune. I developed over 7 rolls of film at Black’s today at the Fairview Mall, so much that it made sense to get a membership on the spot and save money. But so many of the pictures turned out so well, I have to say it was worth the cost. No doubt. Photos from the night my camera broke down before Winter Conference 2003 New Year’s Eve. Photos from around Guelph of scenery and people. Tons of photos from Sudbury, band pictures and fun pictures.

I also spent the money to get to Guelph via Greyhound to have the final dinner of this school year with Malcolm, Mair, Siann, Tesha, and Kylee, my second family. It was totally worth the amount of time and money spent to see the sheer excitement and smiles on the girls’ faces (if you don’t know, I talked about this family in a previous post), and to chat with the two of the most easy-to-talk-to people in the world. As usual, the dinner wasn’t picture perfect since the girls weren’t eating their food and were fighting over playing with a toddler named Enica that Mair was babysitting for the afternoon/evening.

In some spare time as I was waiting to arrive at their home for dinner, I dropped by at Everlasting Impressions to pick up a few items that I’ve been intending on purchasing for a while. The first was the Hillsong + Delirious? Unified Praise Live CD, which I’m listening to right now. The second was Every Young Man’s Battle, which is much more appropriate for guys like me. I had purchased Every Man’s Battle last year, and it was good but it was more geared towards married men. The third item I picked up was a Michelle Tumes CD as a gift to my younger sister. I hope she likes it.

I was intending on taking the 9:20pm Greyhound back to Toronto, but for some odd reason it didn’t stop for me as I was waiting in the rain for it at one of the Gordon St. bus stops at the intersection of Lowes Rd. Either the driver was really blind, or they don’t pick up people at those stops that late at night. But it was a little bit frustrating to have to get on the downtown transit bus to make sure I made it onto the 10:30pm bus in order to arrive at midnight at Union Station. Overall a long but generally satisfying day.

I didn’t really want to start a post on how the weekend went in Sudbury. I really really dreaded it. Simply because there was so much that happened and it’ll take an extremely long post to summarize it up, let alone describe what I felt. But it’s worth a try and I don’t really want to forget any of it.

Have you ever had a weekend where everything just goes pristine? And you never wanted it to end? I have to admit, there have been a few other times like that in the past, and from what I remember, I count them as the 2 weekends I spent at Tim’s cottage last summer, last time we went to Sudbury, and this past weekend. These are times when there are few responsibilities. All the people get along wonderfully. Everyone’s comfortable speaking their minds, playing their instruments, and doing fun stuff. Most of all, time is spent to its fullest, because each person knows it won’t last forever. These times are unrealistic and rare, but sometimes I wish life were like this.

It’s times like these when I don’t mind waking up at 5:00am to welcome Paul, Laura, Sprimmer, and Heather when they arrive at Shuesty’s home in Sudbury. Earlier that week, when Heather wondered whether or not someone would actually be up so early to greet them, I had told her that I would be there. However, saying it is easier than doing it. I didn’t think I would be awake for their arrival after going to bed at 1:30am, but when I woke up at 4:30 to go to the washroom, then couldn’t fall back asleep because I knew they’d show up at any moment, there was no way I’d want to miss it. I would wake up at any time to make sure these friends of mine arrived safely, in fact.

At times like these I don’t mind sitting at a practice behind the soundboard or in the seats watching the band figure out which key to transpose a difficult song into, when my whole being only wishes to join in and sing or play an instrument. It’s just a blessing to hear my talented friends come together to make wonderful sounds, as they praise our God with passion or in frustration. They do it all with unrestrained hearts, and I’m honestly enjoying the exercise in wholeheartedly restraining myself. And they don’t mind when I stick my manual camera in their faces 4 times at weird angles while they continue, to record the memories visually.

With friends like these I don’t mind at all when I’m figuring out for the first time a chord progression that sounds amazing or pounding out and singing “Let My Words Be Few” on Shuesty’s living room piano while someone sits just around the corner on the steps listening to me make mistakes or sing off-tune. To be able to jam a song with 4 other guitars or listen to someone’s melodic voice break into Liz’s “You Have Searched Me” while she skips down the stairs. To race Kinder Surprise toys on the dinner table or smile at the deaf and practically blind dog we tended for one evening. To be thankful for the opportunity to watch two IMAX movies — one about NASCAR and the other on Mount Kilimanjaro — at no cost to ourselves, then have a snowball fight in Science North’s parking lot while we clear the vehicles of the fresh packing snow.

There’s no hesitation at all when I need to wake up at 6:30am on Sunday to be ready and out the door to arrive at Laurentian campus at 7:30 in order to setup and tune all the instruments and liaise with the projection operator about last minute song and order changes. To praise and pray to God before the service begins, to know that everything will go fine no matter what happens, even though every single move of theirs will be recorded, broadcast over radio and internet, and witnessed by hundreds. I’m quite content to just sit with Kyle and the rest of the congregation to sing out a harmony that no one hears but God.

Times like these I can enjoy two 5-hour drives. The first up to Sudbury with Shuesty, and the second returning to Toronto with Shuesty and Heather. I’m thankful that I had that time to spend with the two people I’ve gotten to know tremendously in the past 8 months, and we could just write two super-random collaborative stories and play the word-association game forward and then backward. And for some apparent reason people call that “killing time”.

Why do these times have to end? I guess, in some ways, they need to end so that we cherish them, we use the time wisely, and we look forward to the next time we can see each other again. They need to end, so that we have reason to remember them.

So this day was really long. It hasn’t ended yet, even.

I woke up really early in the morning even though I slept really late last night because of packing up stuff. Mostly I spent the night putting stuff into boxes, sorting stuff, sealing boxes. When I found out that I had forgotten my hat at Middletone’s room in rez yesterday, I decided to take Jess’ bike and bike like the wind at midnight, in order to get it before I headed out. I kind of like night biking, it’s really peaceful.

Then I moved a lot of boxes into the garage. My room isn’t totally clear yet, since there are things I need to move back into Toronto to bring to Calgary. In the morning, I used up the rest of the milk, packed more, and had a second breakfast with Jess — our last meal together in the house. She made pancakes from some powder she wanted to get rid of. Then I walked her via the long route to her exam in Rozanski, stopping at my old office in the Richards Building to give some gifts of Asian snacks — wasabi “peas” and white rabbit candies. I hope they like them. Just outside of her exam room I gave Jess a hug and said my goodbye and good luck. Those two things aren’t a great combination, I must say! On our walk we remembered that it was Earth Day today, so I dared her to yell out “Happy Earth Day!” in the exam room before the furious writing began. I wonder if she actually did it.

After that I made my way back home to make sure I was ready to leave with Shuesty at noon. There was more to pack up, but most of my Sudbury things were ready. We took off around 12:30, after stopping by his old housemates’ townhome (in the same complex). To make a long drive story short, we drove to Timmy’s to get his lunch, took the 401 to the 407 to the 400, stopped in at Parry Sound and found out where his mom was on a retreat with her church ladies group, stopped by to say ‘hi’ and stuff, then made our way to Shuesty’s dad’s place. All of this steeped in deep talks, light conversation, and silence. Very comfortable, just right. Had a lot to eat as well, since I brought quite a bit from my kitchen that was left over that I needed to get rid of.

At his dad’s place, we had a wonderful dinner. It’s rare that I have dinner of that calibre, I must say. We chatted it up a lot, helped his dad move a large and awkwardly heavy piece of workshop machinery, played with a new John Deere tractor, and had our meal and dessert. Quite the affair.

Did some grocery shopping, we’re going to be making our own meals this time around.

And now we’re waiting for the rest of the band to arrive — Drew, Kyle, and Steph at 11pm-12am; Paul, Laura, Sprimmer, and Heather at around 2-3am. I can’t wait; the summer has begun…