Hamilton to Ottawa

I now have a sherpa. Neil has quit his job in Hamilton to join me on this crazy journey and carry equipment and shoot interviews and make sure the sound is reasonable and generally keep me sane. Which is rather a tall order, we'll see how well he does.

I got a bit of a break, and a day to completely reorganize the packs. We've got a smaller backpack that I can now use as our portable studio - the lights, the clamps and fixtures, the extensions cords, 2 mics with cables, a couple of gels, tissues, lens cleaner, chargers, and other assorted crap that I crammed into a fanny pack and stuck at the bottom of the pack. I also got to dump some more useless stuff off to pick up on the way back through, and another 10 hrs of footage that I won't need til the summer. I'm still carting around a full box of 50 tapes though, it will be nice to break that open. I'm hoping for somewhere between 100 and 125 hours of footage when we get back to Vancouver in July.

The weather has been a bit bizarre. It was so warm yesterday, I was running around in a t-shirt - in fact the only t-shirt I brought on the trip, and I was starting to rethink that choice. But Canada didn't let me down, it was snowing again this morning as we left Hamilton. A very dry snow, it didn't feel wet to the touch, but furry. Weird.

We headed to Toronto for a few hours this morning to check out the city and meet with one of Neil's 2nd cousins, Lyle, whom he'd met for the first time a couple of weeks before. Really cool guy. We'll have to hook with him again in April and interview him.

We were on the bus to Montreal this afternoon, when I took a look at the times and realized we'd be getting in after 10 at night with no map of the city, no place to stay, no idea where a hostel might be, and if it might have room. The last time that happened, we were in Turino last summer, and we got stuck with a really expensive hotel. This time, it's Heather to the rescue - she's a friend I met in London, and she's going to Ottawa University, and it's on the way. And thankfully she doesn't mind last minute couchcrashers. Maybe we can even find some karaoke . . .