This is part one in a true series called Montreal Rock City.

The question you gotta ask yourself is how badly do you wanna see the greatest fucking rock and roll show in the fucking earth, right? We’re talking Gene and Paul live, yo. We’re talking about the most voluptuous women hanging out in the audience. I’m talking big breasteses in tight dressteses. We’re talkin’ ‘bout people passing around joints in the audience. I’m talking about fucking Detroit rock city. Shake your wee wee.

– Scalper in the movie Detroit Rock City

The Scene

I’m seventeen. It’s the summer after graduating high school. A rough summer of alcoholic hazes and sleepless nights. I sometimes get headaches when I don’t drink. The august heat makes my shitty job of cleaning car interiors even more hellish. I tell by boss that if I have to scrape one more dead bird from under the hood of a Pontiac Aztec, I’ll quit.

I’ve been renting an old, rundown house for the summer with two friends, Dylan and Tim. For over a decade the house was a funeral home and we occasionally find strange remnants of its morbid past: rusty forceps, giant glass jars, strange stains under the kitchen linoleum. That house Tyler Durden lived at in the beginning of the movie Fight Club? We’re maybe one small step up from that. A few weeks ago, my friend Steve agreed to help me clean out the basement in exchange for sleeping a few nights on our couch. I wore a mask. Steve chose not to. Steve is now laid up in the hospital with some bizarre, nasty lung infection.

But none of the bad stuff – the furniture stained with bodily fluids, the carpet reeking of cheap alcohol, the random people asleep in the rust-colored tub – none of that really matters. Because me, Dylan and six of our closest friends have planned the most epic of all road trips: A road trip to the Canadian capital city of sex, drugs and – most importantly – rock and roll — Montreal.

The Plan

Christian will be the driver, naturally. After all, it’s his mom’s van we’re taking. The other seven of us will cram in the back of the van with our guitars, djembes, and sleeping bags. We’ll maybe stop along the way at a campsite to split up the driving. In Montreal we’ll crash out for a few days at our friend Haley’s place for a marathon session of drinking, partying and rock and roll. Then, the finale, the apex of it all: seeing our favorite band in concert – the only band that meant anything to us in our grunge-music obsessed high school days – TOOL.

After buying the concert tickets, we spent the whole summer in anticipation of the trip, going for weeks on end, rotating through only TOOL albums on the CD player. Most conversations in the weeks leading up to the trip would eventually be pulled back to how stoked we were and how awesome the road trip to Montreal would be. How we would finally get to see TOOL live. If Maynard had written a book called Dianetics and started a religion, we would have been the first to sign up. That’s how into it we were back then.

The Phone Call

Then there was the call that changed it all. It was less than a week before our roadtrip. “Guys, I’m really sorry. My mom needs the van. I know, I know. It’s fucked. But she needs it. There’s no way we can go.” Christian was apologetic on the phone. We were livid. “Dude, go back there and tell your mom that you’re taking the van!”

We went through all the steps Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about.

Denial. “No, I refuse to accept that. We’re going. We’re taking your van, if I have to come over there and steal it. That’s it.”

Anger.  “Fuck!”

Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. We went through them all. Except Dylan and I. We were stuck on the bargaining one.

“There’s gotta be a way we can get to Montreal. I mean, we have the tickets. We have to go.” We just couldn’t let it die.

The next day, after a night bought of drinking and moping, Dylan and I reconvened over a morning (early afternoon) beer. Dylan summarized the situation: “Okay, so we’ve established that we’re going to Montreal – somehow. So, what’s the plan?”

“Well, we don’t know anyone that’s got a car. And we don’t have enough money for the bus or the train…”

“Could we sneak on a train?” Dylan asked.  We both agreed it was a bad idea.

“What about hitchhiking? You ever hitchhiked before?” I asked. The closest I had come to hitchhiking was reading Jack Kerouac books behind my textbook in class at highschool. Dylan said he had never even so much as hitchhiked to the next town.

“Yeah, but people do it, so I’m sure we could get to Montreal.” I offered.

We decided to sit on the idea for the afternoon. Dylan was heading out to his grandparents house for a late lunch.

“I don’t know man. Montreal is pretty far to hitchhike. We’ll talk about it when I get back this afternoon.”

As soon as Dylan left the house I had made up my mind. I was going to hitchhike whether he came with me or not.

I started packing my backpack right away. Guitar, check. Three peanut butter sandwiches, check.

Two changes of clothes. Discman with TOOL CDs. ZigZag papers. Check, check, check. It was the 90s, after all.

At three pm I was finished packing. Twenty minutes later, Dylan burst through the front door, carrying a full duffel bag. We looked at each other and smiled. “We should go today.” He said.

The Hitchhiking Virgins

Our good friend Kyle, one of our only friends with a car, said he would drive us to the airport to get us started. We were grateful. We did make a number of rookie mistakes. For one, we left late in the day. We actually bought a piece of Bristol board and markers to make a sign. And instead of writing a nearby town like Moncton on the sign, we started with Montreal.

Despite our inexperience, we were picked up within ten minutes of Kyle dropping us off. There were two guys in the front, so Dylan and I hopped in the back. Bob Marley was playing on the stereo. Before we could introduce ourselves or ask where they were headed, the Driver yelled over the music, “Do you guys smoke?” Dylan and I looked at each other, confused. “Like, cigarettes?” I asked. He threw a green baggie to me and a package of papers to Dylan. “Hope one of you guys can roll, otherwise you’re back on the side of the road.” He laughed. Dylan and I looked at each other. How very cliché, I thought to myself, followed by, this is going to be an interesting trip.

Turns out, the other guy in the passenger seat is also a hitchhiker, and we drop him off in Truro. Our driver says he’s going to Moncton and Dylan and I agree we should probably stay there for the night as it’ll be dangerous to hitchhike in the dark.

We get dropped off on the main street and find a phone book. Under Youth Hostels, we only find a listing for The House of Nazareth. We call and ask if they have any rooms. “Two bunks? That’s great. How much is it a night? No charge? Uh, okay. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” Dylan and I had never stayed in a youth hostel so we didn’t really know what to expect. We were also still slightly intoxicated from our first Bob Marley ride and didn’t realize that our hostel was in fact, something of a homeless shelter meets recovery clinic. The woman at the check-in counter looked at our backpacks and gave us a strange look, but was friendly and showed us to our room. There were pictures of Jesus and crosses everywhere on the walls down to the basement, where we were sharing a room with four very rough looking men – disturbingly, one wearing overalls and no shirt. I whispered to Dylan, “Sleep with your wallet under your pillow. And make sure your bag is ready to go in case we need to jet. This place is sketchy.” We were the first in the house to wake up and left before 6am.

To be continued…