Montreal, part un

[bigmacbear]

Saturday, July 17

In which we play tag with Buffalo's bus, arrive in Montreal, and visit the Village.

(Note: I ran out of notepaper so my observations from later in the week will of necessity be less detailed than these early ones.)


Gary (gmjambear) and I took Dennis to the RGMC bus and hung around for photo ops and to see the bus off at 8:15 AM. We then left Rochester ourselves by car about 9:40 AM and almost immediately encountered a similar bus (not the same bus, we checked the number) on the Thruway.

We stopped in Watertown for a big lunch at Ponderosa and to get gas and cheap sunglasses for Gary. When we got to the Thousand Islands Bridge we saw that same bus again, and after crossing the border into Canada (about a 30 minute wait) we kept passing and being passed by the bus, until we lost track of each other about the Quebec border.

Driving and weather conditions were perfect until we reached Autoroute 720, when we drove through a downpour and were greeted with a colossal traffic jam on rue Sherbrooke approaching the hotel. After some minor drama involving my misplacing the ignition key to give to the parking attendant, we checked in to the hotel.

We proceeded to the nearby Place-des-Arts Metro station to get tourist passes for the weekend and ride to le centre Sheraton to register for GALA Festival VIIe. As we boarded the train we chatted with a tall Asian fellow wearing a Big Bear Inc. shirt and sporting lots of tattoos. I thought he looked familiar -- turns out it was Leith Chu, whom I've been corresponding with on soc.motss for years and who directs the Ottawa Gay Men's Chorus. (I'm going to be writing this a lot, so when you see GMC it means Gay Men's Chorus, not the truck maker. ;-)

Once we arrived at the Sheraton I got my badge fairly quickly, but Gary had to wait a while before discovering they hadn't printed his badge yet. While waiting, I met some folks from the Buffalo GMC and discovered the bus we'd been playing cat-and-mouse with on the Thruway and the 401 was theirs. ;-) I also met some folks from Turtle Creek Chorale (TCC) including Sam (bassbehr) and his partner Michael (mrh745i), and also Michael (aka Huggybear) from Detroit whom I'd met in Cincinnati. Gary came back upstairs to tell me he'd have to come back the next morning for his badge, and got to meet Huggybear as well. Then we headed back to the hotel to change clothes.

We got back to Place-des-Arts for the opening ceremonies and sat next to Doug, the ASL interpreter for the North Coast Men's Chorus from Cleveland, and his partner Brian, as well as a couple of ladies from Seattle. Indeed the section was fairly full of Seattle folks, including the Standard 4 (wearing T-shirts that read "1 of 4", etc.) We saw some Rochester chorines seated in a nearby box, however. Kate Clinton was just the right mixture of funny and scathing.

On the way out of Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier I saw Ron from Atlanta whom I'd met in Cincinnati, and introduced him to Gary; Gary in turn ran into Jules and Roger from Ottawa whom he met on his (American) Thanksgiving trip a few years ago while I was away, and introduced me to them. On the street outside we met Nelson and Ed who came with us to San Jose in 2000 but have sinced moved to Buffalo. They were chatting with -- who else? -- Leith, and I got to tell yet another contingent from the Buffalo bus about the car thing. ;-)

We decided to hop on the metro to the Village at the Beaudry stop. Getting on at Place-des-Arts there was a long line, to be expected when 6000 people try to get on the Metro at the same time. On the opposite platform we saw vaneramos wearing this incredible shirt (Gary informed me it was a dashiki). We ran over and chatted with him until his train came, missing ours in the process (but it wasn't long until another train came).

When we got to the Village there was a fireworks display going on, barely visible from the place we had dinner (Cafe Europeen, at rue Ste.-Catherine and rue Alexandre-Deseve). Gary had a chicken club and I had the "smoked meat" club. Viande fumé as they call it, tastes kind of like a cross between corned beef and SPAM™. I recommend it.

On the way back we saw Leith yet again, this time in leather shorts -- and he looks very good in them, I might add. When we returned to the hotel we saw Sam and Michael again watching the last busload of TCC members pull in. Then we went to bed.