Friday, June 17, 2011

Monsieur La Fleur!

Yesterday I was trying to hitchhike from Sainte Agathe des Monts to Saint Donat, Quebec. I had been standing by the side of the road for about two minutes with my achilles tendinosis-riddled thumb thrust in the air when a brown Isuzu Trooper pulled to the side of the road. His name was Remi La Fleur and now we are more or less best friends despite the fact that I only understand about 30% of what he says.

Remi was probably in his 60s and going to precisely the town that I wanted to go to, Saint Donat, a little town of 4,000 whose population swells to 20,000 in the summer when people from all over Montreal come to spend the summer along lake Archambault and other area lakes in their chalets and cabins.

The bugs here are awful. For me, at this moment, they are more or less its defining feature, due in large part to the various open wounds along both of my forearms. I am completely bored out of my mind here. I am killing time. I dont know why I booked my ticket out of Quebec for so late. Today my day will most likely consist of swimming off the dock of my hotel, walking to the grocery store, and watching bad American sitcoms dubbed in French. But it is of course not all that bad. It is beautiful here. Cheese curds are plentiful. I am speaking a good amount of French. My entire car ride yesterday with Monsieur La Fleur was in French and also my conversation with Jean-Claude when I checked into the hotel. And the hotel is beautiful. It`s cheap -- 50 bucks a night -- and has a huge lawn extending down to a dock where one can swim and frolick in the water if one so desires. Yesterday I ate horribly. Pizza, fries, a cheeseburger, vanilla softserve dipped in chocolate, so of course today I feel guilty and have vowed to go the whole day without eating refined sugar. This will most likely last until about 2pm when I decide that the miles of walking I`ve done more than warrant the consumption of some kind of sweet good and I spend the rest of the day gorging myself on Twizzlers and icecream while watching more horrible Quebecois television. Last night I watched Top Gun. It was by far the highlight of my night. Except of when Goose died.

One more thing: the owner of the internet cafe I`m in is currently sitting at his computer smoking. Only in Quebec...

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