Vacouver Pictures/ Mogwai story

So we spent the first day driving up to Whistler which was pretty nice. Heres some pictures from the drive up, Whistler Village and some of the surrounding scenery.

Derek, the server of beer and giver of knowledge...

Death on the road...

After getting into the city we pretty much crashed for the night. The next afternoon we managed to get out of bed and take a walk around. Stopped in China town for a coffee then accidentally walked through Gastown which was a bit dodgy with folk taking drugs in the streets and a general feel of depravation around. Once back into the city proper we decided we were going to head towards the comedy club we'd thought about going to the night before but it wouldn't be open for a little while so we decided to stop in at a bar on the way.

We stopped in at an Irish bar and sat down for a nice cold Guiness. Iain got chatting to the guy on his left who looked at little familiar. He was out visiting his brother and his band were playing in a club down the street and after asking the band name I felt slightly embarressed :D

Turns out it was Dominic Aitchison, the Bassist and founding member from Mogwai! Gutted.

Legend

Anyway we sat and talked about the usual nonsense you do with strangers which we like to believe was a welcome break from adoring fans and the like ;) He was nice enough to put us on the guest list and so after grabbing a bite to eat in a restaurant that just happened to be showing UFC 88 we headed to the commodore to catch the gig!


Unfortunately we could only stay for about half the gig as the car was parked in a dodgy carpark about a mile away and we could only leave it there till 11:45 but it was still a good show. Iain and Stu had never heard them before so it a good introduction. A band I'll definately pick up when I go home.

The next day we went up to the Capilano Suspension Bridge (built buy a Scot no less!) just outside Vancouver.

**Ok, so the story now picks up in a dodgy little motel about 50 miles north of LA. Basically since that I last wrote that stuff We've seen the following (I'd normally take time to add some pictures and try and give you an idea of how things went and how we felt but right now Im knackered and when I go to bed im going to sleep till 10:55am and leave this place at 11 so Im afraid it migth be a little more brief than expected...)...

Seattle:

Ok, Seattle was actually really nice for a city. Right on the coast so the temperature was much more like home again! As I cast my mind back through the haze thats been the past week I seem to remember we took an underground tour around a few blocks of the city and got a general idea as to how the city came to be and where it actually made its money (please note this will be a crudely brief description and for those who have been before or know the history I do aplogise.. I'd throughly reccommend reading up on its actual history however as we found it pretty entertaining.)

Basically as people were going north into Canada in the search for gold they needed a place not far from there to assemble their parties and set up equipment and thus the city expanded.... They were all about making money and not spending it so they did really clever things like reclaiming land from the sea with sawdust and then building ontop of this slushy mixture, smart guys eh? The place was also full of conmen trying to make some money of those crazy people stopping on their way to Canada to find gold and alot of them succedded! Around 87% of the cities actual revenue came from ladies of the night who they government aloud to operate in a few parlour houses under the pretense they were seamstresses, good way to make some tasty tax dollars eh?

So yeah, Seattle was a really nice city made and ran by conmen and prostitues but I kid you not when I say it did have a really nice feel to it. I didn't take my camera out those days as I was pretty sick of picture taking however I had masterminded a scheme to take several pictures form the TV series "Frasier" and photoshop our heads into the background. Had I not taken so long get round to doing it I'd have had pictures ready to add in and In my mind it would have been rather humerous! It is however a dream gone wrong..... I'll see if any of the boys have good pictures and maybe stick them up at some point.


From there we drove down through Oregan towards San Francisco. This was a rather bizarre epidose of the trip for quite a few reasons. As we were driving down I had a look at the map and seen that between Seattle and our halfway point to San Francisco lay the town of Salem. In my delerium from our many hours of travelling I put it to the guys that this was perhaps the place of the infamous "Salem witch trials". Now for all of you who know anything about the Salem witch trials, what can I say? I was really tired... For those of you who dont i'll get around to why its funny later on. So we stopped in at Salem and had a look around, driving around the streets and taking in the nice smalltown feel. After a while I spotted a really grand looking building with a golden statue ontop so we decided to go and check it out.



Once at the front door it was clear that it was a Goverment building of some sort so we headed inside to check it out. After standing in this grand entrance hall comeplete with fresco's a gentlemen approached us and asked us where we were from. After telling him we were visiting from Scotland and without so much as a by your leave he insisted we follow him around on a personal tour of the place. Turns out it was the State Capital building of Oregan (Basically their equivilent of our Scottish parliment). We were shown the two main chambers where their lords and commons would sit and then the Governers office, which had recently suffered incredible fire damage. After some time touring these grand rooms and getting to sit in the Main Speakers chair and bang his gavel (crazy i know...) we were shown to the new wing where a few people were actually working. We got talking to a women there who eventually asked with a puzzled look "So what brings you guys to Salem?"

Me and stu, who'd been waxing lyrical about the Witch trials, looked to Iain to voice our thougths who in true Iain style called it like he saw it.

"We hear you burn witches here!"

Im not sure if it was the puzzled look on our hosts faces or if perhaps the crushing weight of our stupidity that gave me that sinking feeling however that moment of realisation will stay with me to my grave...

"Witches? Your thinking of Salem Massachusetts.......*awkward silence*"

So Yes... we're idiots.....

Im pretty tired now so Im going to update the San francisco stuff (pictures and all) hopefully tomorrow night.

Until then folks.