Whoa

It's been one full week since I have blogged, and all I can say is, hold on to your hats, adoring public. I have got some serious ground to cover (not an exaggeration--I crossed the United States by car this week) and about half-an-hour on my library internet card to do it. REVIEW SESSION GO!

On Tuesday we set out, intrepid reverse-pioneers, to drive from Walla Walla (in the south-eastern corner of Washington state) to Ottawa (the capital of Canda, way the heck up near the Detroit-ish area) in three days. I am not in any way, shape, or form joking about this. We were all business. Here's how the week went down:

Tuesday: we covered Washington, Idaho, Montana (SO HUGE), Wyoming and South Dakota. Montana in particular sapped my will to live. Once you pass the continental divide, it's all downhill. We're making jokes in this blog...We stopped in Rapid (Rapids?) City for the night, by which I mean six hours, and tried to sleep as much as we could despite the road-induced hallucinations.

Wednesday: somehow we all dragged ourselves out of bed and back into the car, to go through more of South Dakota (bison!), Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. Evan discovered the weirdest food in the world at a rest-stop: nacho flavored Slim Jims. We stayed in Becca's apartment in Chicago for the night, which felt a little surreal. Well, more surreal than the rest of the trip felt.

Thursday: I found myself blinking up at Wrigley Field in the early morning sunshine, dazed, confused, and somewhat unaware of my surroundings, as we cruised out of Illinois, through Indiana, and into Michigan. I have now seen two (TWO) great lakes, which is kind of awesome. They're the sort of thing that my mind stops being able to comprehend after awhile. Then, after sitting on a hecka high suspension bridge over the middle of Lake Huron for about an hour (Mom would've loved it) we got through customs. Or, we kind of did. We had to go present ourselves at Canadian immigrations to get visitors passes, since we are (hopefully) making money in their fair country.

The road trip was actually really fun, considering. No one got hurt, no one really even got mad at each other, and we only went slightly crazy that first night (I blame Montana's vast, untamed plains). We were, however, slightly disappointed that Canada looked exactly like the boring part of the U.S. we had just left. It got a little more exciting, in the bad sense of the word, when we rolled through Toronto at rush hour. I can only hope that that was rush hour, otherwise Toronto traffic just full-out sucks. People were driving on the shoulder, cutting each other off, swerving dangerously...all at generally high speeds, but who can tell? They use "kilometers" here.

After surviving Toronto, we breezed into Ottawa with relatively little difficulty. We're actually staying in Nepear, a nearby suburb. Our hostess, Brenda, is amazing--she is essentially giving us the run of her house, and seems to think we're pretty cool. Ottawa itself is really, really pretty. It feels very European, only without quite the health hazards of crossing the street. I'm getting some pretty good review on my French as well.

The Ottawa Fringe...where to even begin? I had no idea any one community could be this supportive of artists. Everyone here gets really into the festival, and with surprisingly little effort on our part, we have had large crowds to our three performances thus far. We've gotten really great feedback from audience members and other performers, and it's been a great experience. We're seeing lots of other theatre too, some of it more successful than others. My personal favorite thus far is definitely "Die Roten Punkte--Super Musikant," a hilarious punk-rock parody concert about a German brother-and-sister rock band. Forrest, Abby, Evan and I stayed up way past our bedtime last night to catch their 11 p.m. performance, and it was totally worth it. The whole crowd was made up of other fringe performers, and we all went kind of nuts. Fantastic.

So, on to the next thing. We have three days off (woo!), which means I'm going to spend some time exploring the city and seeing as much theatre as I can. On Thursday night we have an 11 p.m. performance that possibly no one will show up to, but that's okay. We'll at least have Lisa, who is threatening to heckle us if that is the case. We perform once more on Saturday afternoon, and then on Sunday we're driving out to Wakefield for Piggyback Fringe, a new festival.

I probably had a lot more to say, but I think this blog is sufficiently lengthy. That's what she said.

And to Erin, my lovely older sister: congratulations on the new job!