#4 When traveling, socks solve all problems

Transcript

Only a few days into traveling and I'm already starting to have a lay problem. It's just amazing, I'm a stupid dumb little crap can go wrong. In this case, it's just men. I guess I was going to say this always happens, but to be fair the last time I remember this happening was 2004 or something, is when you just don't pack something mysteriously. There's just something missing.

In 2004, when the internet was still relatively new and I moved to Vancouver for the first time, first time I'd moved away from home, first time in a big city, and I didn't bring a computer or a laptop or anything. So what I had at the time, there weren't really MP3 players yet. At that point, but I had a disc man where you could burn a CD with MP3s on it and then it would play. So still needed batteries, still had to put a disc in that would spin, still had to be careful that it didn't skip. Basically just like a portable disc man, except you could put like 700 songs on it. So I had like a wallet full of different stuff that really had to do me because like I didn't bring a computer, didn't plan to have a computer. And for some reason, the only disc that was missing was I grabbed like all of Elliot Smith's stuff. I only had heard of Elliot Smith about a year before when he passed away. But I had all the Elliot Smith albums on this one disc and it was the only disc that wasn't in my little wallet. It's like, man, are you kidding me? Of all the random ones for me to forget to bring, that literally was the worst one.

And you know, if I was back home, just put it down low to this stuff again, burned a new CD, but instead I had to get a job. I had to save up money. I had to go buy from a basement on the hill. I had to go buy, figure it out. I had to go buy new moon. And at that point, I mean CDs. Kids these days, you don't know how good you got it. You can just stream stuff on Spotify, watch every song on YouTube. CDs are like 30 bucks. So I bought those three and I was like, alright, at least I got some Elliot Smith back in my life. But that took me like eight months to even get to that point. And then I never did catch up on all the other Elliot Smith albums until several years later when I had a computer and stuff again. It's just that one little thing, man, really kind of messed me up. In this case, it's a lot stupider and more mundane, but I just, it's just going to shave. And I'm going to try to, last time I traveled, I didn't bring like an electric shaver, like a hair buzzer.

But I've just gotten way too gray, all of a sudden. My last hurrah was when I was in my mid, I mean all the way to my late 30s, I guess. I just had gray hair on the temples. And at the time of like 2016, 2017, the look was the high and tight, you know, the really like shaved hair on the sides for guys. So it's perfect. I just got that haircut. They shaved down the only part where I was really looking gray. I mean I started getting gray hairs when I was like 20. But as long as that part was gone, I was like, yeah, I could sneak in. Cause I mean, yeah, like this fucking coffee shop I worked at in Vancouver, trees organic. Everyone else who worked there was in like their early 20s. And I was in my mid 30s, but nobody knew. They were all shocked when they, when they learned my decrepit age. But since then the gray hair has advanced to the point that I just prefer to keep my hair buzzed down all the time. Fuck it. And getting haircuts was kind of a pain in, in Japan.

I did get a haircut at one barber shop on, on Ouyama Road by Ikebukuro. But at that point, I'd already figured out that the language barrier was a lot more severe than I expected. There were a lot of places where nobody speaks English at all, which is fine. I don't expect people to speak English. I just was surprised because it's not so much that way. Other places. I mean, like here in Montreal, just yesterday I was ordering a coffee. And I was so proud of myself, like a cafe moyen, a fake de crème, a Boston crème, people play. I did it all French. And then she said something that I could not comprehend. So I just said, yeah, yeah, no, that's everything. I'll just pay with debit please. 5:00 But that's fine here. You can just switch to fucking English at any time.

So for my haircut in Japan, I brought a picture of just somebody with their hair buzzed off. It was James McAvoy. And I was just like, just like it shows in the picture. And I just went in and showed them. I was like, this please just set your buzzer to one to the lowest it'll go, just buzz off my hair. And they asked me something. And I was like, I don't know. I speak only English, just just like the picture please. And they asked something else. And I said, I don't know. I only speak English. I just, it'll be a lot better this time than at least I have a phone with the Google translate stuff on it. So they just shaved off my hair. And I paid them 10 bucks and there you go. But it was like, man, yeah, like just trickier. Trickier than you'd expect. And kind of not fair to that, to just have to deal with me and my complete inability to speak. So then the next time I had to get my haircut, I was in Fukuoka. And I remember I just sat in the little, I had one of those little square tubs. And all I had was just a normal razor, like a bick. And I just painfully bick to my hair all off. And it was like really unpleasant took forever hurt quite a bit. So this time I got a razor, but the point of this fucking ramble is I'm going to try to keep up with it just every week. If I just buzz my hair once a week, easier to maintain that way. And I opened up the thing and the razor was there and the power cord was not there. And it's just like, man, I just like really angry at myself. Like, how is that possible? I set everything up beforehand. I've got, I'm like traveling a lot more carefully than last time. I have extras of stuff. You know anything that seemed important, I have like a backup. I'm being a lot more careful and kind of like more meticulous. But all I can figure is I think my meticulousness backfired on me because I must have been, I mean, I don't know, I'm just trying to roll things back in my brain to imagine how I could possibly be this idiotic. I think I must have been charging the razor the night before. So it'll have a nice full charge. And then I unplugged it didn't take the plug out of the wall. That has to be what happened. And again, if I was just at home, maybe I'd even tried if I was just here for longer. But I would just go on, you know, ebay or whatever. It's just a Phillips razor. It's a normal plug. There's probably approximately a billion of those power cords in the world. But without being able to order one, it's like, man. So that's my, my dumb mission today or part of my dumb mission for today is I did find a thrift store the other day.

Bought some very nice little bags to add to my bags within bags system. Again, just to not have any further loss of stuff. So I'm heading back there because there's always that wall of just weird miscellaneous electronic stuff hanging there. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky. If not, I know there's a best buy if I go way downtown. I don't know what they just sell it. Just a power cord. I mean, the whole razor, the whole stupid thing was on sale. It was like 40 or 50 bucks. I have a bad feeling that might be where this is heading that I'll just have to buy a whole new buzzer. But for now, I just didn't shave my hair. I can let the hair grow. It's fine. It's no biggie. Just used it just to shave my beard so I don't look like a wacky vagrant. But I'll just keep the thing with me. Keep my eyes peeled for a power cord.

And then I guess we'll see when I get to Japan. I mean, yeah, I mean, that could be, I mean, maybe that'll be fun. Trying to look at the upside, right? There's all these weird little stores and like Akihabra and stuff that are just power cords and stuff. Surely, surely to fuck. In fact, yeah, that's what I'm going to do. That'll be my mission.

It might be a little tricky to find something here in Montreal. I feel like my options are a little bit limited. But surely in Japan, you know, it's the land of just random power cables.

And then if worst comes to worst and I just have to buy a new buzzer, I'll whatever. Man, there's a random, random story I could tell you. It just makes me just think of random stuff.

So when I moved to Vancouver in 2004, I got like a job as a dishwasher and that was miserable. But then my second job was at a coffee shop at the Belenz Coffee at Davey and Granville. And I worked the graveyard shift because it was like, I don't know, supposed to be one of their flagship stores. So they wanted it to be open 24 hour, but it should not have been. I was just there as security. 10:00 We didn't make any money at night. It's just me dealing with the quite severe homeless problem in Vancouver.

I remember there was this one guy, though, who was a more enterprising homeless guy. But he would offer like, hey, if you give me like a piece of dailed cheesecake and orange juice, I'll clean the washroom for you. And I was like, yeah, dude, are you kidding? Yes, please. Because even, geez, that was a culture shock moving to a big city. Changing the garbage bag in the bathroom. The first thing they taught me was like, where are these big, sick rubber gloves and hold the bag out from yourself? Because there's going to be needles in there. And if the needles poke out of the bag, you could get poked by someone's drug needle. It's like, oh, that's disturbing.

Though fast forward 20 years, and my hometown's not so different. It's one of those things that it's like, it's good and bad. It's like, it's good that there's like services to get clean needles. And it's good that there's needle disposal stuff in like the washrooms in the public parks or at the library. But it's creepy at the same time. It's like, yeah, man, it's a real downer. You're just trying to go to the library. It's like, you needle disposal unit. It's like, man, these poor folk that I certainly do not know how to solve any of that. But anyway, I wanted my graveyard chips. This one guy came in who was just a travel and travel in young man. Who was clearly just sort of had nowhere really to stay. He was just trying to find places to ingratiate himself. And I was just bored to death. Either I was like stressed to death or bored to death on those graveyard shifts. You know, there's no middle ground. So I was like, this guy is pretty personable and he had some adventure stories. And I was like, yeah, dude, hang out. And in fact, here have some, have some of the day old cookies. Have a croissant. Drink all the coffee you want. What do I give a fuck? Minimum wage at that point was really low in Vancouver. I was getting paid like $7 an hour or something for this nightmare job. So I was like, you can just have whatever you want. Just hang out.

But I remember he had a razor, an electric razor that had all these different stickers on it. That he picked up from his travels whenever he got a weird sticker from somewhere. He always put it on his razor. And that was the night the razor broke, sadly. He just went into our washroom to touch himself up a bit. And the razor broke. And I mean, he didn't know me from Adam. I don't even remember this guy's name. I never saw him again, even though I told him he could come back. I was like, anytime I'm working, dude, come on in. I don't mind. Let's wait till I'm out of this traffic. Jesus.

Pay attention, though, to that traffic noise. This is the scene of the crime for my next story. We'll get to that after.

Yeah, this guy's a cool razor that he always took with him broke.

And yeah, because again, we were just random acquaintances. He was just, you know, he put the stiff upper lip on. He tried to pretend there was no big deal. He's just kind of playing it off. But I could just really see, like, I think, probably is a little stressed from being basically homeless or in between places. I don't know exactly what his status was. He didn't at all. He did feel like a traveler. He didn't feel like a homeless person at all. But at that moment, he was homeless and probably tired and stuff. His emotional defenses were probably a little low. But I could see that he was really broken up by his razor breaking, his electric shave thing. Breaking. He clearly had it for a long fucking time and he'd gone all over the place with him. And what's the point of that story? I don't know. But that's what this whole podcast is going to be, just random stories. Vagley related to travel with no particular point. But anyway, none of this is a big deal. It's just a little thing in my book bag, worst case scenario. A tiny little extra weight.

Just truly unexpected. How did I forget the power cord? Man, what a maroon. So I'm on my way to the thrift store to look for that. But I'm also on my way to go scope out a laundromat. I got a couple of local laundromats I'm going to go to just to see if I can figure out how they work. Presumably, I mean, I just haven't used laundry in a long time. Presumably, you can get changed for the washing machines and pay if you find one with an attendant and pay them with a card. Because back in the day, it was all cash. You got to use cash to break it down into the coins. But hopefully now that it's the more modern world, that's not the case. Because since I'm going to be leaving the country soon, I don't want to have any Canadian money on me. 15:00 That's just going to be completely useless. And what I was really hoping is maybe we would be fully modern. Like, why are we still using coins? But all of the places I like googled, they all still seem to take coins. And I asked on the Montreal Reddit, just in case, because like I was saying, how there's like a really good visiting Japan Reddit that's really helpful. I don't really use Reddit that much, but it seems like first stuff like this, maybe it's useful. So I asked them, just anybody know in Montreal? Are there any cool laundry places? But there's two random questions. No, no one knew. And one person pointed out, like, if these laundry places didn't take physical cash, then how would they launder money? And it's like, oh yeah, I mean, I'm not really some big conspiracy guy. I don't know. But I feel like there's a good chance that it is true that a lot of these places there probably is part of the reason they exist. It's just to launder some money through them. I can't imagine it's a glorious, high paying property to have a laundromat.

But yeah, this, I mean, this Airbnb I met, I would have taken it no matter what, because like I was saying, it's the only cheap one, cheap-ish. And it's actually more than I thought. I thought it was like $5.50? It's more like $6.50 for this little stay. It's a little stay in Montreal. What a bummer. Canadian prices, they're so bad. But it did have a washer and dryer listed that are not there.

So I'm also going to scope out laundromats. And the reason that's become imperative story number two is, you know, I mean, I was planning on doing laundry before I left the country, be better than going to Japan with dirty clothes. But if I had to, I guess I could go. Although nothing I think about it. I mean, laundry is oftentimes a problem. I remember the laundromat I used in Amsterdam. I'm similar to my story about how the only place I knew to buy pants in Amsterdam was in the tourist district. So they're really expensive. I mean, obviously there's more laundromats somewhere. But the one I used was right by like the red light district. It's just right there. Because if you've never been to Amsterdam, you think, oh, red light district, like, oh, is that the CD part of town? No, that's tourist grand central. Just all around it are places to buy crepes. And there was a laundromat there that was definitely overpriced. I mean, everything was quite expensive in Amsterdam.

But especially that, but it was right by new market station. I could easily get there. That's where I always spent 13 euros or something to do my stupid laundry. But yeah, when I first got to Japan, also, the first place I stayed didn't have a laundry machine. And I could never find, I did find one laundromat near there. But it had no English signage at all. And I just completely couldn't figure it out. Again, this time I've got the phone with the Google translate. I could like hold the phone up to the signs. And I could probably piece together what's going on. But I remember that was the deadest summer. And I tried doing, because this hostel I was at when I first got to Japan, I was there by myself most of the time. So if I was just there alone, you know, I would just like run super hot water in the sink and put some soap in and mush up my clothes and try to clean them. And then to rinse them. I can't remember where I heard this technique, but while taking a shower, just put your clothes on the floor of the shower and stomp them like your stomping grapes.

So I did that stuff, but it just never quite worked.

My clothes still just always smelled a little bit sweaty. And I was like, oh, I'm that guy. I'm this sweaty foreigner, because apparently there is a thing where it's not 100% this way, but there are Asian people who have less sweat glands than us. I don't know. You have to look it up, but it's a bit of a thing where it's hard to find the odor and sometimes in Japan. And just a lot of people legitimately just don't stink like we do. And if you ever saw the old anime ping pong club, that was one of the jokes.

That there was a guy on the ping pong team who's this giant mussely blonde American guy who just reeks. He just smells awful all the time. As I go, no, I'm the ping pong club guy right now. Mine is the mussels. So laundry is always just a bit of a problem. And yet again, here we are. Once again, me versus laundry. A lot of the places I've got booked in Japan have their own laundry machines, so that's cool. You can also get portable. I just saw this on YouTube the other day. 20:00 Quote unquote, portable washing machines that like fold down. You pull them up, but you can only do one shirt or like three pairs of socks at once and they barely work. And there's still this big thing you got to lug around. Not really portable. But the reason why I can't put this off and I've got to go figure out what's going on with laundry on a much quicker timeline is. You know, I was I was kind of hoping this podcast would be a little less scatological than the stuff I tend to do. Somehow, it always comes back to this though. And I don't know what I was thinking because the grim, the grimy, grody world of traveling is it can be an especially gross experience. What did I think? I mean, the very first episode was about how I had diarrhea on the way to Japan the first time. Of course, this is just going to come up. This is just going to be a thing in this podcast. It would be wildly disingenuous if it wasn't. But let's see how to lay this out. So first off, I guess I was just glad once I'm here that you can just get, you know, Middle Eastern food easily. I think I mentioned that that you can get it in my hometown, but it's really expensive here. I mean, it's not cheap here, but it's cheaper because there's a bunch of different chains that are at least in competition with one another. And it's so nice because you can just get like salads and stuff and you just don't feel bad. You know, you go to fast food and you tend to feel bad. You get Middle Eastern food, show armor plates and stuff. You feel good. Especially, man, Vancouver is so good for that stuff. That place on commercial drive. I would just get veggie plates. I'm not a distinct vegetarian. But I would get the veggie plate because it was better. It was the best option. It was so delicious. So I did that. And I was like, aw, awesome. So good.

But then, the day after that, I was at the dollar store just to buy some whatever soap and mouthwash. All the things like that that I didn't have. And I was like, well, while I'm here, let me just buy a bunch of crap, a bunch of junk food.

And then it started raining a bit. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to head back. This is what I'm going to eat today. So it was just, you know, like gummy worms and spicy lime blasted corn chips and all this fucking shit. And like a giant bag of them, not just a little one. And I crammed all this junk in my face and didn't think twice about it until about 28 hours later, when the next day, I had to roll things back in my mind and be like, what caused this to happen? Oh, that's what. That's why because I went to the dollar store and ate nothing but shit. What I think was going to happen.

Oh, is that the laundromat? Man, it's amazing how fast you get used to the creature comforts. I don't know how I ever found anything. I mean, all of my traveling up to this point, I've never had a little map on my phone. But through the little map on my phone, it's like, oh, buddy, you went the wrong way. You just walked right past the laundromat. I never would have realized it. I just walked away.

All right, I just took a quick little break to go into a dollar store just to buy laundry detergent and useful stuff like that. And I did not buy any food.

Fool me once, shame on me, but yeah.

But I also just stopped in the laundromat. It is unmanned, unpersoned, which I think is normal. Although I'm going to another one on the way back that supposedly has like an attendant person. But yeah, I got to, I guess most laundromats I've been to if they're just there. There's no one there. So here's just the machine. You put in the 20 bucks, you get a bunch of coins. But I mean, I make, I guess like when I'm in my little Airbnb, squirrels away, just these dumb little things, they seem like problems. They seem like such to do's. Where once I'm out walking around and I'm in the world and it's like, how is this a big deal? Just go to the bank machine and I'll get 20 bucks out. Probably, if I do two loads of laundry and drive them both while I'm here, that'll probably use up most of that by itself. And then if I've got coins, man, like whatever, I'll just go to a coffee shop on my way out of town and I'll just leave a tip, just whatever amount of money I have, that's your tip. It might be six bucks. Here you go, just so I don't have it with me the whole time. It's not a big deal.

But yeah, back to my laundry adventure. So I was walking around. My Airbnb is by Agrenel. 25:00 I was walking down Monk Street and maybe it's a boulevard, I don't know, across this canal that's down there, started mosey in and I was like, oh, there's that St. Joseph's oratory, I keep talking about the big famous church. It's like right there. I mean, it's not right there. It's 90 minutes away, but it looks like it's right there. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm just really not that far from anything. I kept walking for a bit and I got near at water station. It's like, oh, yeah, I've been here a bunch of times. Like this is basically Montreal proper.

It's just not that hard to get to. So I think I'm not going to get a metro card because I just don't mind walking. And I mean, I never minded walking has always a walking fan, but podcasting really changed my perception of walking as well. I used to just listen to music while I walked. So, you know, if you walk for an hour, that's like an album. That sort of feels like a long time. Whereas when you walk and listen to a podcast for an hour, that's one podcast, you know, roughly. So even if you walk for two or three hours, it's like, yeah, that's only two or three podcasts out of the 30 fucking podcasts in my backlog. That's all just dumb crap about wrestling or magic, the gathering or something is not important to listen to. But I've always like behind. I've got to catch up on my podcast. There's just no better way to do that than to walk. I was like, yeah, fuck it. I'm just going to walk. I'm just going to walk while I'm here in Montreal. Because this is also, again, this is like a slightly weird that I'm only here for 12 days when usually I'll be here for a whole summer or something, a month minimum, but usually two or three months. So just stuff just happens. There's no need to like go do stuff or go see stuff. But I was feeling more of that, more of the sort of conventional visit feeling of like, oh, shouldn't I go here? Shouldn't I go there? But the only places I want to go that even are kind of actual places are Mount Royal and that St. Joseph's place. And they're kind of one in the same. The St. Joseph Church is on Mount Royal. All the other places I want to go, they're only cool because just because they're places that I've been before, you know, they're just normal neighborhoods. There's nothing special about them. It doesn't really matter if I go back to them or not. There's nothing actually there. So that's all I would really need Metro for. The Metro itself is actually really nice. I like the Montreal Metro. If you look up like top 10 best Metro stations in Montreal, it's really only the top five that are actually cool, but they're pretty cool.

I've heard people say that the Montreal subway is way up there, like just under like Moscow for being a cool Metro. And it really is like it's so deep underground. You just keep going down and down and down and the architecture is so cool. And even just the sound, the sound of the trains moving is just cool. The little announcements and cool. Whereas like the Toronto subway is just kind of bland and not very, you know, very utilitarian. And the New York one is very useful. It goes a lot of places, but it's just awful. It's like a nightmare. It's like you're in Escape from New York. It's like you're in a movie and it's just the worst. So I would kind of like to go on the subway just to dick around, but that's certainly not an important thing to do while I'm here. So then I thought, you know, probably I'll just go to Lionel Grou and just pay the 11 bucks for a one-time ticket to get back to the airport as I get out of here. But then I was walking around and then the sun went down and Montreal, I mean this in a nice way, in a endearing way. But it's very, it's a grimy city. It's just kind of dirty all the time. So it actually looks amazing at night. This place generally or like winter, winter after a snowfall fucking beautiful. And then at night it just looks nice. It just looks cool. A lot cooler than it looks in the day. So I was walking around, it was night, everything was beautiful. And I was like, yeah, and I just love this. I miss this so much from being in my hometown for four years where there was nowhere to go. You know, you could walk clear across the whole city in two or three hours. And I'd been every possible route over and over and over. Nothing exciting about it. We're here. I was just like, you know, roughly walking in the direction that I knew would get me back to my Airbnb, but didn't quite know. Took a different route on the way back because I did on the way in. Everything was just pretty. And I'm like, this is fucking great. It's feeling pretty good all around. Like, yeah, everything's coming up Milhouse. 30:00 And then, man, I mean partially this is just how my body works. I did get an MRI once and they told me I have small organs. All of my organs are smaller than average on the inside. The inside. And it makes us why I got a PLOT. But also, like, when I got a poop, I just got a poop. There's no way around it. There's no waiting. But it's the annoying thing about it is it doesn't matter how many times I stop at a washroom. Was it mean girls or Josie and the pussy cats that was like, you know, I always stop at the washroom every chance I get. Better just to be on the safe side. You know, it doesn't matter. Nothing's going to happen until my body's ready to get things moving. And then at that point, it's an immediate emergency. It's very fucking annoying. But, you know, it's not usually so terrible except what was going through my system was the entire bag of spicy hot Doritos rolled in the... They're like tackies, but they're the Dorito brand. There's a literal dynamite on the bag. It's just like, you're gonna die if you eat this. And it just hit me so hard. And I was still like at least 20 minutes from home. I was by where that loud traffic was earlier. It's like there's this ravine that splits a verdone from whatever this neighborhood is called. I don't know, I guess. And I was like, you know, it's like the pain is just incredible. It's like you're getting stabbed in the gut. And I was like, oh, the stabbing, but they didn't win away. I'm like, okay, maybe I'll be all right. And then the stabbing comes back and I was just like getting angry at my body. Like, what is wrong with you? Just wait. Just wait. Come the fuck on. And that pain went away. But then the third time there was, there's just nothing I could do. It was insane. So there was this break in the traffic of this like six lane megastreet. I ran across, but you can't get down to the ravine. There's a fence along the whole thing.

So I was just kind of in this little patch of space between the road and the fence that had a little bit of like bushes. I was very slightly obscured, but I was glad it was nighttime. And this is also just again just busy traffic going by. There's no pedestrians at all where I'm at. I mean, for an emergency situation, I guess it could have been worse. And this is where I had to enact the traveler's secret of... I'm just looking around. I'm like, there's actually... there's far too many people around right now for me to continue this story. But socks. Socks. Equal toilet paper. Socks, double-edged toilet paper. And I'll tell you how it first came to that. It looks very obvious, but I don't know. It felt like an important discovery when I learned it. I'll tell you about how I learned that lesson, but I'm almost at the Salvation Army and then... Yeah, let me just get to a slightly less business.

This is a neighborhood before I keep talking about this. This is nonsense. All right, in the very fucking fascinating saga of my stupid fucking hair clippers. So in this thrift store, I actually found two different thrift stores. They had like another, you know, from the same brand clipper, but it had all the pieces and all the parts. They just accept the cords. I was like, oh yeah, maybe that's more common. Maybe the world's actually littered with these things with the cords missing rather than with the cords. But anyway, back to the tail at hand. So, yeah, like I said, nighthood fallen. I was by the big highway. It was intermittently raining. So that is the upside. Nobody was around. Just traffic. But it's like when you're on foot and there's cars, you're really in like a different world. You're not even in the same reality as them. Especially on like a highway situation. No one's going to stop. And yeah, I just felt the stabbing in my gut. And it's like, like, this is crazy. I cannot believe how fast this came on. I cannot believe how much it hurts. The cold, hard reality is I'm going to poop my pants and I was just not going to let that happen. If you want to think if I was at like a normal apartment that I lived in and I had to take the walk of shame back and go straight into the shower and then even if I run into somebody, you know, it's like my friends. I mean, that exact thing happened to me in Toronto. That'd be one thing. But when I'm in this like communal situation with random Airbnb people, there's no way. There's no fucking way. I think under any circumstances, I would just whip my pants down and just shit on the ground. 35:00 So all things considered. I mean, this really wasn't the worst ever situation because I doubt that any cars even really noticed that I was tucked away over on the weird side of the street next to the fence.

But as desperate as I was and as much as this was hurting, the one thing I had to do first, take a shoe off, take a sock off, put the shoe back on because there's no way I wanted to do all that maneuvering after being compromised with poop. And yeah, the sock thing. So how I've realized this because I always like to try to have, you know, like a little pack of wet wipes or something on me, just some kind of backup. That was when I really realized how full my bag was with traveling is I had like one of those big, big packets of like 50 wet wipes that you used to refill containers. And I figured out I've got one of these around. I'll just bring it and I just couldn't. There was no room. It just didn't fit.

I'm just walking by like an especially crappy corner store. And in Quebec, you can buy beer in convenience stores. That's not normal in Canada. Normally, I like just not a drinker. I'm a drinker. I'm a what would you call it? I'm a drinker of opportunity, an opportunistic drinker. If there's drinks around, I drink them, but I don't go out of my way to get them. So I do drink a lot more in Quebec than I do normally. I'll wait till I get to Japan. And even then, I probably won't drink too much, but at least there I can get strong zeros. It'll be fun. Here it's just kind of depressing. Me stores just suck so bad. You can kind of tell like booze and cigarettes. And a lot of tickets to the only reason this place is still in business. Hmm, maybe though. Here's another one as I walk down the street. I look at it that way. Maybe I'm doing them a favor, right? I go buy some drinks. Money, money, money is all you need. Fuck it.

There we go. Fuck it. Fuck it. Just bought some booze. I mean, it's the least I could do, right? I freaking had to poop on the street yesterday. I deserve something, right? And they have a big selection in there. In my home province, New Brunswick, you can at least buy some stuff like at the grocery store now, but even that's pretty new. Here, man, that's great. You can get all kinds of crap just at a nice convenience store. It's so convenient. New York was like this, too. I was gonna get, I don't know, some weird like strawberry, watermelon nonsense, but instead I just got a four pack of Sapporo. Why not? Stick with that Japan mode. So yeah, I was exploring around Vancouver once, and I don't remember the exact stop, but one of the stops on the Sky Train, which is what they call just the elevated train, like heading toward New Westminster. Just some stop I'd never gotten off at before, and I stopped there. And there's like a park, so I went into the park. It was wandering around, and it was pretty nice. And then I went in to use the little washroom in the park. And there was just no toilet paper in the bathroom.

This was, I don't know, 10 years ago or so. And I just realized, like, I'm looking around, like, I don't know. I wish there was a free newspaper or something. What am I gonna do? And then I just realized, like, oh, well, I got two socks. And I think I used a phone just to be double safe. And then I just walked around the rest of the day with no socks on, like some kind of fucking hipster. Like a 2008 era hipster. But that was one of those, like, just simple discoveries. But I'm like, oh, nice, because I still always try. I try to have something on me. But when you don't, socks, man, it just feels more secure when disaster strikes, when it's an emergency time. And that's what this was. Unfortunately, these were some of my best socks. Really nice socks. But basically, I won't fucking belabor this too much or get too gross. But once I had my sock ready and my shoe back on, just with my pants down, crap just quick as I could. It was a disaster. Just use the sock just to basically, you know, keep things from being too horrifying. 40:00 Abandoned the sock. Got the fuck out of there.

I was in such a weird little obscure area on the weird side of the highway next to the fence. Like, there's 0% chance anyone will ever come across my misdeeds. So that feels a little better too. At least I'm not just being some horrible person, which is somehow shit's in public and leaves it there, you know. Speaking of canals, I'm crossing the canal right now, back toward Monk.

The sun is just going down. It's like nice, pretty, pretty colors in the sky.

Because I'm sure that's what everybody wants to hear about in the middle of my poop story, right? It's the beautiful sun going down.

And, like, there's Mount Royal, and I mean, it just doesn't look that far. But of course, it's a mountain that the whole city's named after. Of course, it's far. Of course, that's a long walk, but it looks like it's right there.

But yeah, basically, I mean, I think it went okay, but it was hard to tell because I was trying to not dwell there and get things done quick and it's all dark. You know, if you got some kind of time, I don't know, I mean, if you're in like a park or something and you can find like a wooded grove or try to find like a fallen tree that you can kind of sit on, you know, there's ways that pooping outside doesn't have to be a disaster. This was just a pure emergency disaster. And I think I got away without getting poop particulates all over my stuff, but I just couldn't be sure. There's just no way to be sure. And I didn't even check. I don't want to touch it. I'm gonna get poop on my hands. It just basically turns your whole outfit radioactive. You know, I was like, I think I got away with that as well as I could have. But now I just need to get home and get these clothes off and to get them away. Quarantine them somewhere. There's no way I was wearing any of these clothes anymore because if there's even the vague potential for them to smell bad. You know, because I mean, I don't know, you just meet a lot of people in life who I don't know if they just have bad noses or what. But maybe they don't smell like poop, but maybe they smell like pee. Maybe they don't realize. Maybe they're clothes or musty. Maybe they have bad breath. Maybe they're going too far the other way to try to avoid those situations so they're just an old person coated and fucking perfume. I didn't want to take any risks with any of these clothes just in case. So I was like, all right, what I got to do is just get home. It was like 9.30 at night. Wash my hands first because I don't know, just in case they are my hands that I used with the sock also felt radioactive in my mind. And get a new set of clothes, go straight to the shower, abandon the old ones, quarantine them away, shower all up, change clothes. And man, I mean, I don't know, this Airbnb, it's only me, another guy in the room next to me. Across the hall, there's a couple, a guy and a girl who are sharing a room. And there's the fourth room that I don't think is anyone in it. So it's only four of us for like a whole bottom floor of a house. It's actually quite, quite spacious, quite a lot of room. And in the morning, these people like fucking the couple in particular, they're like fucking clockwork. As soon as like the morning hits them, they're up and they're turning on the radio and they're playing music and they're talking loud and they're banging fucking pots and pans around and shit. And I'm like, all right, well, whatever. Slightly annoying, but you do you. But then they go away. And then a little bit after them, the other guy goes away. So for the afternoon, no one's ever there. I'm just there by myself. And that's when I do all my stuff. Which is also how things worked. Or as saying earlier in an earlier episode about the place I stayed in Toronto that was like crazy. It's like 16 people in a two bedroom apartment. And I think that would have been a lot worse for me if I had a normal routine. But everyone else living there was either a student or had a job. So in the morning, because there was only one bathroom for all those people. In the morning, it was a shit show. It was insane. But I would just I just shifted my whole schedule to be different from theirs. So I wouldn't come back until like 11 at night or maybe midnight once everybody was asleep. So I could just come in and just go into my little bunk and fall asleep and never have to really cross paths with anybody. 45:00 Because there were with that many people living there. There was only one case where people got in like a legit fight. This one girl got in a fight with some guy. And whoever owned this place had a bunch of properties. So he just moved them to other properties that all worked out in the end. But I'm I got enough friends. I'm not I'm not there to make friends. I don't want to talk to people. I don't want to get to know anyone. So I come in late when everyone was already asleep and just sneaking to my little bed and then sleep in late. So everybody else would get up and fight for the bathroom and stuff. And by the time I rolled out about it, you know, 11 in the morning. Again, the place was basically just mine. I could just do must do my shower and and stuff and it was nice and easy. So I've been doing a similar thing here. Wait for everybody to clear out do whatever I got to do when everybody's gone. But at this time I had no option. It's like I need to get out of these clothes. I need to get in the shower.