I wake up in the dead of the night.
Oddly, it’s quiet.
My alarm hasn’t gone off yet and I groan. It’s probably something ridiculous like 11:30PM and I barely slept, but I feel decently rested.
I flip my phone over and let the screen come to life.
Okay, not quite. It’s about 2:20AM. My alarm was set for 3AM to give me time to jump in the shower before heading to the airport.
Of course it would’ve been nice to actually sleep until 3AM but, now I can ease into the morning. From the kitchen the floor below, Dakota seems to sense that I’m up before I’ve ever moved the covers off me and he lets out a bark.
First stop: tend to the big guy.
I really hate leaving Dakota when I travel even though I know he’s got the best case scenario staying at home – it’s not like he has to be droped off at a doggy daycare which is an entire other beast to deal with when you have to travel. But we’ve rarely been apart and I know within the day he’ll realize he’s on his own for the week and he’ll get a little depressed.
Me too, buddy.
It’s 5:05AM now and I’ve long since cleared customs and security, waiting in a smaller section of Pearson for my plane to begin boarding which is still a good hour and a half away.
On the plus side all the stuff that gives me anxiety about flying solo is all done and I even have a coffee to sip on (Starbucks only on this end of the airport instead of my usual Tims, but it’ll do) and I got here so early I have one of the few seats before eveeryone else starts spilling in, but on the other side of things – I’m bored, and I’ll be bored for the next 6 and a half hours at least until we land.
At least there’s WiFi.
I started traveling solo in 2021 as things started to ease up after the initial COVID waves. It’s funny but from a young age I always assumed that everyone around me enjoyed the idea of travelling as much as I wanted to, so I thought I would have seen a lot more placed by now. Instead what I realized was that unless I prompted the idea for a trip or, in a few cases, paid for it all outright myself, most people within my circle actually don’t prioritize travelling like I try to now.
The wild thing about travelling is you don’t need a reason to do it, just a willingness to see somewhere new and a healthy credit card limit, but even now I find myself giving myself the extra push by planning mine around an event that makes it special.
This time will be the third that the catalyst for my splurge be a concert, but it’s a pretty important one.
This time I’m making the trip across the United States to California to see night 1/3 of Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley.
If you’ve been following my music pages for a while you know that both these bands are pretty significant to my musical upbringing and I would’ve never guessed I’d be so attached to them so many years after I first heard them. I imagine many people going to these 20th anniversary shows feel the same way.
Truthfully, I wasn’t planning on doing another one of these types of trips, but with the band not bringing this tour to Canada, I really felt like I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know if Ben & Co will ever bring The Postal Service back for another row and make this an event every 10 years, but I really doubt it and would find that surprising. Maybe a one-off or something, which will be impossible to get tickets to anyway if this tour is any indication and if nothing changes within the scope of the sale of live event tickets in the future.
Even with this one, I was trying to get a single ticket for the Seattle pairing, but when that immediately failed I looked into more obscure locations closer to home and only by the sheer luck of them adding a third date for this venue did I even have a chance to purchase a ticket at all.
Trying to attend concerts these days is no easy feat. Weird that more artists don’t talk about that problem, but I guess it’s not as interesting as merch cut rates since it doesn’t affect the artists pocket book. After all, if it’s next to impossible for your fans to get tickets to your show, that’s a good thing, right? (It’s not).
That all said, I have always wanted to visit California. My first big career dream when I was very young was to move to California and become an actress. I have a distinct memory of myself blurting this out in a car ride to my parents in the front seat and them laughing about it. “And how are you going to manage that?” they’d ask me, no more than 8 at that time if you can trust my feeble memory. “I don’t know yet,” my likely response if I muttered one at all.
But that was what I wanted to do. And then along the way I’d fine tune that dream into being an improv comedian and then later, a musician.
By high school I’d decided the way to make it happen was to attend a California-based university and started to work through that process which is a little involved when you’re a Canadian. Ultimately I’d fold and settle on a Candian school instead not feeling quite confident with the process or what I would even take at those schools if I got in – honestly I wasn’t keen on the whole post-secondary thing to begin with, I just wanted to work in a recording studio.
So now, at 33 years old, I’m finally realizing that first dream in some capacity. I’m not a working actor or a comedian (though I am hilarious), and I am a musician (though not a career-one like the bands I’m going to see) and I am finally going to see California. Part of it anyway.
And as the agents begin to call for boarding, I realize I need to pee before we hop on this flight because this Starbucks has travelled right through me at this early hour.
See you on the other side.
This blog is part of an ongoing series that’ll pick up again later. Subscribe or check back for more!
This blog is part 1 in my series chronicling my trip to San Fransisco.
Catch up with the previous blogs below or jump to the next one:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
In case you didn’t know, I have a couple of side projects inspired by the bands that inspired this trip.
Check out Death Bus for Blondie including my entire Asphalt Meadows cover album (and then some) and Canada Post, everywhere you stream.
Thanks for reading.
Crooked Forest 
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