the weekend, in non-photographic review

One of the nice things about having a new camera is that when you go out of town for a weekend and you leave that new camera behind, you get to spend the whole time thinking, Yeah, I wish I had my camera right now.

You think this when you leave Port Huron behind and go up the Blue Water Bridge and below you everything is a shade of light blue, icy cold and sunny at the same time.

You think this when you arrive in Saint Catharines and get turned around on the cute little downtown streets, the ones lined with trees still decked in white lights. You think this when you find the law office lobby, and there on the board is the AV's name, looking so very lawyerly.

You think this when you both arrive in Buffalo to find the snow piled so high you can't open the fence. You think this when you meet up with Tracy for Thai food, the best you've had in months: sweet potato turnovers and fried tofu with peanut sauce you eat with a spoon, and the aptly named paradise tofu, and coconut and spice and lemongrass that steam the windows of the tiny place.

You think this after dinner, when the three of you head across the street for a celebratory drink, and the man next to you at the bar has a ridiculous tattoo on his bicep, and the music playing is high school dance shit.

You think this as you follow the 219 down to Holiday Valley the next day, and when you both get up to the top of the trail that you've skied so many times before. The pines are beautiful. They are decked in snow, and the powder is deep and white, and when you follow the AV's pink hat down the slope you find you have the trail to yourselves for a minute, and there is a fire around another bend that is filling the top of the mountain with the smell of woodsmoke.

You think this later in the night, when you've both shucked off your ski clothes and joined up others for dinner and there are big bottles of wine and eggplant and chocolate vodka and the guy across the table from you states with the perfect confidence of a man who's had a little too much to drink: "Dude--that chocolate river is AMAZING."

You think this the next morning, when you and the AV and Cliff sit around and drink coffee and then Cliff starts talking about the economy using words you don't understand. And you think it on the drive back to Canada, when the Niagara River is turquoise and studded with ice floes. Or when the twin rusting masts of the pirate ship appear on the horizon. Or when you can see Toronto clear across the lake.

You think this when you stop outside of London to buy coffee at Tim Horton's and the man ahead of you in line is so nice, so polite to the cashier. And his mullet is so long, so large. So very feathery. You think this when you pass the huge tom on the side of I-69.

Or when you drive through Flint and it snows--the sun disappears, the flurries fall, and then as soon as you leave it behind, the snow stops. You would have printed that one off and brought it to BockFest in a few weeks. You would have asked Liz why, exactly, it is that God hates Flint.