S A T U R D A Y... night.

As previously reported, this is a out-of-order episode in my western adventure, stretching back two days to Saturday night.

Saturday night we hooked up with the silverorange boys after all and, based on a recommendation from Peter Burka (present only in spirit), we walked into up, up, up to a Japanese mall food court for sushi in boats. But there was a long and confusing line, so we headed back out into the neighbourhood, and finally settled on a Japanese restaurant across the street.

The general consensus was that the food was excellent. I had a combination dinner of salad, soup, sushi, and tofu steak, and a glass of Kirin beer. During the dinner, a plan to engage in some variation of drunken karaoke emerged, so when we finished at the restaurant, we scoured the neighbourhood for an eligible location. Alas we came up dry, and so walked, somewhat sullenly, back down, down, down towards our hotel.

Once at the hotel, a small burst of new energy pushed us back out the door. There was an aborted flirt with a raucous Irish pub, followed by some aimless wandering. Somewhere along the way, the Burka boys secreted themselves off, no doubt to attend some late-nite Mozart concert. Finally, realizing that the End Was Near, we made a last-ditch attempt to rescue the night by jumping on the Powell-Hyde cable car.

At this point, somehow, I was nominally in charge of the event, and there were many sceptical looks my way as the cable car drew further and further from our starting point, and the Fun Night Activities appeared to be whittling away to nothing. We finally reached the other side of the mountain and, as luck would have it, a jazz lounge winding down for the night presented itself. We had a drink, entertained by smooth piano stylings, and then, satisfied that we had done our best to achieve maximum levels of fun, ventured back out to find our way home.

Serendipity struck as, amidst a “we’re going to need two taxis” conversation, Dan flagged down a mini-van taxi that neatly held us all. It appeared, from my backseat position, to be driven by Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. But we got there in one piece, and a much better piece it was than the crazy NASCAR-inspired taxi ride from the night before.

This morning we wrangled ourselves up for 9:00 a.m., and by all appearances our young colleagues were either all out and about, or still asleep (the only one with concrete plans was Stephen, and I’m sure he’ll report his exciting activities here). We had a moribund breakfast at a deceptively well-decorated café around the corner, walked around Chinatown for a while (our weather has been fantastic, and there’s no salve to the frigid snow-pummelled Charlottetown soul better than a warm morning walk in the sun).

And then suddenly it was time for Johnny and Jodi to head back to Vancouver, and for me to do a complex Bart-to-train dance up to Davis to rendezvous with Oliver and Sophie. By the clock on the wall, the train upon which I write this note should arrive in Davis in 20 minutes. More on our exciting Davis activities, and our chocolate-drenched Monday morning, when next the Internet strikes.