It’s Been A Hoot!
When you’ve spent as much time as I have on a bus you learn a few things. For example you learn how to sleep in any position on any surface and at anytime of the day. You also learn to appreciate your iPod and, most importantly, you learn how to hold your bladder for “just one more hour”. When we first embarked on the western Canada tour I was nothing short of ecstatic. Being from Vancouver, BC and having spent a good deal of time touring Alberta in the past, I had my own assumptions as to what it would be like. I 
thought I was prepared. So it’s a good thing Canada is such a beautiful place because from my window seat that’s all I had to look at. Cities and towns, mountains and prairies, it was as if the window was my TV and I’d lost the controller leaving me stuck with one channel for 4 months. We saw tons of wildlife. Anything from elk in the Rockies to prairie dogs in the…prairies. Justin (the bass player) was our self-appointed wildlife tour guide. While everyone else was sleeping in their seats he made it his duty to maintain peeled eyes so not too miss even one moving thing. Occasionally we were all awoken by Justin yelling “Wild turkey! You all missed it!” or “Another white-tailed deer!”. It’d probably be more pleasant to wake up to a gun shot. Nevertheless I appreciated getting to see all the amazing creatures I did wake up to look at.
Even more wonderful then the nature though was all the people we got to meet along the way. All the different styles of clothing, humour, and music – of course they all had something to say about Justin Beiber. Gotta love YouTube. We must’ve taken thousands of pictures and for every one of those pictures there was a conversation. I think its amazing how little time we take nowadays to get to know others. Notice how in all those old movies people would never pass a stranger on the street with out at least saying hello. Now we just turn up Micheal Jackson in our headphones and cruise on by. I don’t think the world got busier, I think we just changed our focus. Whatever the excuse is I can’t use it anymore. It’s these kids and their stories. I feel like I’ve heard more then most people do in a life time. We live in such a beautiful country but there’s so much more beauty that’s so easily missed after first glance. It’s crazy to think that ten years from now there will be celebrities and politicians that are in high school right now. Then I’ll get to say “I met that person before anyone knew”.You have to imagine spending three days straight in a little room on wheels with the same ten people. It can get intense. It’s like a family you have no real relation too. Lucky for us we’ve been privileged to have spent a lot of time with some really amazing individuals. I can remember so many good times already. Snow ball fights at Alberta truck stops, suntanning on top of the bus in Saskatchewan, endless episodes of The Office, pranks – you know who you are. It’s been a hoot! I guess were lucky though. We got stuck with a bunch of extremely funny people. Although there is one thing that we all have in common. We all want to effect others, to make a difference, and show people that there’s so much more out there than what’s on your iPod (although I hope what’s on your iPod is Bondless!).Now were back in Hamilton, ON making food and filling time. Just weeks from the end of tour, I can’t help but look at this experience and what it’s done for me, and to me. I’ve gone through things that I can honestly say will have shaped me into the person I’m going to be. There’s something about seeing an entire country through the window of a bus that makes you think really hard about what is and isn’t possible.
Joshua Anderton from the band Bondless