In the summer of 1996, we were 16 years old, and between the two of us we had a free weekend, $80 cash, a full tank of gas, and a very limited grasp of the French language, so we decided to drive the 175 miles from home in Glens Falls NY to Montreal to find out if Canadian McDonalds really was better than American McDonalds.

The we in this story was me and my best friend Ryan. I had met Ryan a year or two earlier in the high school cafeteria. I had asked him to sit with us at our lunch table and he hasn't left me alone since. He practically lived at my house, a small trailer, where there were always 5 or 6 other adults living at any given time.

Having an extra mouth to feed was very normal in our home - the door was always open to anyone that wanted to come by. Ryan had an abusive father and, at least in our teenage minds, an evil stepmother, he preferred to hang at my house, eat my food and generally be an annoying asshole which is what a teenager is supposed to do. I remember a time when Ryan came over, took a full package of hot dogs out of the fridge, put 8 in the microwave, turned it on and ate the other 4 cold while the rest were heating up. Mom was upset that day and said that was supposed to be dinner.  We found something else.  I also have a really great story about splitting 24 tacos and a dozen donuts with him on a midnight bicycle adventure that ended with 4' of stolen sod from a taco bell, but that is for another time.

This is about a slightly larger adventure.

It was a boring summer day. On the previous 4 or 5 weekends we would jump into my beat-up pickup truck...and start driving south until we either found entertainment or ended up in the mall in Albany. This particular Saturday I had a romantic remembrance of a theme park my dad took us to when we were kids - Frontier Town! It had real horses, fake guns and tin badges, and I know only it was vaguely "upstate".

We jumped onto the highway and headed up...up and up we went past lake George, which Abraham Lincoln called one of the most beautiful places he's ever seen.   We went past Warrensburg - home of the world's largest garage sale and home to one man who got arrested for drunk driving a motorized cooler full of beers. We kept going past Ausable Chasm, a natural wonder worthy of a trip, and further still when we saw some hitchhikers and picked them up to drop them again in Plattsburgh for a Phish show, skipping past Frontier Town along the way.

When we finally reached the Canadian border, the agent asked where we were headed. I said Canada. He said good thing because if you were aiming for Mexico, you went the wrong way.  No passports, no inspection or questioning...just a snarky dick in the middle of nowhere.

Something they don't tell you about Montreal - all the signs are in French.  I didn't have a word of French, but Ryian's evil stepmom taught the language in our school, so I assumed he knew enough.  The signs said Montreal next 7 exits.  Well, we wanted to be the center of it all, so we took exit 4. There were signs for Park this, Park that, but in French, so we were winging it.  Almost immediately upon exiting the interstate we came to a booth where a man asked me for $20. I asked what for and he said for parking.  I asked where we were parking, and he just said "park". I gave him $20, and he gave me back around $6 Canadian, thinking I got one over on him forgetting exchange rates.

We parked on a side street and started walking.  We found McDonalds and learned that the food IS better there - poutine and Canadian bacon fries...mmmm.  

We wandered and had a good time meeting punk kids outside a free live show, discussing how backwards they were compared to us NY'ers.

When it got dark, we decided to head back home. We found the street where the car was parked but it wasn't there.  There were no cell phones, and besides I hadn't asked my parents if I could go up to Canada.  We decided to walk around until we could find someone that could help us find out what had happened to our car.  It was completely possible that I parked in a No Parking zone since I couldn't read the signs. When we got to the other end of the street, I noticed that the next street over looked Exactly the same, but my car wasn't there either. Then the next street and the next...the park was shaped like a wagon wheel with the same street repeated over  and over stretching away from the center. About 36 streets later we found the spoke we had parked on...just in time too because it started to rain. Then pour.  Buckets.

We navigated back to the rotary that would get us home, but neither of us could figure out which exit to take between the French signs and the pouring rain...then the weird noise. It was like a wee-woo wee-woo sound and some blue flashing lights.  We drove 2 or 3 more laps around the rotary before we realized the sound and lights were the police trying to get us to pull over.  He said something to us in French and all I could muster in return was "I'm sorry". He said, "where are you going?" I answered "America" and he said GOOD and pointed at an exit.

We drove south and started to see signs for the US Border, but I thought I had many miles still to go, then I see a stop sign to my right...oh shit 80kph.  I slam on the brakes, and we slide - first 45 degrees, then 90 perpendicular to the road. We slid up and onto a median, taking out a sign and getting thoroughly stuck. A border agent came out of the booth right nearby and found we had all 4 wheels off the ground - the belly of the car in 18" of mud. He said, "I'll call a tow truck", and I said wait...Ryan how much money do you still have? He said $10. I checked my wallet and had $40. I told Ryan to put that $10 in his hat and not to mention it again. I explained to the agent about how we only had $40, and he said fine.  The tow driver came, pulled us off and said $80 please. I said we only had $40. He said call your parents. I said at 1AM? They don't have $40 either and they're hours away. He yelled a lot and swore at me in French, I think. Then he started rummaging through the truck with his Maglite.  There he saw my entire music collection, 40 or so cassettes in one of those big red soft-side cases.  He said he'd take the $40 and the cassettes and I could come back with the $40 to get my tapes back.

We were back on the road and Ryan said, "Why'd you have me hide that $10 - it might have been enough to save the tapes?" and I told him that our gas tank was on E.

We stopped at a gas station, put all $10 in and got back on the road.  Around 3am we made it to Lake George about 20 miles from home, when the gas light came back on, but we rolled into Glens Falls on fumes.  My parents weren't up yet. The car showed no damage. We had survived.

The next morning, I got into the truck to drive to school, made it about 15 yards when I ran out of gas.

About a month later I had a long talk with my folks about some mail including a traffic citation from Canada and a request to pay $150 for a destroyed Stop sign.  I never did get the cassette tapes back, and I'll forever mourn the loss of that live Pixies show, but at least now I know what McDonalds tastes like in Canada.