Improper disposal of waste...

I just got back from Banff. I went out there with a friend from Deer Lake to see the band Canary Mine and to get on a party. I know the band from the audio school I went to in Ontario and I haven't seen any of the guys since I lived at Castle Sketchator a few years back. We were winging it the whole weekend and everything managed to work itself out much better than if we planned anything. I slept in a van and my buddy slept in his truck for both nights, which ain't too uncomfortable when you're drunk as fuck and just need somewhere to lie and pass out.

To the uninitiated, Banff is a small tourist town neatly tucked into the Rocky Mountains about 140 km west of Calgary. Nobody in Banff is from Banff, and just about everyone is a tourist on vacation. The streets are alive with people and everyone is happy.

As planned, we got extremely drunk Friday night and I blacked out as usual. After the lights went out in my head, I was up dancing and fell onto the stage, or as James says (he's in the band), "Richard comes thrashing through and passes out face first on the stage." That's not 100% accurate though because I didn't "pass out," I just tripped and fell. Then some dude comes up to the stage and the band thought it was the bouncer coming to give me the boot outta the place but it wasn't. The guy came and helped me up and I carried on like nothing happened. That's how I roll... smooth, cool, and collected.

Check out "Banff p. 3" to get James' account of the night. He keeps a tour log on the band's site, and he was likely more sober than me anyway.

We leave the bar when it shuts down and hang out on the main drag for a bit, which ain't much. By this point I really gotta piss so I walk over into a corner and go about my business. As soon as I began a cop drove by, saw me there, cut a u-turn and sure enough, he was coming for me. My corner stall is in the pic below, directly behind me.


My buddies warned me to be nice to the officer because I could've easily been taken to the drunk tank. I don't really remember what the cop was like, but I'm gonna assume he was a dick and I was very cooperative. Even after my total cooperation, he still gives me a $115 ticket for "Improper Disposal of Waste." I woke up in the morning and reached in my pocket to find the crumbled up pink citation and then it all started to come back to me.


When all was said and done, awesome night, old friends, deadly people at the bar (hanging out with people from all over the world), awesome bar staff, awesome band, couldn't of had a better night. The fact that nobody is a local is great because there’s so much interaction between everyone because there are no cliques, no regulars, just a conglomerate of people out to have a great time.

And oh yeah I almost forgot the best part of the whole weekend. I ran into someone from Deer Lake at the Rose and Crown Pub. He used to be an Esso Ass Pirate (for the half-a-dozen people who know what that means) and soon retired to sandwich artist.