The Crocus Snowfall

                                                                                                                                                                                Crocus Snowfall  125

Chapter 22

(Death Patrol

)



Monday, June 23, 1969

We were still scratching our heads trying to find a name for our band. One afternoon, we all decided to chose a few songs to play from Leslie’s record collection. As we were going through his albums, Leslie was busy doing something else. He was spending a little time searching the dictionary when he finally came up with something.

    “I think I’ve found something cool, you guys,” Leslie announced, his finger still hovering over the word in the dictionary.

    “And what would that be?” I asked.

    “Crocus!” he said, excited.

    “Crocus—what’s Crocus?” asked Hubert. We all looked at him wondering what he meant.

    “It’s a flower, man, it’s the first flower that buds in the spring. Listen to this: ‘as one of the first flowers to bloom in the spring, the large hybridized and selected "Dutch crocus" are popular with gardeners. However, in areas in which snow and frost occasionally occur in the early spring one has to plant them carefully, as it is not



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uncommon in these regions for the crocuses to bloom early, only to suddenly wither and die from an unseasonable "post-winter" frost or snowfall.’ This northern climate, man; it’s rough for us flower power peace and love people.”

He had a good point - the name was cool, and we did live in a northern part of Canada.

    “Why don’t we call ourselves The Crocus Snowfall?” he suggested.

We kept saying the name The Crocus Snowfall repeatedly, testing it out. Indeed, it had a catch to it, and was very original.

So we all agreed that would be our new name - The Crocus Snowfall. We finally chose five new songs to practice and headed to Patrick ’s basement. As we entered the front door, Patrick ’s mother said we had a phone call from the owner of the Ritz Hotel.

    “The Ritz Hotel - what would he want?” Patrick mumbled, then scratched his head.

Charlie always considered the Ritz to be a dump, and started laughing when he heard the name Ritz announced.

    “You’ve got to be kidding, Patrick. Don’t even think about it,” Charlie said, still laughing.



                                   

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    “Hahaha, I don’t think that would be the right place for us,” said Hubert.

    “You should phone him anyway, just to find out what he wants,” his mother insisted.

A few moments later Patrick came down with a smile on his face. “He found us a contract in Rouyn, at a place called the Day’s Hotel. Said it’s for two weeks and pays room and board.”

    “Weekends, or weeks – as in, seven days?” Hubert asked.

    “Well, almost - four days a week. He said it pays $800.00 room and board.”

There was a moment of silence. We were all thinking about the eight hundred bucks. It was still in a hotel we had to play, but eight hundred bucks was not to be turned down. “He said it would last for two weeks…maybe more,” said Patrick, still smiling.

    “I’m in, man,” said Leslie. “With that kind of money…”

We finally all agreed. We considered it as a run for the money that would last a month at the most.

    “We have one problem, though,” I said. “How do we get there?”

    “No problem,” said Hubert. “We could ask my father; he has a station wagon with a trailer.” At that moment,

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Patrick and I were looking at each other and thinking about Brain.

    “Another station wagon huh?” Patrick said, smiling.

    “—Another station wagon?” Hubert said, surprised.

    “Never mind,’ I replied. “ It’s a long story.”

#

Wednesday, July 2, 1969

Rouyn-Noranda is the second largest town in Abitibi Témiscaming with a population of twenty-five thousand, while Val-d’Or has twenty thousand. Rouyn-Noranda is known for being one of the largest copper mines in the world. Before heading directly to the hotel, we decided to look around the place a little. Indeed, it was much larger than our town. Their Main Street had very large cement buildings at least seven or eight stories high, like in the big cities. We also noticed that there were an awful lot of hippies around. I knew we were going to enjoy ourselves here. We finally found the street and the hotel we were looking for. Nothing very fancy, just a large square two-

                                       

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story building. It had fire escape metal stairs on the side of it. We unpacked the car and trailer, and took our gear into the hotel. It looked just like all the other hotels that I’d played with Patrick before, except this one had an impressively large stage. A tall man behind the bar came to greet us.

    “Hello,” he said shaking our hands. “My name is George, I’m the manager here. So you are the Crocus…?”

    “Yes, the Crocus Snowfall,” I added.

    “Ok, I read the article about you guys in the newspaper, you’re supposed to be pretty good?” he said with a smile.

    “I guess you know where to install you stuff.”

He explained that we could eat at the International restaurant near by; we just had to tell them that we were the Day’s musicians. Jim showed us where our rooms were and from there, we were on our own. We put away all our gear and thanked Hubert’s father for his help, buying him a cold beer, which he had requested earlier. He even helped us put up the sound system speakers. After he had finished his beer, he said goodbye and he was on his way back to Val-d’Or.

As soon as we installed our instruments on stage, and tested a short sound verification, we went up to our rooms

                                   

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to check things out. The upstairs hallway was old fashioned. At the bottom of the walls were four feet high, tiny two-inch narrow varnished planks that decked the walls from one end of the hall to the other on both sides. The insides of each room were identical.

    “Cool,” said Hubert, looking at the walls. “That’s exactly how the bottom part of the walls are made at my Grandfather’s house. Those planks are all hard wood, you know.”

    “Not what you could call very modern, huh,” Patrick observed, as he hung up his clothes in the closet.

    “What do you say we go for a bite to eat after this?” Charlie proposed.

    “That’s a very good idea, Charlie, I’m starting to get hungry, man,” said Leslie.

It was very exciting visiting a bigger town than our own. As we were walking towards the restaurant, a loud noise coming from behind us instantly attracted our attention.

Fifteen chopper motorbikes grinded their Harleys passed us. They all had Death Patrol crests written in white on the back of their leather vests.

    “Sure hope they won’t be coming to the Day’s,” said Leslie.

                                   

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Thursday, July 9th

From what we had heard, the Day’s Hotel was renowned to be a very tough hotel. Actually, our first week was not very different from what it had been like at any other hotel, but something was telling me that it was about to change.

There was a new gadget out on the market for musicians called a WA-WA pedal. Apparently, this new pedal was supposed to make the sound of your guitar strings cry. I was the first to buy one, and we sure had a ball one afternoon trying it out.

    “Hey man,” said Leslie, looking at me trying to work with the wa-wa pedal. “Try playing something just like Jimmy Hendrix, man.”

Jimmy Hendrix was the king of the wa-wa. He could make it sound just like a baby crying, and as a matter of fact, that’s what attracted someone’s attention sitting at a table near by. We jumped as we heard a bang on the stage.







                               

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    “Play that thing right or don’t play it at all!” said a stranger, walking back to his table.

Indignant at the shocking insult from a complete stranger, we all managed to keep our annoyance to ourselves, having seen the person who had uttered those words. He was a very large man wearing all kinds of chains on his old worn down jean jacket, with a crest on his back that had the letters DEATH PATROL written on it. Many others of his kind accompanied him at a nearby table.

    “Where on earth did they come from?” Leslie whispered.

    “I don’t know, but let’s hope they won’t be here tomorrow night,” I replied.

We spent the rest of that afternoon practicing with the wa-wa pedal up in my room.



                                   

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After a few hours, I sort of got the hang of it. You had to understand what you wanted to do with it before using it, and in a few songs it really sounded great, giving more feeling to the song. That night, there was a mixture of people, some in their 60’s; some in their 40’s; and others in their 20’s. Just like other hotels, everyone enjoyed dancing to our music, but that’s because we played some of the older songs we used to play with Brain. Every now and then, we would play some new songs using the wa-wa pedal. The younger audience enjoyed this, but the elders didn’t seem to appreciate it that much. That night, the manager told us that he never had that much people for a Thursday night. Contrary to what we had heard, there hadn’t been any fights or arguments.

#

Saturday 11

Every afternoon we would walk down to the park where all the hippies hung around. Many of the hippy girls were just

                                   

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4

so gorgeous and sexy. They would enjoy talking to us about any subject at all. We felt a new and strange feeling coming over us when we would frequent these places, as if this was our place; where we belonged. It actually was a wonderful feeling, a feeling in which we were drawn to, but we knew that somehow drugs were related. This new generation of psychedelic music was considered to be very cool by these hippies. It couldn’t be understood by anyone; could it be that the secret to all of it was through drugs? Maybe then, and only then, could this insight be revealed? These people seemed to have no prejudices towards anyone, although many people outside this group of people did. They were free, or at least felt free to come and go and do whatever they pleased. Although we promised ourselves we would never take or even try any of these drugs, unfortunately, our inauguration began with three very beautiful and attractive young girls one hot summer’s night. To put it another way: Adam just couldn’t refuse the apple Eve had offered him.



Sunday, July 13

One night, just as we finished playing at around two thirty, we all went up to Charlie’s room to listen to a new

                                   

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album that he’d bought Saturday afternoon. It was a new kind of Hard Rock album, by a band called Led Zeppelin.

    “Wait till you guys hear this,” said Charlie enthusiastically, taking out the record from its cover. “It’s incredible, I’ve never heard music with such groove before.”

He put the album on the stereo player that belonged to Patrick. As the first song began, we all sat back and made ourselves comfortable. It was incredible. We had never heard rock and blues so pronounced.

    “Wow, listen to that drummer,” said Patrick.

This was new power rock with such feeling.

    “How could any guitar play lead like that, he’s so fast,” I said.

Everything had such a powerful beat to it, and the singer could really sing with such feeling. Suddenly something attracted our attention.

    “What was that?” Charlie said, looking at the window

    “Someone is throwing rocks at our window,” said Hubert, looking out the window.

Someone was shouting our name outside.

    “Hey! You guys, The Crocus yoo-hoo.”



                                 

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We opened the window to find out what all the commotion was all about. We noticed that there were three girls down on the sidewalk, calling us.

    “What’s up?” Charlie asked.

    “Would you guys like to come to a skinny dipping powwow?” one of the girls asked.

Charlie looked at us and said: “They’re asking us if we want to go for a skinny dipping powwow with them?”

Everyone ran downstairs as fast as they could, almost stumbling over each other in our eagerness. We opened the outside door, which could only be opened from the inside, and there they were, three beautiful chicks giggling, waiting for us.

    “Hi,” said one of the pretty girls. “Its not too far from here,” she said, pointing towards her right.

The taller of the two was wearing a headband with a flower in her long blond hair, tight jean shorts, sandals, and a loose hippy blouse. The other two were almost dressed identically, except for their hair, which was light brown. They all had perfect figures, and were just so sweet and desirable.

    “Four guys and only three girls,” said Hubert, lifting his left eyebrow.

                                   

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    “Don’t worry,” said one of them. “We’ll be a lot more than three girls when we get there.”

Once we got there, it was at a little lake not too far from a railroad station, and just as she had said, there were more than just three girls. There were boys and girls swimming naked.

    “Look at that,” I said to Charlie. “Ooooh Weee!”

    “Man, we’re going to have fun tonight,” Charlie said.

The three girls began to strip down right in front of us. First we had seen their breasts, then their buttocks, and pubic hair.

    “Coming for a swim?” asked one of the girls.

We all stripped naked and went in for a swim. The water was just great. It was so much fun playing in the water with them. We noticed many of them smoking pot, and realizing we were watching them. Two of the girls passed us a joint.

    “Here, I will give you a blow,” said one of them. But before I could say: “Here…can’t we go somewhere a little more private”, she put the joint in her mouth and blew the smoke in my mouth. Good thing I shut my mouth and inhaled.

It was dark, but after a while, we got used to it. We noticed some couples making love on the beach, and no one

                                     

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seemed to pay any attention. How could we guys not feel aroused by all of this? I guess that was the point of all of this, because it didn’t take long for us to start kissing and exploring each other. Finally, everyone landed on the beach making passionate love, but not for long as the mosquitoes were getting the best of us.

The very next morning I woke up with a very beautiful companion sleeping beside me. We actually spent the whole afternoon making love. I really was beginning to enjoy this generation.

#

July 17, 1969

On Thursday afternoon, we all were in Patrick ’s room rehearsing a new song by Led Zeppelin called “You Shook Me”, when suddenly someone was banging on our door. As Leslie opened, a very large bearded man stood at the door. There was a tattoos on both his arms but on his right arm were the letters “Death Patrol”

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    “I know my girl slept here the other night, and I want to know with who?”

We all looked at each other, naively.

    “My girl’s name is Sandra,” he said, banging his fist on the wall. His face was reddish now and his neck veins were swollen.

We all said that we didn’t know of any Sandra. Just at that moment, the girl that I had slept with the night before ran up stairs. She had a very worried expression on her face.

    “What are you doing here, Roby?” she asked, a little out of breath.

He grabbed her by the hair and said: “I know it’s one of these guys Sandra, you tell me or else.”

    “Hey hey, take it easy man.” I said nervously.

We were shocked at the way he was treating her. That big thug had no right to harass her like that, but if I told him it was me who she had spent the night with, he would kick the shit out of me, if not all of us.

    “It’s not these guys you stupid asshole, I don’t even know them.”

    “You lying, bitch!”

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    “No, I’m not, this isn’t even the right hotel,” she replied.

Roby didn’t say anything for a moment, still not sure who was telling the truth.

    “Come on, bitch,” he said, pulling her by the arm.

I did get a glimpse of Sandra’s wink as she looked back at me before disappearing down the stairs.

    “That was more than close,” said Leslie, still looking towards the bottom of the stairs.

    “But she never mentioned anything about going out with that big thug, People could be just too strange,” I said feeling depressed.

    “She works at the International restaurant,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “We should have supper there tonight and ask her what happened.”

We kept on rehearsing the new song, but everyone only had one thing on their mind: what would she say?

At five o’clock, we entered the restaurant, finding a place just next to the side window.

    “Look over there,” said Patrick. “Could that be Sandra?”

    “She’s wearing sunglasses,” Charlie said.

    “I sure hope that…Shsss, here she comes,” I said.

    “Hi Glenn, hi guys.”

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    “Sandra, why the sunglasses?” I asked.

    “This is why,” she said, taking off her glasses.

Both of her eyes were bruised; there also was a cut on her lower lip.

    “What kind of animal is that guy?” Hubert asked.

    “If I were you, Sandra, I would go to the cops.” I said, feeling sorry for her.

    “Naa, it would only make things worst; anyways, I’m moving to Toronto next month, so I don’t think I’ll be seeing that bastard anymore. It was a mistake, I know, but I thought he was cool, but he turned out to be a possessive bastard.”

    “Anyway, what will you have, guys?” she asked, taking out her tablet.

    “You,” I said, smiling.

    “Any time, Glenn,” she replied, smiling.

As Sandra took our order and left, we couldn’t help but talk about how mean a guy must be to do something like that to a beautiful girl like Sandra. Even if she did cheat on him, that doesn’t give a man the right to beat on his woman. Violence only makes thing worse and never solves anything. Life is too short to use violence. There is only

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one thing that makes the world go round; well, two things: love and money.

#

(One giant step for mankind)

Sunday, July 20, 1969

One thing we hated about playing in hotels was that you had to play Sunday afternoons. Even if there was only one table, the show must go on. But this Sunday, however, the place was almost full, which was very unusual. Even if the place was almost packed, just like every other Sunday afternoon, no one seemed to be paying any attention to our music, and were drinking beer and looking at the TV set above the bar. As we were playing, we noticed something strange; when we finished our song, no one applauded, not a word was spoken, and they all had their eyes stuck to that TV set above the bar. We looked at each other in amusement.

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    “What’s this all about?” I said.

Patrick found it too amusing and started to laugh. Suddenly the bartender came up to the stage telling us to

stop playing and come watch the TV. That was very unusual, but how could we refuse?

    “What’s this all about?” Charlie asked the bar man.

    “Come see for yourselves,” said the barman walking towards the bar.

What we saw was almost unbelievable. For the very first time, man was landing on the moon. We could see it happening right in front of us; live. Everyone was hypnotized looking at the events taking place. Just like everyone else, we spent the rest of the afternoon watching the set. It was amazing. The lunar module called The Eagle was flying above the moon craters until it suddenly landed. At that moment, everybody shouted with joy and so did we. It took a while, but the first man to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong. It was strange watching him bouncing awkwardly around the dusty surface like that. The first words he said would always be remembered. “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”

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Chapter 23

(A Wild Party)



Sunday, August 30

The last day of our contract was a day to remember, because at last it was over. Although we had fun in Rouyn, the hotel itself was a drag. During the time we passed at

the Day’s Hotel, I had bought another pedal, which was a distortion pedal. Both pedals were great for guitar solos, and I was beginning to get pretty good at it. For some reason, every Sunday we would attract the motorcycle club the Death Patrol. They started enjoying our rock songs, and maybe it was the way I played my solos with the wa-wa pedal. It seemed to blow their minds. We were all happy because every Sunday we finished at five o’clock, and this

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Sunday we all would get our final pay; after that, we had been invited to the bikers club for a big party.

It was a quarter to five, and all the bikers with biker girls were hanging around, waiting for us. As soon as the hand struck five, all the bikers helped us with putting our gear in to the back of a large truck that belonged to one of them. On the way out, one of them offered to share a joint with us, and you don’t say no to a Death Patrol. Once all our gear was packed, we each climbed behind the driver of a Harley. We had never been on a Harley before, and I was hoping that we would get to their club unharmed. As a mater of fact, it was very exciting indeed. It was so fast; I had to hold on tight. Besides the flies and bumblebees smashing in your face, it felt great. These large bikes

were very powerful, and I sort of understood just why they loved riding them.

Once we had arrived, we noticed that their club was very big; that’s because it was an old barn that they had renovated. It was situated about ten miles out of town on the side of the main road. The grounds were packed with bikers just taking it easy. There was a large pig being cooked over a pile of red-hot coals, and in another part, corncobs were being cooked in a large pot over a fire. Loud

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music could be heard coming from inside the large club. As we got off the bikes, I still had the sensation of vibration. Many of the bikers cheered us as we got off the bikes. One of them came to greet us. He was one of the largest of all of the bikers. He must have been six feet four, with long blond hair and a strong beard. He had tattoos all over his arms.

    “ Hey guys, glad you could make it,” he said, grabbing our hands and shaking them in a very unusual way.

    “My name is Chico, I’m the president here.” He then called and waved at three other members to come over.

    “You guys help my friends here install their instruments inside,” said Chico.

    “You guys can have anything you want: dope, beer, girls, you name it,” he said.

He then made a sign at a few girls that were hanging near the club entrance to come over. We couldn’t believe it. The girls looked exactly like the ones you would see in a Playboy magazine. “Chris, Mary, Anita, Johan, Bridgette, you take good care of my friends here, you hear, they’re here to have fun,” he said with a wink, and went back to what he was doing.

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Bridgette had the biggest boobs; in fact, it was the first thing you noticed about her, emphasized by her tight black-fringed leather halter-top, and very thigh short-fringed jeans with high heel cork sandals. Chris wore a no-arm jean jacket with just a red bra underneath, and a red and black headband with the same kind of sandals. Mary, Anna, and Johan all wore tight white T-shirts with the words ‘I Dare You’ written on their chests. They all had short blond hair, and wore tight blue jeans and running shoes. I had the impression that these girls could not have been going out with any of the gang, but were maybe just hired to entertain.

    “So you guys are the band tonight, huh,” Chris said, chewing away at her gum.

    “Follow us, boys, we’ve got something you can’t refuse,” said Anna, pulling Charlie’s hand and walking towards the club entrance.

We followed them inside. The place was wide open, with a long bar on the far sidewall. There were steps leading to the second story; that’s where the girls were bringing us. Once upstairs, there was a long hallway with rooms on each side. We could hear the sounds of moaning coming from the rooms. The girls looked at us and smiled.

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    “Lets have ourselves some fun, boys,” said Brigitte, pulling on the lace at the back of her neck to untie her leather halter-top, revealing her big, firm breasts. We each entered a room. Brigitte grabbed my hand, pulling me into the room with her. We both got naked, and I couldn’t believe all this gorgeous body would be mine to have fun with. We both lay down in opposite positions, letting ourselves explore all the taboos of sex passionately.

At nine o’clock, we were all on stage and eager to play. Our instruments were all at their maximum volume. The first set lasted nearly two hours because of their continuous requests. At eleven o’clock, we decided to take a break, which was when they offered us a new drug called LSD.

    “This will blow your minds guys,” one said.

    “Man, with this stuff you’ll play just as good as Hendrix,” said another.

We all decided to try it. Half another later everything seemed to be moving on stage. We were looking at each other and laughing. Everything was just so funny. I looked at everyone dancing very strangely, shouting, and jumping. At one point, I was sure that everyone was naked.

    “Hey, Charlie?” I shouted. He looked at me, but his features didn’t seem the same, but then suddenly he looked

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normal. “Charlie, are those people naked?” I asked, looking at the crowd.

He took a long look and smiled.

    “Fuckin’ shit, man, I think they are,” he replied, laughing.

I looked at the other guys, and made a sign for them to look at the crowd, but they seemed to be too concentrated in what they were doing. I took another look and everyone was dressed again, so I kept up with the song. I was about to do a guitar solo, but the guitar neck just wouldn’t stay straight, as if it was elastic. Suddenly, no one was dancing any more, but just walking around in circles. The music sounded too weird. Charlie wasn’t singing any more, he was staring at his mike. Patrick stopped playing and was

smiling. Some of the bikers were rolling around on the floor. Charlie tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Let’s go outside a bit, I need some air.” Leslie and Hubert followed us. There was a full moon, a very large and orange one. I could almost touch it, or just thought I could. I began walking towards it; yes, if I tried my best I could reach it.

    “Glenn…Glenn! Where you going man?” Leslie asked. “Hey man… come over here,” he said, grabbing my arm.

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    “Look at that moon, Leslie, do you think we…”

    “No, no, man, you can’t, stay right here, man.” One of the girls noticed what was happening and called one of the bikers.

    “You alright man?” he said. “Wait right here man, I’ll be right back.” He came back with a pint of milk, asking me to drink the whole thing. I told him that I wasn’t thirsty for milk, but he insisted. I did as I was told. He said that everything would be ok soon. Half an hour later, I was feeling normal again but very tired. I noticed that only Hubert was still feeling very peppy, Patrick, Charlie, and Leslie had left. I decided to go to bed.

The next morning I found myself on stage with a splitting headache. There was a girl sleeping with her head on my

belly. My pants were undone. Others were sleeping here and there; some were still outside drinking beer and smoking pot. There were beer bottles everywhere. I got up and went looking for the others. I found Charlie and Patrick in one of the rooms upstairs. I woke everybody up and told them to get ready to leave. As we went back down stairs, Leslie and Hubert were already undoing our gear. Later, some of the bikers helped us put our gear in a large truck, and gave us a ride back to the Day’s where we called Hubert’s father to

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come pick us up. On our way back to Val-d’Or we talked about the experience we had had in Rouyn. Something was telling me that this wasn’t the last we’d see of Rouyn.