Having arrived in a city full of nubile French Canadian women all too happy to help some young American’s celebrate their bachelor party I chose to stick with Falkoff, Zoe, and Zoe’s parents to go to dinner in the burbs with Zoe’s parents friends. We went out together for Chinese food at a local suburban Chinese restaurant where I learned and then promptly forgot the word in Chinese for moose neck. I ate next to Henry, who had once applied for a job at ChannelWave with Ron years before. He had been studying in Colorado at a new age location and was convinced that brain energy could control the future of the earth. It might have been a language barrier but my understanding of his theory for the future of the world relating to this brain energy was that we can think the world to self-destruct in a psycho-kinetic fashion. I decided to translate it to mean that our brains are actually one of the more destructive forces when we chose to use them to do silly things like destroying non-renewable resources and building weapons that could kill people in numbers counted in the same order of people served at McDonalds or Carl Sagan descriptions of the stars in the universe. Henry was moving to the a remote location near a lake where he was going to repair machines.

Dinner was nice although the language of choice for immigrants from Taiwan switches between French and Mandarin. So I was dreaming of a future where I could look at someone and be able to see subtitles written in my visual frame under them as they spoke. After the fine Chinese meal we retired to the family’s home. At the home we tasted the wine that they had home brewed from the grapes in their backyard. Henry mentioned that the wine tasted like a $100 bottle of wine that he had once had. I concurred that there was true value to the home brew wine but that it tasted more to me like a $90 bottle than a $100 bottle. The family also had a very large white cat. I did enjoy staying at their home and taking photos with the family.

Falkoff dropped me off at our hotel room to sleep off the residue of the wine and the long ride from Boston. The idea was that in the morning we would begin a secret adventure that hadn’t been revealed to me as a bachelor after we grew our party from two to three with the arrival of Mr. Robert Frigault.

In the morning I watched Montreal television. My favorite show that I was watching while waiting for Falkoff to arrive was Inside the Actor’s Studio with the woman who starred in Chocolat and Blue. The best part of the show in Montreal was that the subtitles came ahead of the English speaking voices so I could test out my French on the sub-titles and then hear the English to see whether I was right or not. This seems to be a very helpful way to learn a foreign language although I also spent some time fantasizing, given that I have a child on the way, that I could alleviate the boredom I might find in watching children’s television programs like Sesame Street if I watched a French version of them and I would probably be learning much of the vocabulary even slower than my infant.

So once Robert appeared and Falkoff and I had swam in the pool on the roof we headed out on our expedition to the unknown physical activity. I was told to bring shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt and that wearing contacts was better than wearing glasses. Zoe had planned the event and was coming along and Asha had wanted to come but she had suffered a massive neck injury during a snowboard accident in the Alps preventing her from doing the mysterious activity. So we drove a hell of a long time into the suburban part of Montreal again and at a few points I felt like I might just be a victim of a mob hit waiting to be brought to a back alley to be shot. I also suspected either paintball or rock climbing but shorts seemed like it eliminated paint ball. The car pulled into the Rock Gym parking lot and we then proceeded to wander about until we had found the part of the facility responsible for trapeze school lessons.

Trapeze school is a very fun activity and doesn’t hurt until the following day when you are hung over and sore as hell from a tour of the local strip clubs and cheap bars of Montreal. The teachers at the school consist of a woman who is far stronger than I will ever be at the top where you jump helplessly over the net and a chubby man who controls your ropes at the bottom. The goal on the trapeze is to swing back and forth, then tuck your feet under the bar, swing upside down with your arms stretched to the ground, reach back to get the bar, then untuck your feet, then swing forwards backwards forwards into a front flip that lands you nicely into the net. It sounds quite easy and looks easy when the beer belly instructor shows you how to do it using a Barbie doll attached to a fake trapeze bar. I did this almost flawlessly on the first try and then could never get through the step of tucking my feet under the bar but it was fun to fly off the trapeze and I enjoyed the experience over all.

At lunch we went back into the city near Vieux Montreal where we went seeking the best brownie in Montreal at a bakery that is one of Zoe’s favorites. Although we got plenty of food for takeout the brownie we ordered never appeared. We walked the food out to the esplanade area near the river and the Cirque de Soleil tents and lay on the grass drinking our beers out of paper bags and talking about which super power each of us wanted to have if we could have any. I chose the ability to eat anything as my superpower. I could always be hungry, eat all the time, never get fat, and in difficult situations I could gnaw on the trunks of trees until they fell on villains. Robert wanted to be embarrassed man. He would turn red and make villains feel uncomfortable. Zoe wanted to be invisible. Falkoff just wanted to fly. We later grabbed both Asha and Kilimnik and asked them their preferred super powers and Asha wanted to be rich girl – where her super strength would be to have lots of money. Kilimnik, like Falkoff just wanted to be able to fly.

What I have noticed about people’s choice of superpowers is that they tend to show a lot about our insecurities. I think that I feel like I eat to much and am getting fat, Robert feels like his shyness inhibits him, Zoe worries that she blends into the background of life, Asha worries that money controls her destiny. I don’t know why Falkoff and Kilimnik both wanted to fly. Maybe they always feel a little trapped.

We had a giant bottle of “Le Fin Du Monde”, a Montreal based beer with us at our little picnic that none of us drank. It seemed like a good way to end bachelorhood but it is still full in the back of my car. On the way back to our car we were ambushed by a large parade full of protesters flanked on either end by police caravans yelling in French to allow them to continue to smoke pot. Someone from the parade must have stolen my brownie! The funny thing about a pot smoking parade is that pot smokers aren’t that motivated of a bunch and also tend to straggle so most of the people who should have appeared at the parade probably were still home thinking about whether to go or just smoke another bowl while the other half kept lagging behind the police car in the rear and then wandering off into some assorted wooded areas like trees planted in metal rings by the sidewalk to play their guitars and drums. One woman was wearing a pot adorned thong that hung out of her pants.

The French restaurants in Montreal often have BYOB policies so we set out to purchase two nice bottles of wine to drink with dinner. The price for the wine came out to $55.55. This wouldn’t be so much of note had we not been staying in room 505. This wouldn’t have been much of note had it not been 05/05/05 two days earlier. The man who sold us the three bottles of wine suggested that I play the lottery and select a lot of 5s. I withheld the urge. I decided to check on the Montreal lottery just now for Sunday. The winning number was: 06 26 28 30 33 34 49. No 5s at all!

At dinner we enjoyed some fine cuisine including an appetizer of foie gras. Since we figured that five people wouldn’t be able to eat more than four dishes we only ordered four dishes. The waitress arrived first with my empty plate and giggled at me as she said “bon appetit” and then proceeded to serve the other four people plates. The French food is actually prepared quite beautifully but once it reached my a la carte plate combining the four dishes it was significantly aesthetically challenged.

After dinner we took a quick hop over to have a beer in a microbrewery and to wait for the arrival of the devil, Mr. David Kilimnik. We met Dave back at the hotel and he told us that Hillary had given him the parting words: “Have fun disrespecting women”. Kilimnik was reminded that he had a lot of catching-up to do. So DK helped us to chug the last bottle of wine to catch-up. I reminded DK of when Dave Fiske had helped me to catch-up at Scorzelli’s bachelor party in Fargo and had given me a drink so potent that after I walked in the door to the hotel room, said hi, and chugged what appeared to be a standard margarita, I immediately dropped to the floor like I had been hit by a tranquilizer dart and stared at the ceiling for a few hours.