And We Named Her Cierra

Sorry for the tardiness folks! This one will be a monster post, we will not be angry if nobody reads it.

Tue 26th

We take the subway to the Lake, where we meet up with Haley and have Subways. Lake Michigan is one huge ass lake, and we got some pictures to prove it. This one is our next album's cover, we'll name it Convergence.


This will be the back cover of the album:


Next we must hurry up to Kuma's, which is a rock-ish burger joint, but happily Erica agrees to drive us there so she fetches us from the lake and we get to Kuma's in time. There we meet Justin, Jason, Casey, some others, and Katey and Erin who are couch surfers from Dallas. We have Swine Flu, and taste parts of Minotaurus. Insane burgers.

Erica & Haley & Erin

Some of us migrate to Erica's to try to find a convertible for us, which we find and set up a meeting with the owner for wednesday, and then we watch some stand-up and people just start nodding off.

Wed 27th

Our first day of laundry, and we try a mexican bakery for breakfast.

We go to see Dan, the proud owner of Chrysler Sebring JXI '96. Dan is this cool guy living in the nice area of Evanston in north Chicago, he plays guitar in a band called Kill Hannah and has visited Finland, played with Rasmus and HIM. Like, what's the probability of that? Well. Test driving the car a bit, seems alright. Leans a bit to the right, and Sakari isn't used to the automatic, but all in all it seems like a cool car. We buy it. We name her Cierra, after Haley's friend. We pay 1800 for it. This is one picture of her, there's more further down.

Cierra. Juval won the Rock-Paper-Scissors for the driver's seat :) This is from Martin's parents' place, more of that later.

And then to DMV, where we register the vehicle (wiihaikl). They'll be sending our title (which is the paper of ownership basically) to Parker's (picture far below) place in couple of weeks, from where he'll FedEx it to us. Registration is about 150 bucks, plates instantly over the counter, including taxes.. You read right, we pay 25 bucks in taxes :D The car is over 10 years old, they don't even want to hear the mileage - straight up 25 bucks. Cheapo.

We drive to E&T Discount Muffler to get the car checked up. Great carshop by the way, recommending! :D Anyhoo, the final verdict is that the front brakes, rot tires (or somethings that sound a bit like that) and alternator belt have to be changed. 540 bucks total. The guys working at the Muffler are great, we just hang around and talk with them. There was one who looks a bit like a gang member (his advice: "Don't go to places where you see people like me."), and the guy fixing our car is really a cop but don't get paid as such so works as a mechanic, one polish dude is helping with our car as well, and all this is overseen by a middle-eastern guy. They have one Jaguar there at the same time with us and the owner of the Jaguar (Romanian owner) just picks and drives his car off without paying. Cursing ensues.

While the car was being fixed we walk to the nearest car insurance place and take the basic liability insurance to our car - in effect till the beginning of August, 120 bucks.

Total cost for a safe-to-drive used convertible: 2610 bucks.

How do we celebrate? Harold and Kumar go to White Castle! :D We buy a Tomtom GPS GO 930 (or something) with Europe's maps on the way from Best Buy, as well as new wipers from Murray's. Fucking potholes. Sakari gets to drive the car first by the way, go Rock-Paper-Scissors.

10 burgers :D quite an american straw-wrapper, both ends say "this end up"..

Long day ends peacefully, Parker makes some Tofu-Thai for us and Haley, which was great, and then we go and have a beer at this mildly famous jazz club Green Mill.


Sound clip of Haley playing her ukulele, with a picture of her :)

Thu 28th

Cierra has trouble turning her front tires, so we go back to E&T's. Same guys fix that up, and then start checking what's wrong with our malfunctioning AC, while we chat about European politics with the owner of the place. We talk about the 1.2mil polish people there is in Chicago, the corporation supported think tanks behind president's decisions, the first and the second world war, the Greece's right to veto Turks joining the EU, etc. At the end AC is not working though, but we figure we'll be alright, it is convertible after all. "How much do we owe you?", we ask after two guys worked on our car for 1.5hrs, and boss's like "Nah, it's okay." Okay. Err, thanks. These people are nice.

We drop our now nicely working car at Parker's, and head to downtown for some Sushi. Erica and Haley join us, and we have too many rolls of sushi and especially too many oz's of hot sake. Buck a bottle is not good.. After one more stop at an italian wine bar, and at Hershey's chocolate shop where we get some stupid hats, Parker joins us and we head to Hancock tower for the view of Chicago and couple of long island ice teas. Feels more like Hancocktail tower. Amazing joke.

Parker, our first couch surfing host, and an all around great guy, and below you can see the hats and how stylish they made us.

Chicago from Hancock tower

Anyhoo, afterwards we take a horse carriage ride around downtown, of which we have these coherent pictures (below), and then most of us have to leave home, except for Sakari and Juval, who head to the Cubs stadium and its bars.

Juval is a master aimer with the camera

This guy is Pavel

Bartenders can drink here, so naturally that needs empirical testing, and as night progresses we meet some new people, whose names now we have trouble remembering. Like this guy here. Although I'm sure he was a cool dude.



Fri 29th

Friday morning we don't dare drive straight away, so we go to see Justin at his work place within the Loop. Haley comes over to say hi while we are eating hot dogs for free at Justin's, and after he packs our backpack and one plastic bag full of juice bottles (which we are still drinking 3 days later), we decide to start driving towards Toronto.

Justin and his work place approximately 300 thousand floors up

Leaving Chicago (the black one straight up is Hancock tower)

850 km to go, the roads are shit, car eats gasoline like it was ice cream, or something, and both of us are tired. Thank god for the FM transmitter in the GPS so we get decent music, and more thank god for the cruise control in the car. Alternated driving and napping later we arrive at the border, where the customs officer is a bit bewildered by our Cierra. Can't believe we bought a car for a trip. He lets us pass nicely though. Sakari is driving and he asks from Juval if they use miles in Canada, to which Juval says "yes". That is not true. We notice it at the same time we pass all the other cars at an area with a speed limit of 70. Luckily no police, or sheriffs, or mountain rangers in the vicinity. Well, only 50 km/h over the limit.

Juval naps
Driving

We hit Martin's building in the smack middle of downtown Toronto at 3 o'clock, and he comes out to let our car to the underground garage.

Sat 30th

We slowly wake up from Martin's apt by the city hall in Toronto, and the view is quite nice, to say the least. Next couple of hours are spent walking the clean and interesting streets of Toronto - Yonge street which is North America's longest, Queen st with its shops, the green and old University area, some spectacular museums, Kensington's artist market, Distillery area's breweries, where we also end up eating and drinking.

View from Martin's apt above, and below one of Toronto's busier intersections

Here is where I got on our drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls, it is now a day and a bar night later in Buffalo. I deeply apologize for the style change in writing, the text will now be more prose-ish because of the hungover restlessness. Plus there is an interesting person sitting on the same table, and I haven't written anything but this disclaimer yet. Juval is getting angry .)

Story continues.. Half a day later we end up in Madison, this pub that mainly caters for fraternities and sororities. Couple of Steam Whistles and Mooseheads later, and some new people and imaginary darts throwing, Martin gets to his head to change place, and we head downtown to see Martin's cousin Darius, one other guy Rob, and Olga and Yvonne. What follows is Martin and Yvonne speaking nasty things of us in polish, while we stand helpless. Or sit. Toronto is nice.

Juval & Olga & Yvonne & Martin

We also got some fortune cookies from a chinese place. Sakari's says: "You are both sociable and charming." while Juval's says: "You will take a chance in the near future." Bit funny.

Sun 31st

Toronto Blue Jays vs. Boston Red Sox baseball match is interesting, for, like, 5 innings. There is clearly a difference between Finnish baseball and American, in Finland it is a team sport, but here it is more of a heroic kind, a battle between the pitcher and the designated hitter. For christ's sake, the hitters only hit one ball out of three or four, so there's not much going on the field. People stand there while the viewers consume beer and burgers. But there are a lot of those people so when something happens, the noise is awesome. And the show - every hitter has his own music that plays for a while between them, and it is loud.


Later we help Martin's parents move things around their mansion 30 minutes north from Toronto. It only takes like 15 minutes, but for reward we get to float on their outdoor pool and jacuzzi-like warm pool, and then we go for teppanyaki with the whole family. Teppanyaki is japanese sushi, but with a show. The chef prepares the food in front of your eyes on this huge hot plate, with a meter high flames, flying eggs chopped mid-air and bonfires made of onions. Iiinsanely cool.

Pool, and not at all faked jump into it

On our way to Martin's parents we go to a car wash, and notice that our Cierra leaks like hell :D All got wet, laughs were had. Well, mostly from the edges, the roof fabric itself is sound. Maybe we'll find glue.

We also have the Cierra's photoshoot at Martin's parents' place :)

Beauty

Later at night we find foosball table, and then another bar called Dakota Tavern, where a local band "The Beauties" (4 or 5 butt ugly guys) play. Really, really loudly. It is an experience, and the bouncer warns us only once too, so it is a success in that way as well.

Mon 1st

And here we are. Writing this on the way to Niagara Falls, 77.3 km to go, or 0:47 hrs. Juval is driving and cursing the road ("Vittu mikä tie saatana", he just said), while Cierra silently and stoically carries us along. We just had Harvey's burgers for breakfast with Martin, before leaving him in Toronto and letting the poor guy get to work, instead of monkeying around with us. Tonight's destination: Buffalo.

Originally that last paragraph was supposed to be the last in the blog post, but then we spent a day in Buffalo before we found internet with which we can update the blog, so, here goes another day.

Did you people know, that Buffalo was the first city with electricity? True, two motorcycle guys tell us at Café Aroma.

Anyhoo, Niagara Falls were great.

Canadian horseshoe fall

We have to recommend that if you visit the place, be sure to visit on the Canada's side. And do not, I repeat, do not go to see the 4D movie "Niagara's Fury", there was nothing 4D about it. Maid of the Mist boat trip however was worth it. See?

We arrive in Sondra's (Lasse's wife's sister) place at 5 pm, and go eating in downtown. Buffalo wings of course, which are awesome, and then some darts and foosball, and the place is a brewery so we taste Train Wreck and Lake Effect as well. And My Bock. They are all swell. Sondra's roommate Joe joins us later, and we get to visit some nice pubs, play some photo shoot (find differences-game) and there is this bartender who must have been a history nut, because as Sakari says "Stolichnaya", the bartender says "That probably is the only Russian thing you Finnish people like."

Juval plays with Eddie, the singer from Pearl Jam

Pub called Hardware, Sakari is explaining (?) something to Joe and Sondra

Tue 2nd

After a slow start writing blog at a Café Aroma in the "epicentre of culture in Buffalo", we get some ground bison from Wegman's (huge grocery store) and make some bison burgers, which are great. Thanks to chefs, Joe and Juval!

George Foreman grill! It says "Lean Mean Grilling Machine" on top.

Then we go to see stand-up.. 3 bucks in, 15 comedians, of which 3 are okay-ish. So, err, a good deal I'd say. Afterwards we sample Martinis at Sample and meet and hear about some of the more peculiar characters in Buffalo nightlife, like the bubble-man (who blows soap bubbles across this one intersection every hour) and the keymaker and the shoelicker, whom we actually meet. Sakari's right shoe is now cleaner. Quite gross.

Darts at Mulligan's Brick Bar

And see, it takes a lot of planning to publish a blog post:

Alrighty! That's it for now, we'll start heading somewhere else, either Montreal, Boston or NY. So. Hi to all, see you in the future.