With this in mind I decided to bring my newly renovated bmx bike out west to accompany me as I drove around the province for a couple weeks. I’d ride skateparks and eat hamburgers like I was 19 years old again. The only difference is that I’d have to do the odd interview during the day and a reading roughly every other night. All other time would be capital “F” free.
Well, there wasn’t too much freedom on this tour. I ended up doing more media stuff than was originally intended (which is good, yes). I also didn’t anticipate these interviews and readings taking so much energy. I spent a lot of my downtime laying low and recharging. In all I ended up doing a lot more resting and/or worrying than I did biking, and the worrying was tinged with frustration at the fact that I wasn’t out being fun 19 year old Aaron even though I had (on paper) the exact conditions needed for a reunion tour with my old self.
The tour started in Terrace. I showed up at 6:15 for a reading at 7:00 and almost immediately after I got there people who had arrived early stopped by to say hello. I was overwhelmed and between conversations would make wide eyes at Sue indicating it was all too crazy. But the glances stopped. I got too busy and I realized that this was how it was going to be — people were here, interested in my work and I should give them the attention they deserve. I’d imagine it would be a bit like your wedding day in that on some level it’s for you, but in reality it’s about the guests who show up.
The reading went reasonably well for a first reading. The turnout of thirty or forty people seemed good and I sold lots of books.
As the place cleared out after the reading, an old acquaintance stopped to shake my hand. With the potent concoction of relief and adrenalin flowing through body, I pulled him in for a hug that I’m sure he wasn’t expecting. “A hug too far,” is how I’ve since referred to it. I think this is something like Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch, or Sally Field’s oscar speech in the 1980s “you like me!” It was a minor miscue, and a reminder to chill out. It only happened once more.
There were lots of people at my next reading in Smithers as well. Because there were many people in the room I’d written about, I was more nervous than I was in Terrace and it took me a while to find a passage that had no chance of embarrassing anyone but myself. I finished the reading and asked if there were any questions, there were lots in Terrace and I just banked on the same thing happening again. Well, this time there were no questions and I stood there in awkward silence at the front of the room for about seven or eight hours before somebody threw me a lifeline and asked me to talk a bit about how the book came about. Good to have a backup thing to talk about to fill a bit of time in case nobody asks questions.
After Smithers things got tougher. There was no home crowd, scheduling confusion meant people in Prince George showed up for a reading at six which was actually at seven. Sue left, tough because everything worked better when she was around, but everything also revolved around me, which isn’t the easiest way to be together.
I got out for a bike ride in Quesnel, the skatepark was mostly wet and it wasn’t very fun.
Most days there was an interview to do as well. I was often driving on interview days and I would time them so I could pull over in a place with cell service and nervously wait for the call from the radio program. The producer always calls first and they always assure you that the host of the show is great, they’re just great. Imagine if once in a while they told their interviewees that the host was a jerk and treated their guests like crap … could make for more interesting interviews.
After five days and three readings in the interior, plus a hellish night drive through the Fraser Canyon in the kind of rainstorm that causes landslides, I made it to the Lower Mainland. My destination was Victoria but before getting there I stopped briefly in Vancouver and met with the publicist in charge of my book.
Throughout the tour I’d been curious about what’s in it for the publisher when they send an author out on tour. When you add up how many books are actually sold at these readings, it doesn’t nearly cover the cost of even the lowest budget book tour. I was told one of the things a tour provides is exposure in local media. If I didn’t go around to these places, then local papers, which do a lot to drive book sales in the small towns where my book is likely to do well, wouldn’t be interested in granting an interview. If the author is coming through town, then you’re more likely to get some coverage. I don’t have stats on how much this helps sales, but when you think about it in those terms, it makes more sense.
Lots of people came out to the event in Victoria — retirees from the north who had come to live on the island, a close friend from elementary school who moved when I was thirteen, friends I went to school with in Newfoundland who had made their way out west. Everyone wants to live in the mediterranean of Canada.
I had some down time after the Victoria reading, but it was raining hard so there was no opportunity to go for a bike ride.
My second to last stop was in Kimberley but on the way there I got stuck behind a nasty truck accident in the Rogers Pass. The delay meant I couldn’t make my destination that night. I ended up staying at the Holiday Inn in Golden. The last time I was in Golden I was twenty years old and shared a hotel room with my cousin and a friend above the strip bar, which was exceptionally crowded as it was “Fresh Meat Monday.” I felt guilty about staying at the luxurious Holiday Inn and I phoned my cousin, who was there during my last stay in Golden, to express my regrets over not being interested in that kind of lifestyle anymore. He exonerated me by saying he too was over staying in hotels where, “the shower soap breaks into four separate shards that cut your knees.”
I revelled in the glory of a place to myself after several nights of taking advantage of the hospitality of others. The next day I drove down the valley to Kimberley. This bit of the tour was supposed to be a relaxing few days of visiting with family, but between the delay in getting there, and the need to leave earlier to do an extra reading I’d taken on at the Smithers high school, I was only in Kimberley for 24 hours.
The reading in Kimberley ended up being the worst attended of the tour, somewhere had to take this prize. Besides three family members and the three friends/partners they brought along, there was exactly one person who showed up. Apparently there was some big debate at city council that night about whether or not a controversial industrial project would be allowed to go through.
You can think your way around the disappointment of a low turnout as much as you want, (ie: too blessed to be stressed etc.) but ultimately it’s still going to hurt. On the tour I was often critical of myself after readings, especially if there weren’t many people there. I’d compare them to better ones I’d done before. I tried to remember that I was essentially doing the same thing every night, and any small variance in my delivery wasn’t going to greatly effect how it was perceived. Still, I couldn’t sleep, I was pretty bummed out.
Then, for no particular reason, I grabbed the copy of my book I’d been using and started reading a few pages of it. I hadn’t looked at the book, save for the parts I’d read in public, since I’d sent the final proofs back to the publisher in early August. But, I started reading from it and thought, “this isn’t bad, not amazing, but better than what the turnout tonight suggested.” We tend to be terrible judges of our own work, but if you’re a writer and you find yourself in a bad low, I would suggest reading some of your work. Viewed from the very bottom, it can seem decent.
I went out for a bike ride at the Kimberley skatepark, the next morning. Ten years earlier, almost to the day, I went out for the Saturday morning “grey hair sesh” at this same park with my cousin and his friends. We probably didn’t have a grey hair yet between the group of us, but you don’t have to be old to feel over the hill in the realm of these sports.
On this morning, in 2017, I went by myself and did about half an hour of uninspired laps of the park. After, I went to the airport to pick up a friend who had flown out from Halifax to do the final portion of the tour with me — a 1600 kilometre drive from the southeast to the northwest of the province. My last reading would be in Prince Rupert.
Part way through our day of driving we stopped for a run. A short while after that grey hair sesh in 2007 I got into a fairly regular routine of running a few times a week. Running isn’t usually that fun, but it has its moments. It’s the kind of disciplined fun that only pays off in fleeting moments after a lot of hard work. Sounds a lot like writing.
Halifax friend is a runner as well. We stopped on the Revelstoke side of the Rogers Pass at a short trail — the “Ancient Cedars” loop. We did a few laps of the 500 metre boardwalk. Each time we ran down to the highway at the end of our loop. After the fourth lap my friend jogged out onto the empty highway. Highways always seems so much wider and more vast when you’re not in a vehicle. Then, with the smallest of gestures — he might have only said “yeah?” to which I responded similarly, no more than a syllable — we started running down the highway. We were past the uncomfortable start, the wheezing and the straining, and now we were really moving, I’m sure we didn’t look it, but I felt as nimble and fit as an olympic runner. Trains chugged up the pass on our left, trucks passed on our right, a few gave us a honk, many veered wide of us and we responded with a wave. The setting sun turned the snowy peaks orange and pink, we found another short trail, we took a selfie. After those skateparks and all that nagging frustration that things weren’t how they used to be, I was truly in the moment, enjoying myself, being who I am now rather than trying to be who I was then.