I looked around the arrival lounge searching for a familiar face. 

The early morning arrivals were milling around the place and the airport was quiet, it was the first or last flight for a while. 

I made for the exit to see for myself the cold that my girlfriend had warned me of. The change of clothes she was bringing, warmer but not much warmer, wouldn’t be protecting my tropically inclined body until she showed up. 

The automatic doors slid open and I stepped out into my new environment, a blisteringly painful freeze enveloped my being, “Oh no no no no… FUCK THAT!” I grumbled under my breath. 

I made it as far as the smoking area before quickly retreating for the warmth of the log cabin-esque terminal. 

I missed paradise. 

I found a comfortable chair and sat down, my eyes shooting around the room at the tired looking travellers. I thought about the last two days voyaging across the Pacific, one hemisphere to another, I was surprised I was still conscious. 

One of the stranger side effects of long-term travel is testing your body’s ability to deal with sleep deprivation. 

I must have looked nearly dead. I hadn’t slept the night before in Sydney and the two flights and 16 hour layover in Hawaii used up the rest of my energy reserves. I was desperately in need of a soft horizontal surface to lay unconscious for the best part of a day. 

I was done, ready to throw myself on the floor and cuddle my bag to sleep, but then the familiar face showed up. 

I saw her smile first. There was no crying or showy display of romance. Just a hug, a kiss and a year spent in a foreign country together ahead of us. 

It was a lot to process, the new country, the new home and the girlfriend I hadn’t seen in months. 

I went to the bathroom and changed into my cargo shorts and jacket. I hadn’t worn them since I left them behind in Taiwan. 

I looked in the bathroom mirror, feeling as if I’d just changed back into an old life. 

It was time for a break from 

Dirty Adventurer Brad. 

Natalie bought me a coffee and a pack of cigarettes at the airport before we took the SkyTrain and then a bus to our new home in Burnaby, just outside Vancouver. 

I held the hot coffee in my hand to warm the cold blood pumping around my body, it was my anchor for everything new and old now converging on me. 

I knew her, she was my girlfriend, we had lived all that time together in Taiwan and been through a lot together. It had been four months since we saw each other in Singapore though and the renewed relationship would take some getting used. 

I now held the secret of my crazed affair with a crazed woman. 

The end of my time in Taiwan was tense and the bonds between us were showing signs of breaking. 

She was even more beautiful, sweet and hilarious than I remembered her. 

I wanted a new beginning. 

My body was a mess and so was my mind. 

I was floating in this state as we left the bus at the bottom of a high hill. 

A wide street with large houses on either side cut the steep slope down the middle. 

I knew what was waiting at the top. 

Rumble Street! I had heard from Natalie this name for months. Rumble Street! I couldn’t wait to meet Rumble Street! 

Everything looked really Canadian. 

The street signs, traffic lights, the tidy lawns and all around physical representations of a thoughtful, structured society. The elements. The pieces. The bits and bobs. All Canadian. All very Canadian. 

Rumble Street may have looked like just a street to most. A very long street. But just a street, most would think. 

But not me. I knew Rumble hid secrets. What kind of secrets? Well, I had no idea then, as I hauled my broken body along it. I could sense something otherworldly at play though. 

Rumble later revealed itself. 

Rumble was no normal street. 

Rumble was a highway of ghosts. 

More on that later. 

My new home on this spooky Canadian street was a modest mansion that had been transformed into a share house by an old Taiwanese couple who were very distant relatives of Natalie. 

My body was buzzing as I climbed into bed for the sleep I had been longing for since Sydney. 

‘What a ride!’ I thought, as my mind shut down and the world went black. 

The next day I went out to try the place on but unlike my renewed relationship and comfortable clothes we didn’t fit very well. 

After dropping Natalie off at a teaching job I jumped on a random bus and took off for some recon around Vancouver. 

_ 

‘Alright, that’s enough.’ I thought, I stood up from the seat and exited the bus into a dreary looking environment. 

As I moved through the bleakness, a series of strange characters moved with me. 

A couple propped up against a brick wall gave me a glazed over stare. 

A woman pushing an empty baby stroller and stinking of booze went by. 

A disheveled hobo coughed his guts up on a bench behind me. 

A bad feeling bubbled away inside me while walking from street to street. 

It wasn’t a complete horror, luckily I hadn’t found myself in the epicenter of pain and despair – East Hastings Street. The worst, most desperate homeless encampment in Canada. 

But here, wherever I was, there were still some true crazies around. 

“Oh hello!” she said, dashing to catch up to me. 

“Sssiiiiirrrr!” she mumble screamed. 

The zombified woman bounced around me, sometimes on the pavement, sometimes out in the street. 

“PleaSeeeEeEeEe SIRRR!!!” 

She continued to try and get my attention and draw me into a conversation. 

I ignored her and continued walking, looking for a bus stop or SkyTrain station to save me from this unwelcome zombie and grey wasteland. 

I quickened my pace. 

Then came the cackled screech of a demon from the ground floor of hell. 

“AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHH!!!!!!” 

I was now going as fast as my pride would allow, which wasn’t fast enough to escape the blonde demon. 

She let out another ear-breaking scream and I’d had enough of pretending like the zombie wasn’t there. 

I stopped, turned and looked at her in the face. I laughed at her and she stopped her show. She stood still, shocked. 

Her face was one of pure mental illness and drug addiction. 

“Stop following me,” I told her, “I’m busy.” 

She gave a twist of her head and made a sad huff sound before turning her body and shuffling away. 

I found a bus stop and minutes later jumped on a bus, escaping from whatever the fuck was going on. 

Except I didn’t escape because the madness continued aboard. 

At the back of the bus a man was banging his head against the window as everyone else tried their best to ignore the very obvious display of insanity.  

The mental illness of a significant minority of Vancouverites was a quality that both me and Natalie would grow used to. 

Crazy people, a lot of them. On buses, in coffee shops, on the SkyTrain. Crazy people. 

Several weeks into life in Canada I came up with a codeword for us to use to signal the need for an immediate exit from any situation… 

Janada! 

A guy tonguing a train doors window…

“Janada!” 

An old, haggard woman waving her arms and thrashing her legs in a Starbucks… 

“Janada!” 

An old man eating his own jacket on the street… 

“Janada!” 

I didn’t really know what I was expecting from Canada, maybe a colder America with more polite people. It wasn’t that. It was more a large England, the landscape beautiful and wild, the feeling not so much. 

The months went by and the routine fell into place. 

I would stay home writing and working on my things while Natalie would go off to work at her job in a Japanese Ramen restaurant strangely run by Korean-Canadians and teach students Chinese. 

Most days I would take the bus or SkyTrain to meet her. We would do some shopping, eat some food out or get some groceries at the Asian supermarket T&T and make a meal at home and that was the day. 

There was a lot more than that, there were weekly movies and surprisingly enjoyable nights of shopping at the gigantic mall Metropolis at Metrotown, which was just a short walk from our house. 

Long treks around Burnaby. 

Ventures into every bit of Vancouver. 

I was enjoying the time we were spending together, we both were but I just couldn’t shake the black cloud. 

‘I hate Vancouver.’ was my eventual conclusion. 

The problem was that I had an idealised version of Vancouver in my head and my first impressions wouldn’t die. 

In 2013 I switched planes in Vancouver during my journey to Seoul. I remember looking out of the floor to ceiling glass windows and fantasised about coming back and stepping outside into what I had envisioned Vancouver to be… 

Canada’s second city!

A place renowned for her natural surroundings! 

A Pacific playground! 

An idyllic well planned garden with row after row of skyscrapers! 

A cold paradise of bears and giant moose! 

A true alternative global powerhouse! 

The expectations were turning out to be just fantasies. Those first few months I was in a constant state of gloom. 

Vancouver was a pretty girl with no soul. 

I just wasn’t getting it, Vancouver’s lights, what? What was so special about them? 

I was going to write the lyrics from the song Life is a Highway here but copyright and all that so instead I’ll still write the lyrics to Life is a Highway here but just spell them incredibly wrong. 

“Frob vozambique to hose Jemphis rights

Lhe Khober Lass to Bancouver’s hights

Lock he pown met sack dup bagain

You’re im ly klood I’m bot e ponely ran” 

Alright back to the book. 

Vancouver was what these beautiful mountains, great big ocean and incredible land almost sacred in her natural beauty got. 

It was fucking depressing me.