To be honest even though this trip started in NYC with the launch of the Seven Deadly Sins collection at Saks 5th avenue;,the actual road trip has hardly been sinful at all, apart from a little gluttony maybe. It really has lived up to the subtitle of “no journey for young men”.

With a collective age for the three of us at 165 it’s not surprising that the trip has involved more naps in the back than bad behaviour in the bar. We thought about it in Montreal but Richard was asleep on his feet so we turned in by 1am. I have to be careful this could wreck the reputation of hell raising that has taken me so long to build.

The journey this time was always going to be a struggle when it came to booze, birds and bad behaviour due to the route we were taking with of course the exception of the start and finish in NYC. The plan was to head to Montreal - Quebec City – Maine and then work back along coast to NYC, over 6 days even bypassing Atlantic City.

We left Manhattan at 10.30 pm on the 10th heading out to upstate New York and Jeff’s beautifully isolated cottage in Galway NY (you’re starting to get the picture). Spent the night at Jeff’s then went for a bloody massive breakfast (the first Gluttony) at Chucks. This part of NY is definitely not in touch with its feminine side which became very apparent when a woman who clocked me browsing the tattoo magazines showed me her latest, told me she lived in a trailer and asked if she could take my picture as she had never seen one like me before. Chucks not only sells Pizza Logs but also has the most comprehensive offering of gun and home defence magazines I have ever seen. It was weird to see so many titles and not one Kardashian sister or Cheryl Cole on the cover of any of them.

After our blow out breakfast we squeezed into the car and hit highway 87 headed to Montreal. It was blue sky and great tunes all the way. Being old school I had packed 50 CD’s complete with cases as well my iPod. If we had a record player I swear I would have bought vinyl. Jeff told me that a car in the 60’s had a 45 player in the dash. He is taking medication at the moment for his liver so this could be nonsense.

All was sweet until we hit a big jam on the way into Montreal and the Thunderbird decided it no longer liked the taste of the coolant. It bubbled like a kettle then threw up a geyser just missing Jeff. It was a scary moment. A very keen French speaking rescue vehicle fought through the traffic toward us to help but Jeff was having none of it, ever resourceful he snatched the remaining three bottles of Corona from the 6 pack and topped the radiator back up. It was a beautiful thing. We went straight over the central reservation and cut out after another 5K of slow moving traffic but made it to the city by the skin of our teeth. The car was 2 times over the legal alcohol limit.

St James hotel in Montreal is top shelf but so was the price. At $700 a night I thought Richard was going to go into cardiac arrest. His exact words were “Susan will kill me”.

I know Susan and he had better work something out.

We had dinner at the famous Au Pied de Cochon restaurant which Gluttony Jeff had booked months ago. I have never seen a baby goat served intact west of Kabul before. It was quite a sight. This is where the cultural divide between French Canada and the USA becomes very apparent. To the Quebecois it’s delicious; to the Americans it would have been road kill. The two couples who had ordered it just stripped it to the bone. What went back to the kitchen afterwards was a baby goat skeleton that even the restaurant dog would have struggled to find a bit of cartilage left.

After dinner we walked the streets in an area which was the night life hub. Even though the people were young and the bars full we could tell that the unlike Toronto, the people of Quebec are earthy types a bit like the folks of Oregon or Seattle. Looking in the clothes stores there is definitely a special sense of style here. It reminded me of my years in Banff Alberta and how shocked my brother was when he came to see me for the first time. He wanted to bring me straight back to London. We settled on instead Red Cross clothing packages from London.

No Sin that night.

Soundtrack of the day; Band of Skulls, Cult, Bowie, Lou Reed, Dillon (4 Richard) Air, Queen, Aerosmith, Bauhaus Cure, Johnny Cash.