The Spinto Band's Jon Eaton checks in from Toronto en route home to the U.S.

We are gathered in Toronto on the first snow day of the season now.  Again, Spiral Beach and Frightened Rabbit have kindly joined us, the only difference is tonite they are all wrapped in scarves... As are we. Well for the most part. I think I packed a little light for this weather.

Enough about weather. We are young, alive, and refuse to kick Father Winter while he's down. He needs an October snow day. He needs people to talk about something besides melting ice caps and he needs us to see more signs like this one. 

On our last tour I mailed my girlfriend a sugar cube. It was one of the individually wrapped ones and I managed to squeeze her name and address onto one side of it so it looked as though I was holding a miniature package. The postage stamp dwarved the cube, and I had to wrap that around two sides. The postmaster in Newcastle refused to take it at the desk and told me I was wasting money, but I still wanted to see if it would work. I put it in the mailbox outside the office, and about 3 weeks later, it crossed the Atlantic and found its way to her mailbox.  Bravo postal service... bravo.

The second thing I wanted to tell you folk about was the band we just finished playing shows with--the Sw!ms. They are the best thing to come out of Scranton since political backgrounds. We were pretty excited when they said they could do these 3 shows with us. Mainly so we could hear frontman Brian Langan tell stories about geeking out in grade school and imitating the Max. Ex. announcer. Hearing them play some music was a bonus. If you live on the east coast, try and catch them live as Langan and the rest of the Sw!ms really put forth the extra effort to make a show fun and, more important, memorable.

We are now in the van about 45 minutes from the Canadian/US border hoping we can make it to Buffalo before seeing any bread trucks. The Maple Leaf leg of the tour is in the books. We were able to do a little record shopping and hit up a nice local hot spot for dinner today which always helps stamp the city into my memory banks a little better.  I usually remember a city for it's record shops and restaraunts...  Another long drive is upon us now though.  We just paid for a quarter-tank of gasoline with our leftover Canadian pocket change which was about to become useless. Oop... need to dig up the passport, I see signs for the border.

Talk soon,

The Spinto Bando