US-Canada Relations, Cont'd

More comics about a long-ago cross-border romance

Hello! Time for some more comics from my old sketchbook journal series,
”The Drawing Book.” In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten away from these old comics (because I wanted to share some other stuff, like my new comic about Calgary’s Glenmore Landing, written for The Sprawl!) But now, back to my adventures as a flight attendant/wannabe artist around the turn of the millenium, all documented in the never-before-seen pages of my old sketchbooks…

Last time we looked, the drawing book told how I met an American guy, and the start of the ensuing romance. You can read about that here. The story picks up again now…

In the spring of 2000, I wasn’t spending much time at home (even though I had a really nice apartment, which I had moved into a couple of years before). In between flights to Frankfurt, I kept heading down to California to visit my new boyfriend. Eventually, we decided that we might as well travel somewhere together. But where?

Readers of The Drawing Book might have noticed that I was a fan of the movie “A Room with a View.” (Still am!) I wrote about that here. That movie was the inspiration for the drawing of the two lovebirds at the bottom of the page… and it was part of the inspiration for the idea of taking a trip to Italy, too.

But that still lay ahead. For now, I kept travelling between Calgary and Santa Cruz. On one trip down there, I made a sketch of a new house…

I had a lot of free time during those visits. One day I found a book about fonts, and copied a few, just for something to do… (I have no idea what any of this says - hope it’s nothing bad!)

I sketched my boyfriend and his roommate…

Here’s one last page that starts with some random interactions… working on the airplane, and then back in Calgary…

My boyfriend’s roommate seemed like a nice guy. Once, I took a photo of him and painted a picture of it. Now it’s hanging at my aunt’s house in BC! It’s funny where stories lead.

It’s a bit weird to be remembering a time when cross-border travel between Canada and the US was something I could do without a second thought and with a couple of hours’ notice… these days, I’m staying on this side of the border. Thanks for joining me in the drawing book memories, whichever side of the border you’re on, whoever you are, wherever you are!