I was only at the intersection outside of Brandon for about an hour or so when a 2004 Chev Impala stopped and the driver offered a ride. The back seat was full of garbage bags so I squeezed into the front seat along with my pack. When I asked the driver where he was going he just said "west" . My response was " that's good - so am I". He later told me that he was careful not to give a destination in case he didn't like me. Then he could have turned off the highway at some point and let me out before he continued on his way. At our first stop, with his permission, I rearranged the bags in the back seat to so that my bag could fit in. The bags in the back seat, and some in the trunk were filled with pop cans that he was going to recycle in Alberta to help pay for his gas.
Daniel ( it took me a few hours to get the story all out and piece it together) was a teacher on stress leave from the Lethbridge School system. He had just separated from his wife in Winnipeg and was heading towards Lethbridge to both tie up some lose ends and to attend his high school reunion. Daniel had had a complicated life with three failed marriages, and a number of kids ( I never did figure out how many children and step children he had).
He had been attending AA meeting for a long time. During talking about some of those things he mentioned that he was a better Christian than most because he knew how to forgive those who had really hurt him. It did sound as if he had been exposed to more trauma than anyone person should have to bear, but I could not help noticing that whenever he spoke about his ex-wives or his parents or his brother, or his former bosses - his language became far more extreme (e.g. lots of swearing) and his voice became significantly louder. Quite frankly he didn't feel as if he had forgiven them. He was far too angry at them.
Most of the time he was soft spoken and we had some interesting discussions about teaching, the purpose of education and life in general. He was well read and had a philosophical sort of mind. Daniel however was not overly optimistic about the young people of today. In spite of my best arguments using the exampes from some of my students, I was not able to convince him that there was reason to hope.
Near Regina it started to rain. And I mean rain. It was as if the heavens had opened up and just dumped buckets and buckets on the landscape. On the ring road that skirts the city of Regina there is an underpass. It was flooded up to the undercarriage of the cars trying to go through. Daniel thankfully decided, as the car was borrowed from a friend, to not go through the flood but rather to find another way around it. We spent almost an hour looking for a way. The traffic was backed up everywhere and many of the drivers were becoming less than patient. Daniel was quite remarkable in that he never became frustrated with cars cutting in front or any of the other actions of impatient drivers. He even found time to roll down his window and flirt with an attractive female driver. He was really a very relaxed kind of guy - except when talking about his family and his former employers.
Daniel's primary claim to fame in my book of drivers was how fast he drove. The road between Brandon and Medicine Hat is flat and straight. There were relatively few cars on the road and certainly there were no RCMP. I think our average speed was about 140 kilometers an hour. It was on occasion much higher than that. It was a good car, he was a good driver and after awhile I stopped looking over at the speedometer. Like all great drivers, he made few stops. He didn't need to stop for food as he had bottles of coke and $30 worth of Mars bars with him!
Because because of my concern over the flooding along the Trans-Canada, we discussed me going all the way to Lethbridge with him. It would have meant going through Crowsnest Pass to get to the west coast. Neither of us were clear as to what the detours were would be like and how far out of our way they would take us. However it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Near the Alberta border we were directed into weigh station and given a map, There were two detours; one for trucks which looked to be a long one and a much shorter one for cars. Again Daniel drove faster than I would have along these secondary roads, but we got the the eastern outskirts of Medicine Hat safely.
I decided to stay on the road I knew rather than going through Lethbridge. I had not always had good luck getting a ride at Medicine Hat heading east or west, but there would be far fewer cars taking the most southern route through the Rockies. Daniel drove me to the west side of town and let me out before turning south to Lethbridge. It was 11:30. Not my fastest time through the prairies but considering the waiting times - I was well pleased.
I am not too sure what, if anything, the Asian man and woman who signed me in thought of me. I suspect at 11:30 at night all they cared about is whether or not my credit card worked. And quite frankly after the last 2 days, that was all I cared about too.
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