On the Road Again (heading east) #7

I like Medicine Hat - I don't like walking through it but I like the corner I stand at on the east side of that city. Great shoulders, good visibility and enough stuff happening that it remains interesting. But I was tired and I felt dirty. It would have been nice to stop except as I have found out other times, there is no where to stop. The east side of Medicine Hat is an expensive place to sleep.

I fairly quickly got a short drive down the road a piece - which probably was not the best decision in terms of being in a good spot but I was on such a roll in terms of getting great rides, I didn't want to lose the rhythm. I didn't write down where I ended up but I think it was somewhere near Dunmore Alberta. My notes say it was hot and the air still smell of smoke.

I wasn't there very long when I got a ride. It was perhaps the dumbest ride of the year and perhaps even of my whole hitchhiking career. Allen (yes I had two drivers named Josh and 2 named Allen this year) was drunk. In my defence I didn't know that when I got in, but within 10 minutes there was no doubt. He was drinking vodka mixed with I think coffee and that certainly masked the smell. He was a bit incoherent. I thought at first that he just had trouble speaking, or that perhaps English was not his first language ( yes I know I am not very bright).

He was bragging about his car - which was a General Motors vehicle called a Cobalt. What made it unique however was that it was a made in the USA car and therefore had a different trim package and a speedometer that read miles not kilometers. I am use to drivers bragging about their cars and have learnt that I do not need to respond to their comments except to agree with them, so I suppose that I could say that I was not really listening to him. I was probably thinking about the fact that he was off to Winnipeg and seemed willing to take me with him.

When I realized that he was drunk, I convinced him to stop the car and let me drive which he did surprisingly easily once he accepted the fact that I was not going drive any further. So for the next 2-3 hours I had to put up with him criticizing my driving and his silly rants about the world. But he did stop drinking. We stopped in Swift Current and he wanted to drive. I said fine, but I was not prepared to go with him so he relinquished the keys and let me drive for another few hours. At some point near dusk he once again said that he wanted to drive.  I was tired and would have had to stop soon. I knew he had not been drinking for a number of hours so I deemed it safe.

Our conversations were disjointed. I don't know why but it frequently feels as if some of my shorter drives leave so much not talked about while some of the long cross country rides are the ones that lack substance. So many times on this trip and on other trips I have wished that I could have travelled further with specific drivers, and I have had my share of drivers with whom I was bored after the first hour. Part of this feeling of dissatisfaction derives in part (I think) from the driver not being interested in me or any of my comments. I don't care what we talk about, but I do like to be part of the conversation.

Allen had been in Calgary visiting a daughter that he had not seen for 16 or so years. I have to admire his courage for making the attempt to reconnect with her. I told him that. I didn't tell him that I could not understand how one could lose contact in the first place. Allen,of course, blamed the girl's mother, and if half of the stories were at least partially true, there may have been some justification for his belief. I am always careful not argue about people's interpretations of their past lives. I barely understand my own, I am certainly not going to try to understand anyone elses. But if I needed to believe his stories about his former wife, then I needed also to believe all of his stories about his girlfriends. It is not surprising that she left him. He had another daughter in Winnipeg. I am not sure if she was his biological daughter or just the daughter of his girl friend. They talked on the phone a few times and there appeared to be genuine affection on his part.

 I don't think we stayed on one topic for more than 10 minutes at a time although we frequently re-visited each story. The conversation got a bit better after he napped for a few hours but it was never stimulating. He had had a difficult week in Calgary and I think he was genuinely grieving leaving his daughter. I think he needed the company and I was available. It strikes me that while it would appear that picking up a hitchhiker may appear to be a selfless act. That people pick up someone on the side of the road to help. This is only partially true. I think some, if not most pick people up for selfish reasons. I am not complaining either way.

We got to Winnipeg about 1:30 in the morning. he let me off and I went behind the Flying J gas station, found a piece of flat ground, tucked my sleeping bag into my tiny tent and drifted off to sleep. My last sights and sounds were the trucks humming in the distance as their drivers slept and the bright metal halide lamps floating like spaceships above the parking lot.