On the Road 2011 blog #8

I have writer's block.... or at least if I was a writer I would be blocked..... not too sure why. I know the next part of the story - after all I was there. I can see the car and the driver clearly. Perhaps it is just that I think that it should have been a phenomenal ride or that something exciting occurred or that there was a moment of absolute truth in our conversation.. It was after all my first ride of the season and surely something exciting should have happened. But nothing exciting happened. We didn't solve the problems f the world, we barely had time to discuss them.

What was amazing was that I got a ride.... I swear, I wasn't really trying to attract the attention of a driver...I was just practicing for that spot down the road where I would drop my pack and stick out my thumb for real. But he did stop and I ran. I don't think that I ever have got a ride so easy....never with the pack still strapped tightly to my back. It is a lot easier to run with the pack still attached to one's body as opposed to hanging off of one shoulder. Another first was that I got to the car hardly out of breath. My cardiologist would have been pleased, I think.

Jack was off to somewhere along the Yellowhead Highway just south of Saskatoon. (does any other country have such romantic names? "Along the Yellowhead Highway - just south of Saskatoon"....does it get any better than that?)  I was tempted to go with him just so I could say that I had done it. The turn off  to that northern route is only  few minutes the other side of Portage so it we did not have much time to talk once we got the basics out of the way...such as who I was and where I was going, and who he was and where he was going.

Jack was a young guy and had not done a lot of hitchhiking but he said that he always picked up hitchers. No particular reason - he just did it. Folks like Jack give me a lot of hope for the future. Just basically nice people doing what makes them feel good. He worked in Winnipeg but his parents home was north of there. He was going home to see his family. I don't know what he worked at, we did not get that far in the conversation. But I sure what ever he does, he will do it well. He struck me as that kind of guy. Jack like so many of my drivers in the past and I hope in the future are people who I would have liked to spend more time with. Not because they are brilliant or wonderfully creative or have done amazing things but because they have interesting things to say, because they have thought about their lives and the world around them. So as is almost always true the ride was too short. Not just because we only travelled  relativity few miles together but because we had just started that slow dance of getting to know each other. I suppose it is a good thing that I leave many of my drivers with a sense of regret that is shared by both us.

I guess I really didn't have writer's block after all.