2019 On The Road Again #5

I can't remember how many times I have gotten up early and been on the road well before 6:30 or 7:00. I get an early start under the general theory of "the early bird gets the worm". However, the truth of the matter is that I very seldom get a ride early in the morning. I get just enough early morning rides to almost prove my theory of worm catching but at the end of the day I am not too sure when I start makes a huge difference in terms of when I arrive.

My first ride of the trip was after I had stood on the side of the road for three hours. I didn't really mind. It was a nice day and I have always enjoyed that almost Zen-like feeling of standing there, doing nothing. The car was driven by a middle age woman with her mother as the passenger. There was lots of room for me in the back seat. According to my driver, she always picked up hitchhikers. I think her mother was less excited by the prospect. They were off to Portage where the mom was going to visit a friend and then my driver was going to Brandon to drop something off at her stepmother's house. As a couple, they were chatty and very pleasant. It was good to see mother and daughter together.

After we dropped the mother at her friend's I moved to the front seat. We had some things in common - our mothers drove us crazy, we both had written a book (hers was about the hitchhikers she had picked up) and we had children. Once again, I was amazed at how easily my driver discussed her personal concerns over her mother, the difficulties of raising children after the "jerk of a husband" (her words, not mine- actually hers were much stronger) left them and how to survive the feelings of abandonment as her children got on with their lives. My driver was a bright, energetic woman who had invested a lot of herself into raising her four boys. She was having a hard time not seeing some of their decisions as a personal attack against her. I suspect that she did not have a lot of friends who could help her see things from a slightly different perspective. I am sorry that we got stuck on this topic. She had made some interesting road trips with her kids and I would have loved to spend more time hearing about them and about her trip to Hawaii to visit one of her sons. I wish that we had had time to talk about the process of writing etc. While I am glad that she felt comfortable talking to me, I wondered if she told all of her hitchhikers how she felt.

For the first time in any of my trips, I made a point of asking to be driven to the west end of Brandon. For some reason, my right heel was very sore and it was uncomfortable to walk on. For the rest of my trip, I made it a point to ask to get driven that extra kilometre or so to the end of town.