Hitchin' a ride

I never pick up hitchhikers so where the hell did I get off, on this splendid autumn morning, suddenly deciding to become one?

No problem. Cause I didn't expect anyone to pick me up. I'd agree with them if they didn't. And if anyone did decide to offer me a ride, I'd be happy for them that the chamber came up empty. Cause I'm a good guy. Oh, and Tammy's a good girl. Nobody's gonna get hurt.

We hit Trinity Valley Road a long way from our temporary home on the ski hill. Grubby folk, reeking of campfire smoke.

So. We'd thumb the majority of the 90-K loop.

The guy coming back from fishing let us hop in the back of his truck. The dogs that had been there were moved into the cab. Can't remember why he didn't just put us in the cab, but it wasn't weird at the time. Some practical consideration. He was going all the way to Vernon but had to drop us at the outskirts of Lumby cause now there's cops about and it's illegal to ride in the backs of trucks.

Not so, back in the day. My earliest associations with hitchhiking are from a time when everybody rode in the back, and picking up hitchhikers was mandatory. Mandatory, at least, in the hippy ethos within which I grew up. You didn't leave your brother on the side of the road if it was in your power to take him where he needed to go.

Nope. You jammed him into your crappy old vehicle with your unkempt kids and you journeyed down the road together. Maybe got into a heavy rap. Far out.

Our second ride was a short one. Lumby to Coldstream Ranch.. Not much further than we'd waded through the snow the night before. It was early afternoon by now and downright summerlike for the first of November. The German fellow in the spotless, air-conditioned SUV didn't seem to notice that we smelled like a couple of charred logs. He was full of enthusiastic questions about our route, lighting fires in the snow and wet, coyotes, bears, etc., when he wasn't yakking into the ether in hands-free German.

Then back out in the full sun. Crossing the tracks and pulling the little hill.

I used to pick up hitchhikers cause I thought it was my duty. Stopped doing it when I had kids. And had spent a few years covering court for newspapers.

That's where I learned useful things like what a voir dire was and that there are a lot of violent, psycho hitchhikers out there. To dispute that is simple ignorance. Yes I know most aren't but I'm not talking about those ones, am I?

Kids? Well, they can be hostages to more than fortune. And when you're driving you've kind of got your hands full.

This would certainly be seen as the worst kind of paranoid bad vibes by the dude in the little green pickup who passed us going the other way and actually fucking TURNED AROUND to give us our third ride of the day. Partly because we're all brothers and sisters, I think, and partly because he could see how much we'd love to hear all about his environmentalism.

Which was presented as being of the extremely active variety. He enjoyed dropping lines like: "As I explained to Elisabeth May...". Leaving the impression that they hung out, although I suspect he just tends to be that inevitable annoying guy at those $20-a-plate fundraising luncheons.

He got us out the other side of town, dropped us at the bottom of Silver Star Road and headed back about his business. Having lost about an hour and driven 30 kilometres out of his way.

What is amiss with my gratitude gland that I remember him only with irritation? Nothing, actually. He was really fucking irritating.

Ambling up the gentle slope on the bottom end of Silver Star Road, sweating in the glorious, late-fall afternoon.

Everyone was whipping by us without a glance. Just like I would. The rich yuppies who live in the foothills and the richer ones who have places up top. I applaud them. There is indeed a decent chance I might be the murderous lunatic they think there's a decent chance I might be.

Less so, I think, when I was a young lad scootching over for every shaggy fellow traveller littered along the roadside. There really was a brief time when, corny as it sounds, the way a person looked and dressed could tell you something pretty reliable about his values. And whether or not he was capable of violence. Within the brief heyday of the often imitated, never duplicated authentic hippy culture, that is.

Me, I grew up and realized I'm not a hippy. Indeed, If I may briefly quote good ol' Buck 65: "I ain't got no culture, nothin'/dirty words but that don't count." From his best song no less. Blood of a Young Wolf. Check it out.

Anyway, I like myself like this. Hippies were colorful and weird but, I was there and I can tell you that they were also all pretty similar. No less so than bankers or Rotarians or fundamentalist Christians.

Me I'm just Dennis. Similar to no one I've met. And I don't owe any of them a fucking thing.

Okay, I probably owe some of them money. But I sure don't owe them a ride. Or a heavy rap.

Which is good. Cause I generally have the universe inside my vehicle adjusted about where I want it before I round a bend and see someone standing there with his thumb out.

Still, I wasn't disappointed that the young feller in the little import on his way back from some sort of ski patrol course in Banff was a mellower dude than me. He hauled it over and hauled us up the hill in an agreeable fashion and dropped us at our borrowed door. Grand circle complete.

Now the bathtub, the fireplace and the wine.