This was a long standing indefinite plan with the owner's son, that if we survived the summer we'd head off camping and drop some acid.
I agreed, mid summer and fall were yet a long ways away.
October, fall-winter, and the time is nigh. This is the unthinking contract penned with the devil come to fruition.
The first snowfall, I pick up him and his dogs and we head up. Halfway Hot Springs. He's packed everything, dogs, etc. and they pile into the recently cleaned/spotless jeep...
"Spotless" is a bit much, I agree, but for me it was pretty damned good and that's all that matters. And there's a dog-smell, that fills the jeep, and - well, wet dogs, they're not my dogs. Nice dogs, not my dogs.
The drive, a fresh snowfall, lots of vehicles in the ditch. I'm a bit sensitive to this, I've been on ice too many times, slipping, sliding, brakes on full and falling downhill...the abundant cars and trucks off the road on the way don't reassure me. We stop to help a Quebecois, there's always one, trapped sliding down a hill on the logging road, and the jeep slides, almost completes the job he'd begun, finally gains some traction on the sand we've shoveled out for him.
And to the hotsprings. A beautiful place, hot water, various pools to heat up and chill out in, drop our acid, and that's it. I shut him down, this trip, wasn't for him, I'd rather have not dragged him along, and maybe in his own way he's sensing it, he keeps asking me inane questions to which I can only growl.
The next morning, partially restored after too little sleep in the jeep, waking him in his tent, my feet, frozen solid blocks in my shoes, "Get UP GET UP", the long quiet ride back to Balfour.
I knew better, didn't want to be rude, a great time with anyone else, it's me, not him, but I've seldom found anyone with so little I could connect to about.