Picking Up Hitch Hikers

Call me dangerous, but I love to hitch hike and have done many miles by the thumb. I dont hesitate to this day to use my thumb. I also like picking up hitch hikers. Call me dangerous, but I love the conversations and the joy of helping somneone with a lift. I know you all probably have horror stories. While I beleive them, I beleive that Hitch hiking has been a positive thing in my life.

Last Friday night I was making the big trek up north for another weekend of Northern fun. It was 9 pm and I still had another 4 hours of travel. I thought " I need to pick up a hitch hiker"
As I turned the corner, there he was. A hitch hiker in all his stinky, unkept, unshaven glory. He was a street man and he looked it. Thank goodness I had the top down on the convertable....he really really stank! As he climbed in my car he said " All my belongiongs are in this bag...heck of a way for a system engineer to live" I asked him where he was going. He told me and I calculated that it would put me an hour out of my way.

What the heck. Whats an hour? I asked him why he was heading to Midland. He told me he was starting a new job. He said he had to rip apart and rebuild some operating systems. He was in the process of analyzing and computer mimicking a particular voice. I know a bit about computers and I knew he was lying to me, but I went along with the game. He had a cell phone with him which he used to call "Emily" I learned by eavesdropping that Emily is a computer voice in a voice message center. He was laughing and joking with her...the voice. I felt sorry.

He kept looking out to the stars. He told me he had never been in such a vehicle before. He was quite intrigued. He asked if I could put the roof up. The problem is he stank so bad I refused cause I didnt want to puke. I put on a jacket and told him that it was a new car and the novelty of driving with out the roof was still overwhelming. He buttoned up a bit and we continued on our journey.

I began to notice, that as the music changed, so did the conversation. I found this quite amusing, because it became evident that the music was controlling the things this fellow said. As the song changed so did the conversation.

I dropped him off at his desired location. The corner of main street and Elizabeth. I could see his excitement as we got closer. Finally he said OK this is the stop. He was grateful and I said goodbye.

I didnt get to my destination until 2am, but I was happy and content.

Next day we spent 5 hours in the canoe on Temagami river. We got chewed by the blackflies! I have never had it so bad. Even though we were wearing bug jackets, we still got slaughtered. After 5 hours, I stripped down and jumped in the river for releif. I was covered in bites....and bleeding too! I mean really bleeding. I had to take anti-histamines. What a mess. I think I even got poisened by it, because I couldnt make it to work on Monday. I was a mess! I have never been abused by bugs like that before.....I cant waith till weekend after next cause I'm going back for more!