Illusions of Control

We're gone!

Off to Montreal to catch the plane to Germany in two days, all our stuff (two guitars, two suitcases, a plastic bag with kitchen left overs and apples and chocolate, a small bag pack and my purse of similar dimensions and - of course not weighing anything less than the former), in the trunk, rolling towards Kemptville, when the battery light (in emergency red - I just became a word designer for a color, like the lady on Ontario Today the other day) comes on the dashboard, with the mileage on the trip meter at 666. He turns to me, mumbling under pretend-shy smile, something that indicated he was blaming my sex-appeal for that, an amusing thought ...

We both turn our heads toward each other and giggle, turn them back to the road coming at us and are serious again. He says, I don't like it, I sigh and try to blame it on the humidity that Canadian, ah, US-American cars are not used to, meanwhile it's pouring sideways and +1 C out.

In Oxford Mills the radio quits. We both curse the used car dealer and his mechanic till their grand children and back - they just had the car for about three weeks to get other things straightened out. No body ever mentioned the alternator, though.

I catch the ABS sign coming on driving by the wrench shops just outside Kemptville.
We like it even less, although I confirm with my friend, that the car dealer assured us, "that it would always come on".

We make it to Macs in Kemptville and the engine stops, the car coming to a halt under the big new roof, the rain just turning to sideway snow, we watch the wet ghost flakes smash on the windshield of the car. Thank god the windows are zipped up and the doors unlocked - meanwhile thoughts of being locked into your juice less car make me wonder if, in that case you would actually have to smash a window to get out.

Sunday evening at Macs, good thing we've two cell phones. He is getting on his with friends and mechanics (often one and the same) or candidates likely to have booster cables, which we didn't.

The window shield gets steamy with condensed water, as the passenger room slowly but noticeably cools down, meanwhile I screen our friends in my mind, when then I remember something about Macs - "The Greyhound for Montreal leaves from exactly here", I turn and say to him off the phone. He just hums, or stares holes diagonally in the ground, mumbling different curses. I encourage him to check inside for booster cables and call a good friend from right around the corner. "You can do this". He pushes the door open, only sweater and rain skin, apologizing. I say something extra nice, like if he didn't want the warmer jacket from the backseat. It's zero (which I did not say) and we're having the 15th of April. He just nahs and brushes it off, gone again.

Coming back, he is smiling, the girl inside is cute and has booster cables, and it's warmer, too. Some noise to our right. We both witness the Greyhound pull in under the other side on the roof, look at each other and I bitterly regret having turned off the camera after Merrickville. I did not pick it up then, because it's always so intimidating to point that machine at something, and I also felt like that without the light thing on the dashboard and the radio crapping out, it would have never gotten the right dramaturgy anyway.

Sitting in the car (you just want to be out of that wet rain, aeh snow) we decide, no, we'll rent a car and spend the night at home, taking a cab from his Kemptville mechanic-friend's mother's place, where we're supposed to leave the car, and then have it picked up by the former to try some more while we're gone.

While he expresses having to suppress weapon-involving revenge rage at the very moment, I try to point out, that this is "no reason to get exited", well put since the sixties, because, c'est la vie. We need an extra day, and now we're taking it, the flight's not before Tuesday afternoon. He insists to see, if our car was ok tomorrow. But I feel like we're not supposed to take that car, so FI, we'll rent a car tomorrow, go home have a hot tub, cancel our nite with the girls (the hardest part to face, really) - There's a blizzard right now, we hear from our friends in Montreal an hour later, and we knew all along that New York was getting a thick white layer, while we were still packing. Ok. We're not supposed to be on the road. Fine.

"Do you just wanna transfer our stuff and go?" I say, only to flirt with the thought for a second and it's over.

The mighty engine roars, and off goes the bus.

We start feeling like in The Truman Show, just looking at each other, fighting our way back to taking it like real Canadians, instead of just running around in circles, trying to find a wall to meet with the front of our crane. I am a poet, I chronicle and describe stuff, and I failed miserably again, not having the camera on.

"You wanna go inside, get warm, he offers me in that suggesting way, so Canadian. "Ya, I have to see the restroom anyway" and have a look at the attendant, I answer only the first part, pop my door open and am faced with rain-snow-storm sideways.

"You locking it?"
"You don't wanna lock these now", he says smiling and amused, just a little sour.
"Good point", I say, and we linger on this secret knowledge together, how everything could have come even worse. I pull my giant shoulderbag-purse from the backseat without wrecking my back and carry it inside, nestling my hood up, that is somehow stuck in the collar. Unpretentious has always been a child of elegance, and I am so proud, that we're laughing all along.

Coming back, we see a friend of ours walking towards the cash, and we haven't seen him in ages - he is very friendly, offers to give us a boost with the girl's cables, when a toe truck pulls over into the gas station. Our friend is off the hook that way and returns to his wife in the car. The toe truck guy is all busy, mumbles and storms forward, out the door, in the weather.

I jump back in our car, while the toe truck guy and my guy get the hood up and the cables connected to the battery poles. We have no or little charging, so we have to leave immediately, only the windows are a milky fog now. The fan though draws too much electricity, therefore we open the window. Ooops! Again battery power, this time waisted on getting something down, which simple gravity would be able to handle. Comes for free also. Why be smart as long as we can waste electric power?

We find the place not before having explored one of Kemptville's muddy land's ends, turning around to realize, that it was east, not west, praying to the almighty above, not to have the battery crap out this very part of the journey, and it doesn't. We have enough juice left to have even the heat blowing in while we're waiting for the cab driver.

On the way back in the cab he points my attention to another quite explicit sign of the roaring springtime in Eastern Ontario: a tall young lad IN A T-SHIRT walking through the wet storm, smiling.

Shortly before Merrickville we catch up with a driving school vehicle, the signals going left and right without displaying any logic order nor timing, then going into traffic jam mode, meanwhile our buddy is trying to glue the bumpers of the two vehicles together, all this with the speed of around 35 km/h. Finally he pulls over and we can pass him, not without the content-gas-hit on the pedal, presenting this teenage manouvre as if it proved superior position in the traffic hierarchy. I make a very transparent attempt to alleviate the built up tension by pointing out, that that guy's car might face a possible, somewhat humidity-based problem with the lights, too, followed by friendly giggling by both males in the car.

We' re not turned into our road, the cab driver's cell phone rings. He greets with the company name, we don't hear what is said on the other side, because of the rain, the engine, fan etc.

Buddy starts smiling and says to us in the back: "It's that guy." We can't help laughing with him as we all watch the cat fight unfold. While listening to what probably was a lot of very intimidating tirades about bad driving and so on, buddy got so distracted that he pulled into our neighbors lane way, despite us yelling out with protest and disbelief from the back.

Poor cab driver - while he was trying to get me a receipt, he had to stand two other calls from an obviously rightfully outraged responsible participant in traffic, now in louder variability, we noticed through the background noise. I was still laughing, when we carried our stuff back in our lovely house, and just really disappointed now with having been presented with all these wonderful chapters of the everlasting study of human kind without my tape rolling...

TIC, people, this is Canada - and we're leaving it, I promise. Our friend Joel (an excellent mechanic) is going to drive us to Montreal tomorrow. What a life.

Be safe people, don't argue with cab drivers, don't drive in blizzards, and go see a gospel choir (good against late-spring-syndrome).

PEACE!