An Independent Woman

Sonja is an independent woman. She does what the fuck she wants. Last week she came home with a new car, the car she has long dreamed of, a blue Volvo station wagon. There is lots of room in the back for our crap and our dog. Nothing wrong with making a dream come true for yourself. If beer companies made cars I would dream of driving a twelve cylinder Carlsberg Special.

I asked, "How much did it cost?"

She said, "Don't fucking worry."

I won't.

When we get a new car we take it out on to the crumbling highways that twist through the mountains. We drive for hundreds of miles to see just what the car can do. We drive like Bonnie and Clyde if Bonnie and Clyde had shot up all the fucking pigs who gunned them down and escaped to Canada and got jobs in the woods far away from the government men.

We had not gone far on the car's first long ride when we came upon a horrific looking accident. I told Sonja, "Got to go." I grabbed my little first aid bag and joined the small crowd gawking at the smashed car's occupants. Another first aid guy was already working on the driver. He had blood on his gloves but the driver looked alright. Two children were picking their noses in their car seats in the back of the car. It was real quiet. You could hear the birds sing. My help was not needed so we left just as soon as we heard the emergency crew's sirens in the distance.

Makes you think when you see an accident like that. I like to have a drink after I have seen a mess like that but it was too early for the pubs to be open. I am a gorehound, most first aid folk are, but knowing just how close those little kids had come to having their cute little heads ripped off was a little unsettling. We stopped at a rest stop and I had a quick couple beer. Sonja asked me, "Why do you do first aid when it makes you drink?"

I told her, "Waking up makes me drink."

I drove a little slower than usual the rest of the trip. I have torn up and down the same roads like Steve McQueen lots of times. We made lots of stops and took short walks with the Hammer in the woods. We dangled our feet in the same cold water our beer cooled in. Lou Reed had Berlin, I have my mountains - Baby, it was Paradise.

At one stop I talked to a real nice guy from Mt. Currie. He was with his wife and his adopted daughter. I asked him, "You guys get any work out of the Olympics up here?"

He told me, "Yeah, but I quit. All everybody wanted to do was work. No coffee breaks. Nothing. The money was good but I quit. Now I am driving a school bus. I like it better."

They were going to Alberta, the land of the four strong winds. The girl wanted to see the dinosaurs there. They were my kind of people. I prefer Canadian Indians to the other kind.

When we got out of the mountains we came upon a motorcycle in the ditch. Its rider, having made it through all the treacherous mountain curves, relaxed and got distracted when the riding looked easy. His buddies had gathered around his machine, which weighed over 800 lbs. and were trying figure out how to lift it back to the road. Another couple guys with a rope from Mt. Currie stopped and dragged his big hunk of Japanese shit out of the ditch with their '66 Mercury pick up. Never let your focus wane when you are keeping your motorcycle between the ditches. The rider was in good shape but it may take several months for his ego to heal.

In Whistler Sonja and I stopped for more beer because we had emptied our cooler. The biker and his buddies spotted us on the pub patio from the sidewalk and joined us. Pretty soon we were real fucked up. The biker who spilled his rice hog admitted, "I guess I had a few too many for lunch when we stopped back at Roger Creek for lunch." No shit Sherlock. They had already decided to spend the night before anybody else tried to fuck a ditch a with their face.

Sonja and I had other plans. We drank up and got back to the blacktop. I felt like a yuppie choking on greed's vomit as I steered the shiny Volvo along the edge of the Earth. I asked Sonja, "Are we fucking yuppies now?"

"It took you all day to figure that out?" she answered.

I am a motherfucking yuppie. Fuck me.

Near home the police waved me through their roadblock. They were too busy ripping apart every young Hindoo's Jap car that came by. The perfect end to a perfect day.