Road Trip

Last weekend some local dudes took me on a road trip. A sixteen hour ride covering three provinces. Almost 3000 kilometers. For all you Europeans out there: That's like driving from Berlin to Rome and back. Over there you'd probably not even drive that for a nice two week vacation. You'd take a plane. In this country it's a nice weekend trip. Three days on the road for a concert show.

We left here on a thursday at about 1 in the afternoon. 90 minutes gravel, then blacktop road. They call it highway. I'd call it Alte Letzlinger. No one else on the road, endless bush to the left, endless bush to the right. First stop after about two hours, because they always stop there when they drive somewhere: a lonely gas station next to some more or less important highway junction.

I bought some coffee and chocolate bars for the road.

They had a squirrel there, right outside the door. It didn't run when I went in, it was still there when I came back out. Just sitting there, eyes darting between me and the garbage can. I talked to it for a while, then went to get my camera from the car. Back at the door the squirrel was gone.
On we drove. The next settlement or sign of civilisation came about four hours later. A small town. We gassed up and decided to have some food. I myself always develop a strange desire for MacDonalds when back from nowhere, but the MacDonalds was closed. Imagine that.
We went to Burger Kind instead.
Bad idea. The food was mediocre at best, the staff as friendly as robots. I myself really enjoy the latest efforts of major fast food chains to make their restaurants look more stylish. Not here though. You walk in, you sit down with your food and as soon as you take your first bite you feel like a complete and total low-life loser.

I had a sandwich that was supposed to have mushrooms, because that's what it looked like on the picture. I even asked if it were mushrooms. Uh, mushrooms? Yes, they said. In the end it turned out to be onions.

We got back on the road. We were about to cross into the next province and hit Highway 9. I was looking forward to that. Highway 9. I imagined straight smooth road, immaculate lines painted on asphalt, divided highway.
It took about half an hour or so to get there. What can I say, the asphalt ended, gravel started.
Highway 9 was a gravel road.

A wolf next to highway 9.

At the province line.

The was a lot of swampy looking woods both sides of this highway 9. Lots of water right next to the road. Inevitably thoughts about breaking down here crossed my mind. Three guys lived for four days on three cans of coke and one mars bar while wading through treacherous swamps and evading killer wolfs and monster bears. Didn't happen, though. And even if, we would have been rescued: There was one other car.

It took us four hours to get back to a proper road, and to another town. I bought ice cream there, Magnum. Then we drove on, scenery flying by left and right, listening to music that was foreshadowing the show we were about see. I drank coke out of cans, are mandarins and chocolate bars. It was very nice traveling.

Until the next stop.

The next stop came sudden and was an utterly unwanted and totally unscheduled and completely unnecessary one.

"I have you at 121 in a 100 zone..."

Fifteen minutes later and having gained valuable experience and some expensive paperwork we were back on our way.
The land had become very flat, wooded areas had been replaced by endless fields in all directions. Just barren land to the horizon, a few bushes and small tress here and there.

Another two hours later, it was dark by now, we reached a major city. Time for food (MacDonalds, finally), groceries (red bull, I also bought a book) and gas. The gas station guy was some young dude who coincidentally wanted to go to see the same show, but couldn't. Probably broke or something. I told him to jump in, but he said he had to work another hour. I didn't say anything to that, and he kept standing next to our car until we drove away.

Nice highway now, divided and all.
I was getting tired. It was dark outside, nothing to see, just the music and the droning of tyres. Two hours later, right past the next bigger settlement, our driver asked me to take over.

"Yeah, I can drive."

Bought those red bulls for something after all. I also decided to have myself a nice fine smoke first, so I rolled one and got out of the car and stood there and jumped around in the cold wind. We were on the outskirts of some town, some lights in the distance, everything else just darkness.

I could feel the nicotine enter my blood stream.

I got in the car, adjusted the seat and off we went. According to the clock on the dash it was 1:38 AM. I settled for a nice 110 km/h and tried to keep the continuous line to the right and the dashed one to the left. There was no other traffic. Just the road, straight like a ribbon through the dark prairie night.
Four or five hours I drove like that, with my passengers either sleeping or dozing. Dawn came, that made it easier. I had set the heater to very off, the cold blasted away, my feet felt like blocks of ice, but it kept me awake. Then we stopped for bisons.

Unfortunately they were a bit shy and didn't want their picture taken.

A new day is dawning. This is it.

We were very close now, just about an hour to go. But somebody had turned the heat up, and it hit me like a truck, so our number one driver took over again. I fell into the backseat, and when I woke up again, we were in the city already, right in front of our hotel, the concert venue just across the street.
We had reached our destination.