Jason in the vast spoils of America

Last night I drove to Stratford from Kitchener to see my father’s blues band play. Before I left town I went and checked out Andrew’s band’s first show. They were really rad, but they’re dongs and didn’t play loud enough. Anyways, when I left my car it was starting to snow, when I came back from the show I found it covered in snow. Great, winter’s here.

I admit, it was pretty bad out for being the first real snowfall of the year, but it’s ridiculous how people just completely forget how to drive in the winter, every year. I was driving down Highway 7/8 towards Stratford and within a 5 mile stretch of highway there were 5 cars in the ditch. It seems either people drive way too slow, painstakingly slow or too fast and they end up in the ditch.

I’m not the best person to be judging this though, two years ago I commuted 45 minutes through country roads to get to work. Fuck, thinking about that, I’ve been at my job for coming on three years…my life sucks. Anyways, there was a five week period of time where once a week, every week, I’d ditch my car on the way to work. I guess that’s what happens when you’re in impatient driver who has to take gravel roads to work. I recall coming home one night, she told me to slow down because the roads were bad, I brushed it off and next thing I know we’re careening down the gravel road, we’re fucked. We flew into the ditch, into a big pile of snow and she basically gave me the “I told you so”, whatever, it was exhilerating and we were fine.

There was something soothing about being isolated in the middle of nowhere with no cellphone to call for help. I’m not sure what it was but it was fun trying to catch a ride into town to call for a tow truck, or in this case a nice farmhouse. There was also the joy of calling my boss on the evenings when I wouldn’t be in because my car was stuck in a ditch. It came to a point, in the third week where I was just telling him “I know you’re not going to believe this, but I ditched my car again so I won’t be into work tonight.” I didn’t mind, that manager was extremely leniant, he didn’t give a fuck about anything. I managed to get paid for all those days I didn’t make it in, and I got to crawl back into my warm bed.

I kept a good record last year, I didn’t ditch my car once and I plan on keeping it that way this year.