Filed under: Canada
1. Manholes without their covers. Driving at night I’ll sometimes think I see a manhole without it’s cover and I’ll swerve to avoid it. The other night I thought I saw one at the last second and I nailed the gas.
2. Locking my keys in my car. Okay this isn’t so much irrational because I used to do it far too often, so much so infact that I used to keep a spare key in my wallet.
One time I was coming home from a show in London, Bear Vs. Shark was the band playing, irrelevant but whatever. Anyways, it was in the summer and the venue was disgustingly hot so on the way back to Milverton I grabbed a big gulp. I crushed that Dr Pepper so fast and felt a lot better. Sometime on the way home this big gulp makes it’s way down to my bladder. The pain becomes too much to bare when I’m about 15 minutes from home, it was about 2 in the morning so I figured what’s the harm in just pulling over on this back road and relieving myself instead of waiting an extra 15. I leave the car on and get out, piss and go back to the door. It’s locked. I locked myself out of the car in the middle of nowhere without a cellphone at 2am. Great.
I started walking down this dirt road, hoping that someone would come along to pick me up. After about 10 minutes of walking someone drives by, they sort of sped past even though I tried to flag them down. I gave them the finger and they hit the brakes. They start backing up and I start running up to meet up with them. I explain my situation and the guy offers me a ride to the nearest town so I can use a payphone. I explain to him that Milverton is just as close as the town he wants to drop me off in and I can tell him how to get home from there. He agrees and takes a sip of his beer. We make small talk and I find out he’s a millwright. Great, my dad would always tell me to be careful in Milverton on Friday nights because millwrights would stay late at work, get trashed then drive home, and I’m driving with a millwright who’s drinking at the wheel. I didn’t really care, I needed a ride home.
So I got him to drop me off on Main Street at the library and walked home. I woke my mom up and got her to drive me out to my car. A couple days later I was reading the news and saw that a man who was pulled over for a random check on Highway 19 (AKA Main St. in Milverton) and was found with some ridiculous amount of weed and cash on him. Might have been blow too, I have a bad memory. Maybe it was that same guy, maybe it wasn’t. I’ll never know for sure.
Earlier tonight I went out to get groceries with Kevin. I got in the car and the low fuel light was on, it had been for the last day or so, so I headed to the Pioneer station by my house because it’s usually the cheapest place. So I pull in and gas is 67.4, awesome. I see there’s this woman setting up for pay at the pump, there were cars waiting in the other lanes, so hoping she won’t take too long I pick her lane. There’s a car at the pump in front of hers fuelling, and a car behind her waiting for one of them to finish.
The car in front finishes, drives off so the guy behind her pulls off, keep in mind about two minutes have passed and this retard still hasn’t started pumping any gas. So we’re waiting, and waiting. At some points it looks like she’s honestly having a conversation with the pump, maybe she was talking to the attendant inside, but doubtful. It took her 5 minutes after the second car started fuelling to finally get the OK from this machine that she could pump the gas. So she pulls the nozzle out and puts it in her gas tank (I have no idea how she managed it, but she did, she figured that part out.) Apparently I picked the worst person to wait behind, but whatever, I just waiting in my car, dumbfounded at how this woman seemed to get more retarded by the minute.
Now, the final steps, she’s almost there, she has to put the gas in her car. Push a button, hold down the lever, how hard can it be, right? Apparently she mastered the pre-pay thing, or so I thought after all the time it took, surely she can do this. So we’re waiting, waiting again while she’s staring dumbfounded at the gas pump, trying to press buttons that don’t actually exist (when I arrived at the pump I realized she was trying to press the sticker that lists all the accepted payment types (each major credit card, gift cards and interac cards.)) There are three fucking giant buttons, the biggest buttons on the pump, three fucking choices, pick the lowest grade, that’s the one that costs the least, so you can get the most out of your $5 and be on your way.
So after about another minute of her retardation and Kevin and I losing our minds she finally surrenders to the Gas Pump God, prints a receipt (for the $0 worth of gas it took her over 10 minutes to put in her car) returns the nozzle to the pump and drives off. Turns out she had her car on the entire time. Who knows what genius gave this retard a credit card and a car, let alone a license Seriously how do you not know how to put gas in your car?
Filed under: Canada
It’s all happening again. We’re fucked.
Filed under: Canada
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.
