asked if i’d take a quick road trip with him. in the van? yeah, in the van. ohh, yeah… righto. there goes another year off my life. we’re off to dunsandel this time. an easier drive. the road there doesn’t have as many bends, turns and hills. it’s actually a really boring drive. unless the old bugger’s behind the wheel and then it’s a butt clenching, white knuckled, tailgating hell rally. if the lady behind the counter at the cafe in dunsandel was alarmed by my heavy breathing and holding onto the counter like i was lost at sea then i apologize. also, if the whites of my eyes were showing it was not because i’d skipped my medication.
i knew it was going to be a long day when the first thing he did was reverse the van down his driveway and right into his gate. even though it was open. not even 30 seconds into the trip and we’d already crashed. even worse, he didn’t know what we crashed into. then he lost his temper. soemtimes when he loses his temper i say, “woah there, cowboy, easy now,” and he calms down. or laughs. nope. he just floors it. but we’re tangled in the gate. there’s gravel flying, we’re going nowhere and the gate’s making noises like it’s being murdered. i’m thinking that’s weirdly appropriate. i bailed out when i finally heard the revs of the engine drop off. looked at the fence and briefly considered just vaulting over it and running all the way home.
i somehow managed to get the gate untangled from the van without both of us ending up mangled beneath its tyres. there goes another year. a few more of these road trips and i’m going to die before he does. a few hundred metres down the road he’s swerving from one side of the road to the other. gaining speed too. this the icing on the cake of his distracted driving. when he’s fucking around with the stereo, or the heater or anything on the dashboard he seems to absent mindedly floor the gas pedal. and he won’t accept help with whatever he’s doing. we’re probably going about 130kp/h and the cd is still not in the stereo. still swerving erratically. if he drops that cd i’ve got .03 seconds to pick it up before he tries to reach for it himself. or we’re dead. all because of fucking micheal buble.
against all odds we made it to dunsandel. there’s a grain factory there and he wanted to get some barley to brew another bunch of his whiskey. that’s why i was there. i was the mule. i didn’t mind. all the adrenaline from the drive made the sacks of barley grain as light as pillows. on the way home i had to muster up a bit of courage to even look at it, let alone walk back towards that van. i was about to offer to drive when he threw me the keys.
we stopped at his mate’s taxidermy shop. had a look around. my first reaction was similar to, uh, in the second ace ventura movie there’s a scene where he goes into a room full of stuffed animals and after a few moments of panicked screaming ace quietly says something like, “my, what a fantastic room of death you have.” i’m all for mounted trophy fish but stuffed animals are kind of weird. and deer heads are kind of boring. mostly there were just different types of deer and mountain goats. but there were some interesting animals in there. baboons are smaller than i thought they’d be. same with grizzly bears, i thought they were bigger. the moose head was massive. there was a north american buffalo there too, that was impressive. it would make a suzuki swift look like a kid’s toy.
we also stopped at the book barn, which is exactly what it advertises itself as. a barn full of books. not very well organized though. the shelves randomly strewn about, not even set in rows. there’s wobbly looking piles of books anywhere books can be stacked and it’s kind of tense in there because you’re just waiting for someone to stumble and for the whole thing to collapse like a complicated series of dominoes. i couldn’t find a copy of blood meridian. i’m not sure the old bugger would have read much of it, anyway.
i watered the garden and did some weeding on friday. it was hot. i drank some water from the hose. felt like shit on saturday. and sunday. and today. his water isn’t filtered like it is here. i think it’s from the same well the farmer irrigates from and i know his water’s been contaminated before. but it was hot and i needed a drink. ah, well. there was nothing happening here this weekend anyway.
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