[Sylvanfan]

Back in 97 on a November evening I was heading back to P.G. from Kamloops and for some odd reason opted to take the long route up highway 5 to 16, than West back to P.G. it like like 65 more km, but had a lot less settlements to slowdown and drive thru. I had a new VW GTI that I had bought like 5 months earlier and thought I'd enjoy a nice rural drive where I could let it loose a bit.

In Valemount around 7:00 I topped up the fuel and it was cool but still like 6 degrees outside. About an hour 15 later I hit some black ice on a bridge deck and the car spins on me up the hill until there's a curve and I launch off the side of the road and down a hill. Maybe 25 feet down the hill a smallish tree which probably saves my life stops the car after rolling over 2 times. The floor of the car close enough to the center of gravity hits the tree and stops the car. Car was still operational enough that I could open the Moonroof, so I crawled out if it as the drivers side is up in the air on this tree.

I flag down a trucker and hitch a ride back to McBride. Call the local tow truck who had just finished playing hockey and he will bring it back to McBride, but doesn't want to tow it to P.G. that night since hes is tired. He gets me at the gas station and drives me out to where it happened and we recover the car pretty quickly. Even if I had to crawl back in to unlock the steering and make sure he pulls it up straight. So back to McBride and I get a suitcase, a bread maker and another box with some other food my mom sent with me and to make bread including canned raspberries. In fact the flour opened up and there's a mix of flour and raspberry fruit in the car which also ended up in my hair. By now it's 10:30 and I'm supposed to be at work by 8:00 the next morning. Nothing is open except a gas station and they have the Greyhound schedule there. Turns out the red eye from Edmonton to P.G. rolls thru at 4:30 in the morning. Of course in a small town it's a small station off main street that's only open for a few hours a day from Monday to Friday.

I try the lone motel/inn the Sandman, but it's locked and no one answers the after hours buzzer. After 30 minutes, I'm getting cold and I'm pretty beat. So the one warm place I can find is the vestibule at the Scotia Bank which is about halfway from the gas station to the bus station. I drag these boxes and suitcase down main street, and attempt to crash there for like 5 hours. Of course in 97 cell phones are very rare, and I have an analog Gucci Watch that my parents got me for graduating my crappy 2 year CADD diploma. So no alarm, still cold, and not wanting to miss this 4:30 bus I lay there mostly awake. Finally just after 4 I haul all my stuff to where the bus stops and it shows up pretty close to on time. The driver is pretty stunned to see someone but helps me load the stuff and gets me on the bus.

A couple Idigenous guys see me come sit behind me and start asking me questions since I'm looking a bit rough. Do they hear the story and they haven't been to P.G. for a decade so they keep badgering me about the city when all I want to do is sleep. As we roll into P.G. they're like this place isn't as rough as it used to be they really fixed this town. I get off the driver grabs me to go pay the $35 fare at the P.G. Station which at that time was a pretty rough place as they didn't build the new commercial area next to it for like another 18 months. My room mate and his boss come and get me and drop me off for work just on time. Yes his boss just had to see this himself when he called to say why he might be a bit late himself. My boss didn't send me home, had me work the day, although he did let me spend like two hours reporting the claim and finding a shop who'd get the car and tow it to P.G.

So on one hand I'm grateful to the Hound for getting me out of McBride that night. If I had a knife that night....I might be notorious for beheading a couple guys. I still did a couple trips after that on the Greyhound in Canada out of sheer cheapness. Also rode the thing in Australia. Rode busses in Brazil a lot too. On a trip from Sao Paulo to Curitiba we were on a nice 4 lane highway going into some hills. Get up to take a leak. Midstream we're now on a rough goat trail...I tried to stop, but I sprayed that lavatory and definitely got some backslash on myself. That was the last time I used a bathroom on a bus.