Swassy Decisions

The homesickness had ceased to subside. The first words out of my mouth were a slurred grumble of irritation.

"Fuck this. I'm waking up in a pile of dirt with a hangover and an empty stomach. This sucks. What are we doing with our lives, Scrib?"

"Well, right now, I've been flicking these little green worms off your sleeping bag for the last half hour. Get up, dude."

My irritation dissipated as we laughed, coughed, coughed some more, then left our alcove and walked the three feet back to the highway. It didn't take long after we'd stuck out our thumbs for a ride to pull over.

The time passed mainly through conversations about our driver's company - he made mobile gun targets and spent a hell of a lot of time testing them out. He showed us a few videos of his products on the range as he took us all the way to Hope.

Hope was a great place. The people were friendly - ecstatic to encounter travelers with smiles, a rarity in such a small town. We offered them a few tunes on our didgeridoos before we hit the road. We couldn't dawdle - we still had to find Fernweh and Aids in Osoyoos.

The walk to the hitching spot was tedious, hot, and filled with the deathly gross repercussions of swass. Swass (along with mosquitos and people who don't pick you up) is one of the most aggravating aspects of traveling, particularly with such an exemplary amount of ass hair. Swass is the precursor to buttchafe, and buttchafe can easily half a group's walking speed.

It took us three parched, sweaty, painful hours to reach the hitching spot - right at the junction of highway 3 and the Coquihalla. By the time we'd arrived, we'd figured, fuck it. We didn't want to be on this swassy highway for any longer. We'd go wherever our ride was going, be it Osoyoos, where Fernweh and Aids awaited, or be it towards Kamloops. Scrib had spent some of his teenage years growing up in Vernon, north of Kamloops, so we figured that if we went that way, we could rendezvous with them.

Well, as it turned out, we got picked up by a fellow named Greg who was going straight to Vernon. Fernweh and Aids would have to wait, we supposed.