7:30 - Habeeb hadn't shown up. This was to be expected - at the speed that he drives, I wouldn't expect him to be any less than an hour late.
8:00 - One hour late. We didn't actually expect him to take this long, but we weren't surprised.
8:30 - What the fuck, man. We were starting to weigh the pros and the cons of the potential situation. If he didn't show up, we'd have to hitchhike from Kenora to Toronto throughout the forlorn highways of Ontario. On the bright side - no more Habeeb!
We were considering calling someone to report his license plate number and have him tracked down, since he still had some of our stuff in his car. Between 8:30 and 9 he finally showed up. He bought us each an Egg McMuffin, presumably as an apology gift for leaving us sitting in McDonalds for 2 hours waiting for him.
Once we'd crammed back into his car, bent at unsightly angles and crushed by unnecessary amounts of our own gear, we witnessed another episode of Habeeb Driving. I swear, he was trying to follow his GPS out of the damn parking lot, because he ended up doing a bunch of half-circles around other people's parked vehicles at a max speed of 5kmph. I vowed never to let him park his car again before he let us out in Toronto.
We'd only driven for about half an hour before we saw the all-too-familiar red and blue flashing lights shining throughout the car's interior. Beebs pulled over and rolled down the windshield.
"Your insurance is expired, sir."
Idiot! You don't take a bunch of kids on a rideshare without letting them know that your insurance is expired. Granted, maybe we should have checked, but paying $180 for a ride generally guarantees the assumption that it will at least be legal.
We were convinced at this point that Beebs was going to have his car impounded and that either the 4 of us would have to hitchhike out of here, or that Beebs would get a ride to the impound lot and the 3 husbands would be stuck hitching. It was bound to be an excellent couple days, foodless and drinkless as we were, cast under the vicious beat of the sun.
Nonetheless, after the cop made a blatant point of assuming Scrib was a criminal by singling him out and asking for his ID, we were set free.
 | |||
| At least he took us to see this. |
Later on, when the sun had begun to set, we were pulled over again. Apparently Beeb's headlight was blown out. Fuck, man. We pulled over in the next city to rest until the sun came up, so as not to get busted again.
Beebs passed out pretty quickly once we'd found our parking spot. Understandable, since he didn't have pounds of baggage crammed onto his lap. It took Scrib and Fernweh a while longer, and I wasn't even able to fall asleep - though I was able to bare witness to Beebs being an idiot, even after we'd all relaxed.
During Fernweh's slumber, he moved his cramped knee and bumped it into the guitar. The slight jarring of the strings awoke Habeeb and sent him straight into an outrage.
"DO you not SEE that I am SLEEPING?" he hissed; the car turned from a calm, collected, and uncomfortable stupor into a spit-filled growl-haunted chamber, if only for a moment.
I considered stabbing Beebs and taking his car, but decided against it because I don't have a driver's license. Whatever. One more day, stuck in this car, and we'd be there...
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