Leaving Saskatoon. Parties and hangovers.

Saskatoon was fun! We stayed with Floyd and Jill, a couple of lovely ladies who we know from Halifax. Floyd is a radio personality at a radio station in Sask, and she gave us a tour of the station. It was pretty awesome. Their co-worker invited us all out to a backyard campfire/barbeque and we had some drinks. Good times, lots of food too!

In the morning Brendan and I walked to the highway and started our hitching portion of the trip.

The first drive we got was from a man who took us further out of town onto the actual highway to Regina, he decided to take us much further than he intended because the cops were doing spot checks on the highway heading back into Saskatoon, so he took an alternate route. In Saskatchewan every vehicle only needs to be safety inspected once, and then that vehicle is good for the rest of its Saskatchewan life. However, when the cops do highway spot checks, they have a mechanic do inspections on the spot, and they pull vehicles off the road if there's anything not up to code. I'd rather have to safety once every two years instead of have the extra stress.

The second drive we got was from a woman named Crystal I think? She was very nice, but also very nervous about picking us up. Her first words to us were "I don't usually pick up hitchhikers, so please don't kill me or steal from me okay?" We set her mind at ease pretty quickly by starting friendly conversation, she took us right to the Canadian Tire in Regina because we needed to grab a couple of supplies. She was great and had really good taste in music (some selections included Against Me, and Beastie Boys).

The third drive for the day was a man in a Cadillac, he took us about 30 minutes from where he picked us up, and said he'd take us all the way to Winnipeg if we were still on the highway after he was done his errands.

After halfheartedly hitching for an hour, and actually turning down a couple of short rides, we decided the Cadillac man might not be coming back for us, so we grabbed the next ride. Devon was his name, he had just picked up his sister to spend the weekend with her. They were really cool, twenty something, and his sister was 16, we drove at 160kph and he offered us warm beers which we drank in the back seat. After a while, he said "You know what would be funny, if I took you guys back to party with my friends back home." We kind of laughed about it a bit, and he continued to hint at inviting us back. Eventually we ended up deciding that we would go and stay with them and party for the night. Oh holy crap it was awesome. We drove 30 mins off the highway on a dirt road through a beautiful valley with a crazy winding river running alongside us. When we got to his place, he had a sweet stereo system, and we listened to loud music and drank all night. Brendan and I didn't pay a cent for anything, and we got severely hammered. Those people were SO GREAT. In the morning Devon drove us back to the highway and bid us adieu.

Yesterday was kind of a crappy day. I was hung over as hell and we weren't getting picked up. We took a nap in the grass after a bit of thumbing, and then we tried again. We spent from 10am 'til 6pm without getting a ride. I was taking periodic naps, but Brendan was hard at it the whole time. I went in to the diner nearby to make a phone call to Leann, and when I was done I came back to the road. Brendan had been picked up and taken right to Winnipeg. I got picked up shortly after waiting by a really nice 23ish year old girl named Amanda. She was super nice and had a box full of kittens 8^) She took me about a 45 min drive.

My last drive of the day was Todd. A 50ish year old boiler maker. He was really happy to pick me up because he was getting really tired and needed someone to keep him awake at the wheel, we were still a good three hour drive away from Winnipeg at this point. We had some very mind opening conversations, we were very interested in each other because we both have ADD and have been dealing with it in interesting ways for our whole lives. We related our ADD to our depression, which we both periodically suffer from. Really great conversations.

Once I got into Winnipeg I grabbed a bit of food, and after a very warm greeting from Celeste and Dandy, I went to sleep.