A canoeing day
Well, now I can tell you the story of two crazy people trying to hitch-hike on the road to Lindesberg in wet suits :-)
It was a very sunny and warm day in beginning of June and he and I decided to take a ride in a little river not far from home. We packed the canoe on the trailer and a small grill, my camera, a basket with plates, forks and knives and food in plastic boxes, such you buy ice-cream in, into the car together with our bicycles and off we went.
When we came to the place to where we were canoeing, we locked our bicycles there and went back to the starting point, where we unpacked and locked our car. Now a wonderful day was in front of us! We were going to stop about half-way to have lunch and everything was just great. There was a little more water than usual in the river from all the snow last winter, but that seemed just fine. The river was amazing! Clear water and green trees all along the way mixed with small fields of grass and growing crops. As the sun was warm, we took off our clothes and went on in just our swimming dresses.
We knew there was a stream some bit away and put our luggage in a big plastic sack to keep from water if we got any into the canoe. Just the basket with our food and our clothes were still uncovered. We would manage he said - we were good at this - we had been canoeing in much worse streams and no problems. I felt no worry. I knew I had done this so many times before and felt secure with him, knowing he usually managed to run the canoe through streams and between rocks and stones.
Soon I saw the stream. It didn't look like it used to. There was so much water and many of the rocks in it were covered, not to be seen. "Is it here already?" he asked a little surprised. "We have to be careful!"
Suddenly our canoe drove onto a big stone and turned around. The stone could normally be seen, but not today and so it came too close to us. I lost my paddle and all our things fell into the water. I grabbed the end of the canoe and held it with all my strength and with my knee towards the stone not to follow it with the stream. "I have the canoe! Help me hold it!" I screamed and he took a grip in the side of it and we managed to turn it around to the right way. The river was not deeper in this stream than he could get the sack from the bottom of it and with all our forces we managed to push it into the canoe and finally, after another turning around, we got to the shore.
Now where were all our things? We had the canoe, the sack and one paddle. The rest we had to pick up along the river, so when we had emptied the canoe from water, we continued our trip and saw one wooden-clog here, one wooden-clog there, a shirt, an upside down basket with one plastic box with food, the other paddle in a tree, and another food-box floating a little further away. Well, we could eat without plates and forks and knives - no problem! We were just following our course to our bicycles and then to our car and the trip would be just as fun as we meant it to be, The matches were secured in a plastic box too. The sack was torn and our things in it were wet, also my camera, but we didn't care about that now, just poured the water out and picked out our belongings from it.
"The keys." I said "The keys were in the food basket. And our bicycles and our car are all locked." Silence!
"We have to get up to the road at the bridge and go home to fetch our other keys", he finally said. "It's not very far ahead." Said and done. At the bottom of the bridge we pulled our canoe ashore and started to walk up to the road. It was a big road and many cars were supposed to come, so this would not be any problem - we thought. They came all right, but although he tried to hitch-hike with his thumb, noone stopped. Everyone just drove us by! There we stood at the side of the road, sucking wet and nobody cared. Well, what did they think of us? A drunken couple that they never would allow to enter their car.
"I will try", I said and started to wave my arms in the air. Noone stopped. I went out into the road, sure to be seen, and waved even more with my arms and hands and put on a desperate look. Now somebody just had to see me! They did, but went by. Now we were shivering, because even if the air was warm, the water had been chilly and our wet dresses started to feel very cold.
Suddenly a car drove by very fast, put the brakes on with a screeching sound and went backwards towards us as fast as it could. The side-window opened and a young man said: "I thought I would not stop because of some crazy drunken people on the road, but then I though something might have happened and so I went back." "Something HAS happened", I said and told him about the canoe and our keys on the bottom of the river. "Step inside", he said and we pulled up the rubber mats from the back floor and put them on the seats and sat down. "Where are you from?" he asked and got to know we were just a few miles from home and as he was going through our town to get to an old-car-meeting, he promised to let us off at our home.
Suddenly he put the brakes on again and nearly stopped. "If you have your keys on the bottom of the river, how will you get into your house?" he asked. "Well", I said "we have extra keys on a safe place for our kids if we are not at home when they come there, so it's OK." The rest of the driving went on with talking about the car-meeting and his proudness over his brilliant old car. It was a very nice young man and we enjoyed his company.
Well at home we found our extra keys, got inside our house and took our extra keys to our bicycles and car. Now our trouble was to get back to the canoe. We could not possible walk, because it would take too long time and we didn't want to bother anyone else. "Eva has got a lot of help from me lately", he said "and she will help us." Eva is one of his mates at work, so he called her and she came in a few minutes to drive us back to our canoe. She laughed at us in her car when she heard our story. "This could only have been done by you", she said laughing "noone else does such things."
We got to the bridge, went down to our canoe, pushed it into the river and went on in the sunny weather. We stopped at the picked out place for lunch, grilled our meat and ate our bread. The two bottles with light beer were gone we found out. They were drowned together with our keys and other things. I had lost a blouse and my shorts too, but that didn't make our trip a sad one. After our meal we went further, secured the canoe at our bicycles and rode them to our car and drove back again to fetch it. Finally we got back home after a long and eventful day. Eva didn't tell anyone and so didn't we for at least two weeks. After that our story has enjoyed a lot of people. Some don't even think it's a true one.
If you wonder about my camera.... It didn't work and I had to buy a new one.