my most ridiculous hitch hiking experience ever

All this talk of Ireland and Irish folks I met in Alaska reminded me of a funny story from the past. I was at the Talkeetna bluegrass festival in Alaska, which is a pretty long running event. It was my second one and right when it started getting way too big for its breeches. I'd guess its 10 times worse now. It is 3 or 4 days of late nights, all day booze, bottlerockets zipping past your head as you try to find your tent in the blackness, and security provided by the Hell's Angels. On the day after I woke up and decided to pack up and go, staggered through ground zero, stopped by Johnny and Sarah's school bus to say what up and became aware of some major irritation in my eye that was getting worse. It was watering and really sensitive to light and I couldn't really open it. I said goodbye to all the scallawags and walked out to the road to hitch back up to the Denali area to camp somewhere. There was about 20 hitchikers trying to leave and the one in front told me to go down the road after the last of them...this is hitching etiquette in his mind. I couldn't see so I didn't argue or tell him that the reason he can't get a ride is because he looks like an angry dick. After 5 minutes my ride came, bypassed the angry dick and the 19 other hitchikers and came right to me. Karmic retribution in action...or so I thought. One remarkable thing was that it was an RV leaving the festival that stopped. RVs are so unlikely to pick you up that they are not worth the effort of extending an arm, let alone your arm AND your thumb. The driver was some stoner about 30 years old that had "borrowed" the RV from his grandmother. There were several teenagers on board an a guy I used to work with who also happened to be hitching. The first thing anyone said was sorry about the smell, which proceeded to nearly make me puke on my feet. The shitter was broken or full...or something, and it was hideous. But If I could tolerate it for less than 3 hours I could set up a quiet camp and rest, otherwise it was waiting for 20 other guys to get a ride before I did. So we zipped along merrily in a possibly stolen and at least dubiously borrowed RV full of sewage, and I couldn't open one eye. Before too long the driver stopped to pick up another hitchhiker, which ended up being a native woman that was completely shithoused. She was stark raving loaded. So now I've got one good eye left, a nose full of shit smell, and ears full of the incessant cackling of this old drunken coot. Shortly after that, we get pulled over by the highway patrol for speeding. During this intermission everybody is ID'd, and guess what? Me and the guy I know (Hal, if I remember right) are the only ones who have driver's licenses, and Hal did not bring his with him to the festival for fear of losing it in the melee. Because the driver had no ID, It delayed the policeman from learning the probable truth that the guy did not own and probably did not have permission to use the RV. We had made sure to say 10 times that we were hitchhikers to preemptively absolve ourselves from anything these dipshits had done. At this point an amazing thing happened....the drunk woman decided to just walk away down the middle of the highway pushing the cop out of the way when he tried to stop her. Since he was probably patrolling 300 miles of highway alone, he had no choice but to deal with her and let us go. But he ordered me to drive the RV because I had a license. I feebly said "But...my eye" or something like that, which of course he had no time to hear about. So off we went, without the cackling drunken hag at least, but still with an RV load of dipshits, enough shit smell for 1000 hells, and the guy that can't see (me) driving a probably stolen RV....BECAUSE A POLICEMAN ORDERED ME TO (that is the punch line, hence the caps). After a half hour or so I am really struggling because I just can't see and my eye really hurts, we were low on gas anyway so the original driver says he will drive after we get gas. We figure we are off the hook with the cops because the only one probably had to go pretty far south to put the drunk lady in jail. So the guy has no money to purchase any gas. So here's what he does, he takes out the stereo and trades it to the gas station owner for a fill up. What this means is that if he was telling the truth and he borrowed this RV from his grandmother, he will be returning it with a broken shitter badly in need of emptying, and no stereo. Nice guy. He drove the rest of the way and I was so tired of it all I just fell asleep. When I woke up he dropped Me and Hal off at Denali. We didn't really have to say anything we could read the exhaustion and relief on each other's faces.

Epilogue: I hitched another short stretch with somebody I can't remember and decided to stop in and see if I could just crash at Brenda and Kathryn's trailer in Healy. I was really not in the mood for one eyed camp setup in the dark with rain coming. They had a trailer that was so off kilter than you just sort of pitched and tumbled downhill until your fall was cushioned by the bed, cleverly positioned at the lowest point. Kathryn was around so we went to the payphone at the Totem Inn so i could call my dad. He's an optician so I thought he might know something about eyes and what the hell I should do. He thought I had probably scratched my retina or maybe a cinder from someones campfire got in there. But there was nothing I could do at 11:00 pm except see if it got better (eyes heal fast), and if not see a doctor. So we had a few beers, then I went to sleep and woke up with my eyes functioning normally, no shit stench, no borrowed RVs, and no police. So if your eye is ever inexplicably fucked up you should just have a beer and go to bed. The end.

So...back to Ireland. I ended my Ireland trip with a visit to Kathryn's house about 12 years after the above experience. She and her fella Dunnock have a nice house near Clonakilty with a flat floor, no pitching or tumbling, easy access to the beach (they are surfers), and close to Castle Freke (pronounced "freak") owned by none other than Lord Freke. Also they have a new baby, good work.