It seems that I’ve been unwittingly acting as a getaway driver lately. Before I left for NZ I picked up a hitchhiker while driving from Melbourne to Horsham (in Victoria, near Mt Arapiles). All was going well until we pulled into a regional centre just off the highway so that my passenger could get some food and smoke. He went into the supermarket and returned empty handed, saying something about not having money and shopping. I misinterpreted this comment, because as we drove out of the carpark he pulled a chocolate milk, a packet of M&Ms and a vacuum sealed salami that was at least 30cms long from various parts of his clothing. I tried to convince myself that he’d just refused a plastic bag to save a dolphin, but it didn’t seem like he was that worried about choking hazards for our ocean bound friends. The whole thing was a bit dumb, because if he’d just said he was broke I would have bought him some lunch, but I guess he saved us both some money. Anyway, the rest of that drive was a bit awkward, and I didn't feel comfortable sharing any of his illegal M&Ms.
More recently, I drove a posse of Broken River regulars to the Flock Hill pub a few ks from the bottom of the ski field’s access road to watch the All Blacks play the Wallabies. We ended up staying for a while after the game while some of the crew played pool. It must have been a pretty captivating game, because I just found the white cue ball in the seat well of my car. I suspect that some drunken absent mindedness is to blame, rather than malicious ball stealing or victorious souveniring, but it’s still a bit awkward, especially because I’m now several hundred ks from Flock Hill and it will take me a while to get the ball back to them.
As an aside, it’s a bit weird finding a hard, dense white sphere in the seat well of your car. Without the context of a pool table anywhere nearby, it’s not immediately obvious what it is. However, the density of the sphere ruled out dinosaur egg, and it was just a bit too big to be a gobstopper, so I worked it out in the end.
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