The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Jerry Brens

Image by: Ed Bierman

Usually I would never go rummaging through the trunk of a stranger’s car, but desperation can make a person do all kinds of things. I suppose he wasn’t a complete stranger though, Patty and I did have breakfast with him earlier that morning, but under the circumstances we failed to catch his name. He spoke perfect English but did so in rapid fire sentences, so getting a word in was next to impossible let alone asking a question.

From the moment he took his first sip of coffee the stories began. Nervously taping his foot under the table like an over wound metronome, each sentence seemed to keep time with the rhythm on the linoleum floor. He went on about running marathons in Miami, rolling his own cigars in Cuba and photographing the Mayan Ruins with his wife, who was still in bed with a headache – I couldn’t imagine from what.

As he was getting up from the table he asked what brought us to this particular B&B along the Niagara Peninsula. We told him we had been doing some vineyard hopping by bike and planned to head down to the falls after breakfast. Surprisingly, he didn’t have a story about the falls, he simply laughed and wished us luck as he left the room.

We figured it was about an hour to the falls by bike and then another 20 minutes to catch our train home. But by the time we finished with breakfast and checked out, the sky had turned black and the rain was coming down in diagonal sheets.

Our minimalist packing job did not accommodate for raincoats, and with nothing but vineyards for miles around we were out of options. Biking for an hour in apocalyptic conditions was not my idea of a nice ride in the country, but we had to catch our train so what other option did we have?

As we were getting our bikes from the garage we bumped into our story-telling stranger again. He looked at us like we were crazy for going out in that kind of weather. But realizing we were determined to accomplish our goal he said he could help, and motioned us over to his car.

He opened the trunk of his navy blue Lincoln, which barely fit in the garage. The inventory inside looked like he had robbed every souvenir store in North America. There were enough T-shirts, key chains and snow globes to plug up the American side of the falls, but among the mess he assured us there were two rain coats, we just had to find them.

We began delicately combing through the mess and soon found ourselves halfway inside the trunk, wading through novelty mugs and “I (heart) Alberta” trucker hats, but eventually we uncovered two extra large, yellow raincoats. Bingo!

They smelt like a fresh package of tennis balls and were big enough to cover both us and our backpacks. We considered this a bonus. Cycling in these rubber parachutes was an experience to say the least, but we made it to the falls and managed to avoid hypothermia.

In hindsight that stranger could have easily pushed us into his trunk of souvenirs and no one would have been the wiser. But on that day, under those conditions, we were glad to have bumped into the storey-telling-packrat from God knows where. This man’s kindness renewed a tiny fleck of trust in strangers for me, but I can’t say I plan to go raincoat fishing in the trunk of a Lincoln anytime soon.

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