Trip The jiggling of our cat'’s collar once signified the arrival of new mail at our door. Now only the lonely footsteps that drop off my divorce papers are all I hear at my door. Enough is enough. I pack my bags and part just after the evening news begins. The M5 seems to have lost it's effect on me- I am no longer enthralled when I look at the contemporary styled rims that I spent so much time picking out. At least it's fast, too bad I have nowhere to go quickly. As I pass Pearson airport at speeds I wouldn't travel at otherwise, I'm reminded of the annoying radio ads that tell you to slow down. I juice it even more. I don't know where I'm going, all I know is that I must leave this mundane existence and actually change my life; not like those infomercial product buying wannabes, but actually change it, for the better. I zoom by a station wagon filled with a family of five with a canoe on their car; I'm reminded of when my father and I would go out into Algonquin Park for a week or two. Those were the days, nothing but untouched wilderness, not the stuff you see in zoos but real, live animals. Animals that fight to protect their--- great. Cops. I'm in sixth but two seconds later I'm in first hitting my chrome plated brake pedals harder then ever before. Speed trap? No. Car wreak and thankfully not a bad one, the cops don't even notice me. Good. As I sit I remember to change my cars clock from day light savings time back into which ever it is for the winter months. Odd how it's been days since the change and I haven't noticed. Animals that fight to protect their young. Those were the greatest summers of my life, probably because soon after that I lost my father. Why was he so stressed, I used to wonder. Toll freeway, I bet it's almost always empty, lets see, I feel the turbo kick, here we go like doh-diddly-o. So the story goes, she wants the house, our child and even the cat, she doesn't even like cats. Apparently she has no interest in my car, shame really. The quiet roar of the engine makes me realize I don’t have any music playing. Odd. I shuffle through my discs looking for something to fit the mood. Chicane is the first thing that comes to mind, sweet ambient music. I depress the gas pedal a little more. Back in sixth. Canoeing with my father was always fun and challenging at the same time. He let me be in stern, so I had all control but also had to use my body to the fullest. Power always comes with a price I guess. Isn’t it interesting that when you drive fast you seem to float by everything? I think it is. A calm comes over me, much like the calm that one finds when watching rain drop on skylights. Every time we pulled upon a campsite the first thing we did was find a place for our tent, it may seem obvious but it was a long process. My father always preferred the high more rocky locations, while I always wanted the tent near water so I could hear the calming sounds as I lay there trying to sleep. The gas icon is lit. Why can’t there be gas trucks that you summon, they fill you up and you’re on your way without being bothered to stop. We should put gas trucks way before things like the censorship of the Internet so it becomes mindless like television. When we had the tent all set up and my favorite stuffed animal tucked in my sleeping bag waiting for me we quickly made a fire. Gas stations nowadays seem more like space stations in my mind, with the extremely bright lights and bubbly form. As I step back in I hear “so your back this way again?” part of a song by chicane, fitting. As it grew darker from day into night my father would ask me to go look for firewood but never letting me leave his sight, he had a thing about me being an easy kill or something to that effect. I switch on the headlights, with that blue like colour that seems to blind people more then anything else. Oh well. The only thing I seemed to dislike about our northern getaways was how the smoke always seemed to blow in my face even when I moved next to my father. He always found it quite amusing. Electronic music always seems to sound so much better then the real thing, mind you jazz has its moments too. Just before bed we would brush our teeth at the waters edge skipping rocks that seemed to bounce off the glass leaving it’s mark for only a short time. Similar to how things fad with time, ask someone if they would like to watch a movie made about a dozen years ago, almost always that response will be “that movie is old”. Funny. I follow this road and these cars to where ever they take me. When I was in my sleeping bag and ready to sleep my father would ask “would you like a story” my instant reply was always “yes”. He woculd tell the greatest of stories. I up shift trying to overtake an oversized Sport Utility Vecile, with ease I fly by almost wanting wave. The lights that illuminate the highway shrink into regular lampposts and the roads do the same into regular roads. Do the cars slow? Of course not, we, I, go faster. I would always drift into a sleep always dreaming about the subject matter of that story, I wonder if my father was ever offended when I did that. I think I have figured out why people buy SUV’s, it’s just so they can run over the other cars in the event of a crash. BANG. I jolt out of my sleeping bag with what I believe is a gun shot, where is my dad? I slowly unzip the tent door to find my father on the ground. A lone jet-black wolf stands upon a nearby rock. Blood. So much of it. I wipe the sleep from beneath my eyes just as the chime in my 15 hundred-dollar watch dings one am. The blue light from the headlights reflects quite well off the eyes of the beast ahead of me, I jerk the wheel to avoid —and like that it’s over. Strange.