To Arctic and back: Here's to my Smart partner

Feb 05, 2010

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Wheels Columnist

Picture a four-day road trip. Picture doing it with somebody you've never met. Now picture doing it in a Smart car.

That's how these things work. As I hopped off a plane in Kelowna, B.C., ready to embark on a press trip to the Yukon (where I would hand off the keys to editor Mark Richardson for the next leg), I scanned the crowd wondering who else was here for this reason.

Saturday Wheels: Read how Sommerfeld was run off the road by a logging truck

The dead giveaway is always the footwear. Auto journalists wear really ugly hiking boots.

If you eavesdrop closely enough, you can always hear a couple of pros discussing their last trip. You gravitate toward them, hoping the rest of the herd will do the same. Then you start furtively making eye contact, trying to size up total strangers and deciding who you want to learn intimate details about for the coming week.

As I took into account the size of the car, I homed in on a French journalist. I had 10 years and 10 pounds on him, which made me decide I could take up more space and decide when the pee stops would be. It also occurred to me he was standing there with just a backpack – a considerable factor.

We cemented our driving partnership with a handshake. I breathed a sigh of relief that the first question had been answered.

"We can go in the first truck to the hotel," I told him, gesturing toward the door.

"You go, I have to wait for my bag," he told me. As he said it, a large suitcase came along the conveyor belt and he grabbed it. The case was bigger than I am.

The following morning, I was the first out to the cars. Sylvain wandered out 20 minutes later. I could see we had different approaches to this, but I decided to be quiet.

"Bonjour, Sylvain!" I greeted him.

"Hi. Is this our car?" he asked. As we determined the best way to get all of our stuff in, I asked him why he wasn't driving with another French journalist.

"I thought it would be good to practise my English," he told me. "And you can practise your French!"

I told him he'd already heard all of my French.

The next question is always crucial. It sets the tone for the entire trip.

"You drive, or me drive?" I asked him.

"Whatever you like," he responded.

Within the first hour, I'd smacked him on the shoulder and asked him to open my water bottle. When I was done, he took it back and put it away. He'd found my charger for his MP3 player. We'd exchanged information on spouses and children – we both have two boys.

I discovered that everything he ate had chocolate in it. He discovered that I carry everything – everything – in my purse. We shared KitKats and TicTacs. He translated the French that came over the walkie-talkie for me, and we ended up sitting at meals together. This is a big sign on a junket to know which drivers are getting along. If they avoid each other whenever they're not in the car, something's up.

Others teased us. I laughed. I had a co-driver who was a gentleman, wasn't a wheel hog, automatically reached for my camera as well as his own and didn't tailgate. In this world, this is bliss.

As we left the lunch stop on Day 1, I came around the back of our car.

Expertly drawn in the muck was a bell and a pretty little heart. "JUST MARRIED" ran beneath our licence plate.

Five hours down, 108 to go.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Saturdays in Wheels and Mondays in the Star's Living section.

www.lorraineonline.ca

Saturday Wheels: Read how Sommerfeld was run off the road by a logging truck 

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