Once, while heading out across the great Canadian vastness by thumb, he got stuck just outside of Thunder Bay for nearly six days. After sleeping and eating that long at the same dreary hostel, he finally got disgusted enough to start walking west.

By six or seven that evening, with dusk coming on fast among the Ontario pines, he realized that the odds of getting a ride that night were slim to none. So he set about looking for a place not far off the road to set up camp.

Somewhere around midnight, it began to rain. Hard. Even inside his tent, he knew that this night would not end well.

Being alone in a tent in the rain for three days makes you go through your highly idealized itinerary in great detail, and with no small amount of scathing self-criticism. Where exactly did he think he was going? What exactly did he think he would find there? And how exactly did he think he was going to make this journey turn out the way he had dreamed it would be?

When the sun came up on the fourth day, he spent most of the morning getting everything dried out in the clearing. He finally got back to the road about 12:30. Five minutes later he got a ride with a couple of other travelers, all the way to Penticton, B.C. Had a good time, too.

• Like when the tire goes flat.

• Like when your lover forgets to call. Forever.

• Like when that still center your meditation instructor told you you would find by the tenth day of the fast fails to put in an appearence.

• Like when you get bad directions that take you to a part of town that you are too afraid to ask someone else directions on how to get out of that part of town.

• Like when your new computer crashes during the final moments of a one hour file download, and that term paper is due first thing tomorrow, no, wait, that's today now.

Its one of those lemon/lemonade things.