A Firefly Lights Up Kamloops

I aimed the disposable camera at Heather.
“Take a photo, quick! We could be dead at any moment, and it will be the last photo of me, EVER!!”
I clicked the button down, and the camera recorded her terrified face for posterity. Of course, she could have just slowed down.
It was late March, and we were barrelling down the snowy Coquihalla at 120 km/hr. Heather was driving a ’89 Pontiac Firefly that had balding summer tires, and I was holding onto the shuddering door handle in the front passenger seat. Every few kilometres she would urge me to take a photo of her, and I would comply, as I too believed that any one of these screeching moments could be our last.

We had awoken that morning with a keen sense of adventure.
“Let’s just get in the car and drive.” Heather was always a spontaneous kind of gal.
“Sure. I’m not driving, though!” I had replied. I had to reminded Heather that I had just turned 16, and did not yet have my driver’s license; I would not be able to share in any of the driving responsibilities. She was fine with this, as she had been driving for two years now.
Being young, and cool, we did not believe in packing supplies before we set out on our journey onto roads not yet travelled by us. Heather and I just hopped in the car and made our way onto the highway.
We headed towards Langley, and then past Abbotsford. Blasting Madonna and Janis Joplin, we merrily sang at the top of our lungs, and completely disregarded the signs that flew by us along the road. About two hours into our trip, the roads began to get increasingly icier. The winds howled, and the tiny vehicle began to swerve with the strong gusts of air.
All was somewhat fine until snowdrifts began to burst, in frozen explosions, across the road’s shoulder and onto the windshield. For the next two hours after that, any car that passed the Firefly would have heard the worried cries of two teenaged girls. Flurries had decided to grace us with their unwelcome presence as well, and the road lines were soon indecipherable. Heather thought that if we drove as fast as possible, it would get us to a town sooner. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I squinted through the wall of white, waiting for sign of a town.
“Kamloops, 20 km ahead!” I cried out. I was relieved that we would soon be safe and out of the Firefly. I was also relieved that I could soon stop taking photos of Heather….

We reached Kamloops. Like a sign from a welcoming god, the snow ceased and the clouds broke open above the town as we rolled into it. We had the privilege of seeing the last few minutes of sunshine left in the day, and it had a calming effect on my harrowed nerves. We reached the first, and only, hotel that we could see.
After booking a room with two beds, we began to explore the town by car. It turned out that there was not much to explore. As we were both under 19, we were further limited for entertainment options that evening than most, and settled on stopping by the town’s pool hall. We were there only half an hour before we realized how awful we were at the game of pool, so we decided to go out hunting for excitement.
Hoping to attract some male interest, we cruised down the main strip of Kamloops in the Firefly. But men were not clamouring all over the car to get to us; there was scarcely even a soul in sight. We resigned to head back to the hotel after giving the town one last tour.
That’s when we spotted a carload of rowdy testosterone, and knew that our night was saved.
Pulling up to the guys at a stoplight, we motioned for them to pull over, got out and began conducting meaningless conversation. They were drunk; we were bored.
Suddenly, a car came careening around a corner, and crashing into an auto parts store across the street from where we were standing. The passenger door opened, and a woman emerged…with a gun! The driver side door opened as well, and another hand gripping a gun appeared. I blinked. Heather screamed and jumped into the awaiting arms of a drunken loser. I’m surprised she hadn’t asked me to take a picture….
The gun-handling couple didn’t even give us teens a second glance as they took off on foot around a corner and out of sight. It all happened in a matter of seconds, but the Kamloop natives’ that we were conversing with were quick to claim that what we had just witnessed was the most exciting thing to ever happen in their town.
The RCMP were quick on the scene, and real photographers also swarmed the site within minutes. I walked over to the car to be sure that I would be in the photos, as I wanted my image in the newspaper.
Now, whether it was from all the excitement of the moment, or just plain craziness, Heather asked the six older males if they would care to accompany us back to our hotel for drinks.
This did not impress me.
But, I did not have much of a say in the matter as I had neither driven to, nor paid for the hotel, so I had to go along with Heather’s possibly dangerous request. In our hotel room, we spent the remainder of the evening drinking beer, and watching wrestling and porno…a guy’s night for sure.
I kicked the drunken guys out of our room soon after Heather passed out, grateful that no one had had any wrong ideas about us, and fell asleep to the sound of the WWF announcers.

The first thing that we did the next day was to go to the local store and check for our photo in the local paper. If last night’s vehicular craziness had been the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Kamloops, then surely it would be on the front page. But Kamloops, being a smaller municipality, did not have a daily paper that we could find at the time, so we left the town never knowing if my photo had made its way into the paper. But I did know that I had a whole camera full of photos of Heather screaming, and the scene repeated itself on the ride back to Vancouver.