"How do you know we're not going to kidnap you and kill you?" she asked me as we got into the back of the van.
"You're going to have to rape me first," I said.
The day had started in Ottawa Ontario and I was hitching to Niagara Falls to have a look at the legendary sight for the first time.
After a number of rides I got stuck on the side of the highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere with traffic going by 60 miles an hour in the hot summer sun and I was starting to get discouraged.
Then a Volkswagen van hove into view. I don't know why, but I always got hopeful when I saw a VW van, hoping that it belonged to some sympathetic student or hippie of somebody. Usually it was a family and they drove right by. Not this time. The van with California plates pulled over and I picked up my pack and ran to meet it as the passenger got out to slide the side door open. It was skinny young woman with short reddish hair. I looked on the driver's side and it was a woman with long tawny blonde hair tied back with a blue kerchief.
As we got under way, I found out that they had been touring eastern Canada and the states and were heading back to Niagara Falls for the night before crossing the border in the morning to head back to the U.S.
I said I was too and they agreed to take me to the falls with them.
I can't remember what the skinny one said, but the one with long hair's name was Francesca and that she worked at Ingrid's massage parlour in San Francisco.
I told them I had a ticket booked out of Montreal later in the year for Moscow, the Trans-Siberian railway and boat trip to Japan and was killing time waiting for the departure date.
It didn't take long to get to the falls, and as it was late afternoon by then, we went for a walk along the rails and admired the falls, making idle chit chat.
I was really taking a liking to Francesca. She had that honey-blond American look, a pretty face with a cute button nose, a small but shapely body with all the curves in the right place and a vivacious curious personality.
