As much as I love my grand kids - I find that I am neither use to the noise nor the constant need to pay attention to what they are doing. Consequently after five or six days of visiting ( or sometimes far less) I am tired and I need to find a quieter place to live. So after being a good granddad and looking after the kid etc. I decided I needed to go to Victoria for a break.
Usually, for no particular reason, I have almost always travelled from Duncan to Victoria by bus. It is rather silly way to travel when I hitchhike 1,000s of miles across parts of Canada, but I buy a bus ticket to travel a an hour or so down the road. It was time for a change. So after getting a ride from my son to a reasonable location just outside of Duncan I went to Victoria through the generosity of others.
It wasn't any faster, but it was an interesting trip. I was quite awhile at the first spot. It was a busy corner with lots of cars turning this way and that. For at least 20 minutes of my 40 minutes there any possibility of getting a ride was demolished by the riders from two motor bikes and a car pulling over and having a friendly chat with each other. They took up most of the shoulder that I needed for cars to pull over. Across the road from where I was standing there had been a minor fender bender and the RCMP were dealing with that. While it is not illegal to pick up hitchhikers along this spot of the highway it is against the law a bit further north. I suspect that the presence of a police car did little to make drivers even think about stopping. As the policeman finally finished his business with the accident, he drove up beside me and asked if I knew if the bikers had wanted to speak to him. I said that I didn't think so and he drove away.
Fairly shortly thereafter a man picked me up who was heading about halfway to Victoria. He was off to have supper with a friend. At some point he got a call from her and promised to pick up some ice creme in Mill Bay. Normally I suggest to my drivers that I would be glad to wait for them, or to go shopping with them but this guy didn't want to do that. He let me out at the highway and then ten minuted later, true his promise he picked me up again. We spent our shout time together talking about the politics of small towns and cities. When I mentioned Nanimo and what a confusing, poorly designed city it was, my driver had some very clear and not very positive opinions of the mayor and the city council.
He let me off at the turn off to Shawnigan Lake. I was not there any more than five minutes when the driver of a van coming from Shawnigan Lake honk there horn and waved me over. When I got in the van I was surprised to see that the driver was a female and that there was a young girl sitting in the back. Mom had just dropped her son off at a camp and she and her daughter were heading back to the city. When I expressed my surprised at her stopping she admitted that she had not stopped to pick someone up for a number of years. I thing she was surprised that she had stopped too.
We had a lovely chat about the complexity of raising kids, and of how to be frustrated at their behaviour while not showing too much of our anger. It sounded as if her son was at that age where he was or had mastered to art of pushing his mother's buttons quite nicely. Her daughter occasionally interrupted the conversation to ask why her mother had picked up a hitchhiker and did that mean that I was going to their house. Clearly hitchhiking was not a common topic of conversation in their house.
They let me out at the corner of Pandora and Douglas, a few minutes away from the hostel. Perfect.
As they drove away it struck me as being somewhat special that neither I nor the mother had mentioned the fact that she was white and her daughter was black. It is nice to live in a time and place where such facts no longer needed explanation.
Usually, for no particular reason, I have almost always travelled from Duncan to Victoria by bus. It is rather silly way to travel when I hitchhike 1,000s of miles across parts of Canada, but I buy a bus ticket to travel a an hour or so down the road. It was time for a change. So after getting a ride from my son to a reasonable location just outside of Duncan I went to Victoria through the generosity of others.
It wasn't any faster, but it was an interesting trip. I was quite awhile at the first spot. It was a busy corner with lots of cars turning this way and that. For at least 20 minutes of my 40 minutes there any possibility of getting a ride was demolished by the riders from two motor bikes and a car pulling over and having a friendly chat with each other. They took up most of the shoulder that I needed for cars to pull over. Across the road from where I was standing there had been a minor fender bender and the RCMP were dealing with that. While it is not illegal to pick up hitchhikers along this spot of the highway it is against the law a bit further north. I suspect that the presence of a police car did little to make drivers even think about stopping. As the policeman finally finished his business with the accident, he drove up beside me and asked if I knew if the bikers had wanted to speak to him. I said that I didn't think so and he drove away.
Fairly shortly thereafter a man picked me up who was heading about halfway to Victoria. He was off to have supper with a friend. At some point he got a call from her and promised to pick up some ice creme in Mill Bay. Normally I suggest to my drivers that I would be glad to wait for them, or to go shopping with them but this guy didn't want to do that. He let me out at the highway and then ten minuted later, true his promise he picked me up again. We spent our shout time together talking about the politics of small towns and cities. When I mentioned Nanimo and what a confusing, poorly designed city it was, my driver had some very clear and not very positive opinions of the mayor and the city council.
He let me off at the turn off to Shawnigan Lake. I was not there any more than five minutes when the driver of a van coming from Shawnigan Lake honk there horn and waved me over. When I got in the van I was surprised to see that the driver was a female and that there was a young girl sitting in the back. Mom had just dropped her son off at a camp and she and her daughter were heading back to the city. When I expressed my surprised at her stopping she admitted that she had not stopped to pick someone up for a number of years. I thing she was surprised that she had stopped too.
We had a lovely chat about the complexity of raising kids, and of how to be frustrated at their behaviour while not showing too much of our anger. It sounded as if her son was at that age where he was or had mastered to art of pushing his mother's buttons quite nicely. Her daughter occasionally interrupted the conversation to ask why her mother had picked up a hitchhiker and did that mean that I was going to their house. Clearly hitchhiking was not a common topic of conversation in their house.
They let me out at the corner of Pandora and Douglas, a few minutes away from the hostel. Perfect.
As they drove away it struck me as being somewhat special that neither I nor the mother had mentioned the fact that she was white and her daughter was black. It is nice to live in a time and place where such facts no longer needed explanation.
Love your blog Dave! Keep it up!
ReplyDelete- From a former student ;)