It was around 5:00 in the afternoon on Sunday. We were in Chilliwack. If we kept on driving through to Vancouver I could easily make the last ferry into Victoria. Now that would have been a record for speed! But Jessie seemed tired and wanted to stop. I also think that he was getting ahead of himself in his logs and had driven a few more hours than he should have. We had talked a fair bit about the best way to get into Vancouver. At one point he had even asked and accepted my advice as to the best way to get to Vancouver. We could have gone along the Fraser River but it would have taken longer. Or we could go along the Coquihalla highway, which goes through Merrit (which is part of the near desert,but had snow in the valley) which would be faster and I thought easier for a truck. The Fraser is beautiful but it is just two lanes and very twisty. I chose the Coquihalla for the speed.
It seems to me that one of the most common delights of the drivers that I have travelled with, is to cheat on their logs. I think they do it because the logs make their lives more complicated, reduce their capacity to make money and mainly because so many of them have both a sense of larceny and resistance to authority in them. They want to believe that they are the independents who are the last lone wolves of the open road, that nothing ties them down. But of course the reality is that with the regulations they are forced to follow, the speed limiters on their engines, the checking in with their dispatchers, the weigh scales and the logs they have to fill out, they are as restricted as any other occupation and perhaps a lot more than some. I of course, would never say this to them. We all need our fantasies to sustain us during the long dark night. And truckers, it seems to me, have as many if not more long dark nights (figuratively and literally) than the rest of us.
None-the- less, for what ever reason Jesse seemed determined to stop in Chilliwack. There were two practical reasons, one was that his delivery was not due until Monday morning and the only place to park his truck for the night within the city of Vancouver was a very small lot with no services: The second reason was that he wanted to eat at a specific restaurant that on Sundays had "all you can eat fish and chips". It seemed to me as if he had been talking it for most of the afternoon.
Once again things got a bit confused between us. At one point when I raised the issue of where I was going to sleep that night (in my usual subtle non-aggressive manner) he suggested that while we were waiting for a table, I could check out the Greyhound bus station next door to see if there was a bus to the ferries from Chilliwak. I did so and found out that there was one leaving at something like 3:00 in the morning and that it would cost approximately $50.00. I went back to the restaurant which still didn't have a table ready (it was Father's Day and there seemed to be lot of families there) and talked to Jesse. He thought that $50 was a lot. For me, I was bit frustrated. Here I was in Chilliwack, just a few hours outside of Vancouver, lining up to sit in a restaurant for a meal I could not eat, knowing that if I waited around, I would at least feel that I had wasted some time.....that I could travel further and faster if I left Jesse now and headed out on my own. This was not a new or unusual feeling. Quite frequently after a day or so travelling with someone, I get the urge to meet someone new, to see if I can get to somewhere faster using some other means. But it made no sense to switch horses so late in the race if I could get a ride to Vancouver with Jesse. It really didn't matter if I got to Vancouver Island Sunday night or Monday morning. Over my salad and side order of chips, and Jesse's numerous orders of "all you can eat fish and chips" we talked about what to do. Jesse said that if I wanted to go on the bus that was fine with him, but he was going to Vancouver and I was welcome to get a ride with him. So I did.
I think his feeling may have been slightly hurt when I accepted his suggestion to check out the bus, or perhaps he had picked up my anxiety and felt like he needed to make that suggestion. Regardless we finished up our meal, got back into the truck and withing a fairly short time made it into Vancouver. The traffic was a bit heavy but probably a lot lighter than it would have been on Monday morning. We took the last spot in a small truck stop, walked around for bit to stretch our legs and then went to bed. The next morning we drove about 15-20 minutes to the warehouse, and with me blocking traffic, he backed the truck into the terminal. I grabbed my pack, shook his hand, thanked him for a great ride and was on my way. I didn't know exactly where I was, but there were lots of people about so I was sure there was a bus stop somewhere. I was surprised to round a corner and see the entrance to a Skytrain station. I was on my way to the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay.
While I would seldom counsel anyone that no action is the best action, in terms of hitchhiking it seems that frequently might be the best thing to do. If I had left Chilliwack either on the bus or by hitchhiking, it would have at the very least cost me money to sleep somewhere and more importantly, for the latter choice, there would have been no guarantee that I would have got to Vancouver or the Island any faster. Doing nothing had worked out well. All in all it had been a good ride. Not perhaps the best I have ever had, but a damn good ride. Brandon to Vancouver in 36 hours...does not get much better than that! Even the train would have taken longer.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
On the Road #12
Jesse was up early and I barely had time to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. There is reason that I don't eat a lot when I am travelling. I would have assumed that with the amount of fruit that Jesse ate that he would need to use the bathroom far more frequently than he did. Jesse was not a morning person and even after a huge cup of coffee he was not very communicative. But then even the day before he had not been overly talkative.
Some drivers like to talk and it only takes me a few questions about their truck or their load and they are good for 15 or 20 minutes. Others love to go on to great length about why they love driving a truck for a living. A few of my truck drivers have been interested in my life and have asked lots of questions. Sometimes the truck driver and I can go off on weird directions such as the time a driver and I spent a night planning a cross Europe car trip to the Pacific Ocean. There have been other drivers who have used me to talk about their failed relationships and why their fathers didn't love them. Jesse did none of those things. We did talk about his girlfriends and some of their problems. He talked a lot about his relationships with some of their kids. But it felt somewhat superficial. Not that he was intentionally superficial, just that our conversation never took off. Usually if I travel with someone for a day and a half I get to know them quite well. With Jesse this really never happened. It was until late on Sunday I even found out that he had kids of his own. But he had no contact with them. It was sort of sad and perhaps explained why he didn't seem interested in talking about my grand kids.
To make it even more difficult for us to have a conversation, Jesse mumbled and there were times that after asking him to repeat something twice and still not understanding him, I just agreed with him or stopped talking for a while. It wasn't until last evening together that he mentioned that he had a problem talking clearly or loudly. He said that he had never spoken very loudly. I wonder if his manner of speech, and perhaps his uncomfortableness with it led him into profession that did not require him to talk a lot.
The only topic that Jesse talked consistently about was this "self improvement club" he belonged to. Except it wasn't a club, it was a scam to take people's money. It appeared as is one went to a meeting, heard some sort of inspirational speaker, and were then convinced to buy a specific product. The hook was that if one could develop the skills to sell these products to other people - that is where the self improvement came in - then the products were free. Jesse was taking some sort of mood leveler vitamin and some sort of "fat reducer" pill. Jesse told me that if I had not been in the cab, he would have been listening to his tapes. Clearly not only were the pills useless, but to get people to believe that this would "improve them" seems to me to be fundamentally dishonest and perhaps even more importantly morally corrupt.
Jesse not only ate a lot of fruit he, also smoked a lot. In hindsight I wondered if that was why he liked driving in the States. Tobacco products are so much cheaper there. While he was polite the first time he lit one up, and quite often offered me one, the smoke did get to me. There were times when I thought about getting out at the next stop and trying for different ride, but the stops were few and far between and besides I had learned the hard way that the Hitchhiking Gods punished those who rejected rides.
Some drivers like to talk and it only takes me a few questions about their truck or their load and they are good for 15 or 20 minutes. Others love to go on to great length about why they love driving a truck for a living. A few of my truck drivers have been interested in my life and have asked lots of questions. Sometimes the truck driver and I can go off on weird directions such as the time a driver and I spent a night planning a cross Europe car trip to the Pacific Ocean. There have been other drivers who have used me to talk about their failed relationships and why their fathers didn't love them. Jesse did none of those things. We did talk about his girlfriends and some of their problems. He talked a lot about his relationships with some of their kids. But it felt somewhat superficial. Not that he was intentionally superficial, just that our conversation never took off. Usually if I travel with someone for a day and a half I get to know them quite well. With Jesse this really never happened. It was until late on Sunday I even found out that he had kids of his own. But he had no contact with them. It was sort of sad and perhaps explained why he didn't seem interested in talking about my grand kids.
To make it even more difficult for us to have a conversation, Jesse mumbled and there were times that after asking him to repeat something twice and still not understanding him, I just agreed with him or stopped talking for a while. It wasn't until last evening together that he mentioned that he had a problem talking clearly or loudly. He said that he had never spoken very loudly. I wonder if his manner of speech, and perhaps his uncomfortableness with it led him into profession that did not require him to talk a lot.
The only topic that Jesse talked consistently about was this "self improvement club" he belonged to. Except it wasn't a club, it was a scam to take people's money. It appeared as is one went to a meeting, heard some sort of inspirational speaker, and were then convinced to buy a specific product. The hook was that if one could develop the skills to sell these products to other people - that is where the self improvement came in - then the products were free. Jesse was taking some sort of mood leveler vitamin and some sort of "fat reducer" pill. Jesse told me that if I had not been in the cab, he would have been listening to his tapes. Clearly not only were the pills useless, but to get people to believe that this would "improve them" seems to me to be fundamentally dishonest and perhaps even more importantly morally corrupt.
Jesse not only ate a lot of fruit he, also smoked a lot. In hindsight I wondered if that was why he liked driving in the States. Tobacco products are so much cheaper there. While he was polite the first time he lit one up, and quite often offered me one, the smoke did get to me. There were times when I thought about getting out at the next stop and trying for different ride, but the stops were few and far between and besides I had learned the hard way that the Hitchhiking Gods punished those who rejected rides.
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