On the Road Again 2011 # 36

While I am always glad to get a ride - the first ride I got after spending the day in the rain was especially sweet. It was not a glorious vehicle nor did I get very far, but it was a ride, the driver didn't care if I got the seat wet and the truck had a heater. It felt like heaven to me.

It was a one ton flat bed work truck that looked and sounded as if might be, if not falling apart, well on its way to that status. There was junk in the back and lots of bits and pieces in the front seat. There was room for me and my pack, but not a lot of leg room left by the time I got all of me in and the door shut. My driver was a hairy fellow, with a beard as shaggy as mine. He had on old greasy work clothes and if he had been on the sidewalk somewhere along Hastings Street in Vancouver, well he would not have looked out of place. But then I suspect I would have fitted right in too.

In our short ride together I didn’t quite grasp what he did, I think it was something to do with hauling construction machinery around. He seemed to have it pretty well organized and was happy with his life. Every December he went to Australia for a month or so to celebrate Christmas with a construction crew he had met while they were building a bridge somewhere in the lower mainland of BC. What are the odds of that? But that is what he did every year. It sounded like a great plan to me. 

We didn’t get chance to talk for very long, but I really like him. Not just because he had offered me a drive, but because I like his gentle nature and good humoured way of looking at the world and the little problems than can pop up. Given where he had picked me up and my minor rant about my great spot being ruined by construction and the general advancement of all things new, it is perhaps not surprising that we started off our brief chat talking about roads, road repair and the need for even more lanes. Somehow we then drifted into talking about the state of the Vancouver docks. It was strange in a way that my last conversation with Jesse as we headed into Vancouver had been about road repair and the ever constant need for the more lanes, and here on my first ride out of Vancouver, I was having the same conversation.

I was let off somewhere outside of Greater Vancouver. My driver said that it was a better spot. It didn’t look a lot better, but at least it was safer and I could see a gas station down the road a bit. Now if I needed some water (which seemed highly unlikely) or something to eat, there was somewhere to buy it. It had stopped raining but because I was in a more open spot I was exposed to a nasty little breeze that was rapidly sucking away what little body hear I had left. I took off my rain jacked, pulled my heavy fleece out of my bad and put my jacket back on. The top part of my body was warmer but my thin, quick dry pants that had been so nice a comfortable in the hot days of July were now offering very little protection or warmth.

There was a fair amount of traffic along the entrance ramp and it was going slow. So people had lots of opportunity to see me and make a decision. I suspect however that most of the vehicles were not going very far and so most of the drivers avoided eye contact. I then noticed that cars were starting to do u-turns and head back the way they had come, away from the highway.  The traffic on the highway was slowing down to a slow crawl with all lanes blocked. It looked as if there was an accident. What this meant for me was that what had looked like a promising spot with a reasonable flow of traffic had become a parking lot.

However with traffic going by me at a crawl, an older car did stop and wave me over. It looked like I was going to get out of the city.

intermission - Shark Fin Soup

As someone who has not eaten red or white meat for well over 35 years and has not eaten fish for close to ten - I am always glad when I hear about people deciding not to kill animals for food.

I am just not too sure about the right of Toronto City councilors to make a municipal law banning shark fin soup. Really people - you are OK with people living on the streets in winter or when it is mind numbing hot - facing death by freezing or heat exposure; it is OK when children do not have enough to eat and it appears to be just fine to cut services when people need those supports just to stay alive and perhaps to stay sane, but it is not OK to kill a shark. 

I have to wonder how many of the councilors  who voted for that bill actually have eaten shark fin soup. Are they themselves giving anything up? Or was it just an easy vote that made them look like they cared about the world?  I also wonder how many of those same people have eaten veal, or perhaps beef or chicken or pork from a factory farm? How do they get to decide what is moral behavior or not? The word  “sanctimonious” pops into my mind.

 Perhaps one day someone will ban the eating of all animal matter (including sharks) for the simple reason that there is no "humane" method of killing an animal. But until then, can you please get off your collective high horses and deal with what is happening to people outside your office doors.

On the Road Again 2011 #35

There are a number of ways of getting from Vancouver Island to the interior of BC and further east. I know of three ways to do it but I am sure there are more. None of them are particularly smooth or easy. All require the use of public transit in some fashion or another. The first route is to go to Victoria, take a long bus ride to the ferry terminal, catch the ferry to Vancouver, and then take a couple of buses and the Sky Train and then another bus to get to start my off point just outside of Langley. To the best of my knowledge this spot is the only place where the city buses cross over Highway #1.  It is a great spot with good sightlines and lots of room for cars to pull over. The traffic volume is reasonable and consistent. At the very least, I usually can get a ride from this spot to Chilliwack which gets me well out of Vancouver. Unfortunately  it can take four or five hours to travel this route.

The second way is to take the ferry from Nanaimo (which gets one to a different ferry terminal on the mainland), and then take fewer buses etc. to get to the same great spot to hitch out of Vancouver. The advantage of this route is that one can be on the road with your thumb out and hour or so earlier that the former method. Both ways require staying in a hostel overnight and getting up really early in the morning.

The third method is to leave from Nanaimo take the ferry to Horseshoe Bay and then the Greyhound bus to Whistler. This route works well except one can't get to Whistler until after 12:00 and then one either needs to get through town - which means it is quite late to start travelling or stay in a hostel in Whistler so that you can get an early start the next day. The method is the most expensive option and feels as if it is the slowest to get going.

I chose this time to take the second option. It worked out great. I took a taxi to the terminal - I could have walked the 40 minute walk, but it was too early, it was still dark and it was starting to rain. The ferry ride was fine if a bit stormy, the bus connections were perfect and I was at my spot by 11:00. Except my spot was not there! It was totally destroyed. They were creating a new on-ramp and it was absolute chaos. Half the cars were going the new way and the other half were going the old way. It was muddy, there were lots of construction vehicles buzzing around and it was raining. It was raining hard. I had my pack covered with its special bright orange poncho type thing and I had on my even brighter orange rain jacket. But I got wet. The rain was dripping off my Australian drizabone hat in a constant stream; my quick dry pants had no chance to dry quickly or any other way and every step I took squeezed water out of my socks. I walked to a number of spots, dodging cars and back hoes and dump trucks. None of them felt safe for me or the drivers. It was depressing.

I have been lucky in my travels. I have been caught in a number a downpours and storms over the past year. But either I have been able to find a place to get shelter or the rain has not lasted very long. This time there was to where to hide from the constant day long rain. It may of stopped or at least slowed down for the occasional minute, but if so I don’t remember. I was so wet that the money in my wallet was soaking wet. I don't think I have ever been so wet in my life except when swimming and even then I don't think I had been any wetter than I was that afternoon. It was not just that I minded being wet, but I knew that the wetter I looked, the less likely it would be that I would get a ride. No one wants a wet passenger in their car. I could not blame them.