While it is sometimes a bit humiliating or embarrassing to stand on the road while cars are zooming by without stopping or even slowing down, I quickly found out that it was even more uncomfortable to be standing there with cars going by at a crawl and still not stopping. In the former situation I can always rationalize that drivers do not want to stop due to their being in a rush or going too fast to slow down or being in the wrong lane. But this time, because of the slow down on the highway, the cars on the entrance ramp were barely moving. It would have been easy for any of them to wave me over and invite me in. For at least fifteen or twenty minutes nobody did. That could only mean that they had looked me over and decided they didn't like the way I looked. I didn’t blame them, but it was still uncomfortable. One bright light was a trucker opening his side window, telling me that he wasn’t allowed to offer a ride, but offering me a cigarette for my comfort while I was waiting. I don’t smoke cigarettes but that was a very kind thing to do. It also suggests how miserable I must have looked.
Eventually a driver of an older model car took pity on me and invited me. He immediately started into a rant of how he never picked up hitchhikers because we were not very careful and how he hope that I knew how to be safe when getting out of a car. It took a few minutes for him to get to the point of his story. He had once picked up a hitchhiker who, when he had gotten out of his car, had been hit by a passing vehicle as he crossed the road. I can understand while he was cautious about picking up folks. I assured him that I was very careful about such things and that he needn’t need to worry about me. It was a strange start to what turned out to be a rather pleasant and interesting ride.
My driver was a drywaller. He was a private contractor who worked in Vancouver but who lived in the town of Hope. He made the long commute every day because he wanted his kids to grow up in a small town where it was safe for them to ride their bikes and to walk home from school. Quite a remarkable commitment as it was at least 150 kilometers between the two the two places. The distance could equate into an up to two hour drive each way depending where he was working and the traffic. He seemed very comfortable with his decision. I found it admirable that he would be so committed to giving his kids the kind of life that he thought would benefit them. Although I suppose one could argue that it might be better for them if their dad was around for an additional three hours a day. But it is never easy to make the right decision or to at least find the right compromise. He loved his kids and he was proud of them. Those kids were lucky.
But things had not been easy for him. He had gone bankrupt a year or so ago when the economy crashed and at least one of his customers could not pay him for the work that he had done. He seemed to have lost everything and was now living in a rented house trying to get his credit rating back.
He was also very angry at contractors who hired unskilled East Asians for minimum wage to do drywall. In fact he was initially very angry at the East Asians for working for so little money and for doing what he said was not a very good job. This discussion consumed much of trip. He vented at the unfairness of immigrants underbidding him while I gently tried to nudge him into the opinion that perhaps it was the contractors who were abusing the workers; and that perhaps even the purchasers of the services who allowed people to be paid a wage that was only barely above subsistence level had some responsibility. I think I was successful and by the time we got into Hope, he didn’t seem as angry at the workers. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t matter why someone was undercutting his bids, but perhaps his anger was directed at the right people. I hope so.
Not too far outside of Hope he looked down at the heat gauge, swore and immediately slowed down. The gauge was well into the red zone. Fortunately, if he went slow, the dial stayed just below the danger point. We got off at the first exit that had a gas station, filled up the radiator with water and got on our way. I was glad when the gauge remained in the normal range. However for him the leaking radiator meant another few hours added on to his work day as he would need to find the leak.
He let me out out of his car about halfway through Hope. He was going home to a nice supper, some time with his three kids and then back out to fix the radiator. I was off down the road, still damp cold and more than a bit tired.
