There was a time when the just the thought of getting
through Calgary on its public transit system caused me more than a little anxiety.
It was so intimidating and confusing.
There is an alternative to going through the downtown that I have been
reluctant to try. The ring road around Calgary has been finished for about a
year. I have never had a drive around it and therefore I don’t know how busy it
is or whether travellers from the west going east actually use it. I suppose
that I should see how it works…perhaps next year. But in the meantime I have “mastered”
the bus system and find it quick and efficient. I still have to walk a fair bit
after the last bus stop but the road construction is finished and it does not
feel as long as it use to.
On the “C” train a young man started to talk to me. He was
quite interested in my method of travelling and I think he assumed that I was travelling
this way because I was poor. He didn’t understand that I thought it was fun. He
offered to let me use his cell phone if I wanted to do. It was a kind offer.
I try not to hitchhike at the outskirts of cities around
rush hour. There are just too many cars in a rush to either get to work or to
get home. Most of the vehicles are not going very far and at least half of them
are on the outside lane and could not get to me if they wanted to. However by
the time I got to the east end of Calgary it was already close to 3:30. Rush
hour had started. I settled myself down for a long wait. I had bought some extra
water and was ready for whatever came my way.
I knew I could be there for awhile. And I was.
At one point fairly early in my wait a car stopped and a man
got out, offered me some water, a cigarette and showed me where he was going on
his map. It was not very far and it looked as if he would be letting me off in
the middle of nowhere. I thanked him for his offer of water, cigarette and a
drive but decided to stay where I was. I didn’t need either of his two other
offers. I noticed that he stopped just up the road and picked up a local hitchhiker.
Clearly the driver was a man who wanted to help someone.
Eventually a hour and half later a car did stop. It was
driven by a middle aged man and his teenage son. There were going fishing an
hour or so down the road and would be glad to help me on my way. Ever since I had rejected the first ride I had
been swearing at myself for breaking one of my rules….”if you reject a ride –
the Gods of Hitchhiking will punish you”. I did not dare to risk the wrath of
the Gods again and so I took the ride.
They were nice folks off for an evening of fishing. They had
no serious intention of catching anything; they just wanted to enjoy the water,
the sunset and each other. It was kind of neat. We chatted about fishing and
about hitchhiking. In hindsight those two activities have a lot in common. Both
require or at least benefit from a sense of patience, the capacity to
appreciate the beauty of wherever you end up and perhaps most importantly to
have high expectations of future events and at the same time, the capacity to accept
that the future may be considerably further away than anticipated.
The dad decided that he would go out of his way and drive me
to the down of Strathmore. That was great. While it was not yet 7:00 I decided
to stop travelling for the night. I was dirty and tired. It was time for a
shower and a decent meal. I checked into Leroy’s Motor Hotel at the east end of
town, replace my shoes and socks with my sandals and hung up my bivy sack. It
had gotten wet with dew the previous night and needed an airing out. I had
stayed at Leroy’s before. I don’t remember when – but it all looked familiar.
The room was fine, although I again don’t understand why there needed to be two
double beds especially as the first bed was so close to the front door that I
could barely get in. I would have been just as happy with a smaller room with
one double bed, and a bit more floor space around the entrance way.
I walked across the highway, had a veggie burger at Boston
Pizza and after a brief walk to nowhere, went to bed early. It had been another
successful day. Tomorrow I would start the trek across the Prairies.
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