On the Road Again 2012 #8

One of my little pleasures of travelling is, after a long day, to find a restaurant where the locals hang out so that along with my beer and a meal I can observe the interactions. Sometimes I am lucky enough to find a greasy spoon and have the chance to have a few words with the waitress, other times it is a Boston Pizza or a Casey's that I sit in. Either way it provides a brief window into that community. I usually am able after my meal to go for a walk around the town and see what kind of stores line the main streets, to see who if anyone who is hanging around the corners. I have walked down the streets of towns from Massey, Ontario to Tofino on Vancouver Island; I have paused at those corners and occasionally walked down darkened alleys in Sault St. Marie, Calgary,Winnipeg or Vancouver; and I have walked along quiet residential streets in towns as far apart as Thunder Bay and Nanaimo all because I am curious about the people who live in those places. My note books and my memory banks are full of those observations. I will never use them but it gives me pleasure to collect them. I did not do any of those things in Peace River, Alberta.

The motel was nice. The room was perhaps the largest I have ever been in. The king size bed was far more than I needed for a single nights sleep alone. I think a family of four or five could have fitted quite nicely on to the bed. It felt overly large and almost uncomfortable. When I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and realized that I my very expensive mouth guard (that the dentist says that I need to wear to save my even more expensive gold crowns from shattering) had fallen out and was lost somewhere in the bed, the bed took on enormous dimensions.

The room itself was also over sized with an electric fireplace in one corner and enough room left over to teach someone ballroom dancing. The television was so far away from the bed that I had to turn up the volume to hear the weather forecast for the next day.

Between the size of the bed and the room in general, one has to wonder who would expect that much space. Surely not the guys on the rigs. Motel accommodation is apparently in short supply and I was told that the big exploration companies front the money to the motel chains so that they can build more, and bigger motels for the workers.

There was no restaurant that I could find that was open except the Chinese restaurant attached to the motel. There were no none meat dishes on the menu except for rice so I thanked them kindly and left. I walked across the highway to a grocery that was open 24 hours and bought a egg salad sandwich and bag of chips and an apple juice. Not quite the meal I was planning on. There may have been, in fact I am quite sure that there were other restaurants in town, I just could not figure out how to find the centre of the down.

Except for the search for mouth guard and the fact that it was a lot brighter at 12:00 than I am use to - I slept well.

p.s. it may have been the best bought egg salad sandwich I have ever had and I don't think it is because I was really hungry not having eaten all day.

On the road Again 2012 #7

Valleyview, Alberta - or at least the little part I saw of it looked like a crossroads to other places. The description of the town from their own website confirms that perspective:

 "At the Crossroads to Opportunity - 350 kms north of Edmonton and 115 kms east of the City of   Grande Prairie.  The Town of Valleyview is strategically located at important crossroads that lead to Canada's north. Excellent paved Highways lead the traveller to northern adventure via Highway 49 leading to Peace River and the Mackenzie Highway that will take you to the Northwest Territories, and Highway 43 leading to Dawson Creek, the Alaska Highway and adventure in northeastern British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska.  Population: Town of Valleyview 1,884 and the trading area 5,000." (source http://valleyview.govoffice.com/)

There were a number of motels that I could see from my vantage point, there were a lot of both pick-up trucks and larger tanker trucks passing me by and I could see family vehicles hauling fairly large trailers stopping to take their dog for a walk and then moving on. Many of the larger trucks left a raw oily smell in the air as they roared past. The smell slightly turned my stomach.  While it was nothing specific or unusual I had a sense of discomfort, or not belonging to this culture of oil exploration. Perhaps I was just tired or being over sensitive but something felt a bit unwelcoming.Or perhaps the feeling was generated by a few rude comments directed at me, made by folks as they drove by. As I have said before - I wish I could tell people that while I can get the tone of their slurs, it is really hard to hear what someones shouts out of the vehicle as they zoom by at 80 or a 100 kilometers an hour.

I was there at that corner of highways for quite a while and as it was starting to get late (by my watch, not the height of the sun in the sky) I, in spite of it being a poor travelling day, was getting ready to walk over to the nearest motel. Just after I made a call to my daughter to say that I was still alive etc, a large pick-up truck with a back seat that seemed larger than the combined square footage of the front and back seat of my car stopped. There was a couple in the front seat. The male driver asked me if I was going to Edmonton. Which may seem like a strange question considering that I had spent most of the day, albeit somewhat unsuccessfully, trying to get away from that city. I suspect that my sign which on one side said "Yellowknife" and on the other side said "Edmonton" had been accidentally flipped over and was showing the wrong city. The good folks were just stopping to tell me I was going in the wrong direction.. But when they heard where I was going they didn't have the heart to refuse a ride so I got in. Perhaps I should use that tactic more often!

It was only a hour and a half drive to the town of Peace River which is surprisingly little time to talk and to get to know someone. They were off for a weekend in the Peace River country. He was an oil rig worker ( I can never get straight what all of the jobs are around a rig - so I am never sure what the guys actually do) somewhere near Edmonton but they both loved the northern Alberta country and would move there if it was not so far away from their families. They had two young children at home and I think the woman was a stay-at-home mom. He had done some hitchhiking when he was around 16 or so throughout parts of BC but I am fairly sure that I was his wife's first experience with hitchhiking.

We mostly talked about the oil exploration that was happening in the area. He talked about the "oil sands" that had been discovered near Peace River and the fact that because there was no pipe line to transport the raw crude, it was being shipped in tanker trucks. He thought for every $10,000 dollars in crude heading south, it was costing $3,000 in shipping. Not, in my mind or his, a good use of resources.

We went around a long curve and there, in a valley, was an absolutely perfect setting for a town.

 While the picture does not show it - the sun on the Peace River was quite glorious. Unfortunately the closer we got, the less attractive the town became.  Peace River appeared to be turning into an industrial area. I understand the importance of jobs and the need for folks to feed their families and pay for their mortgages - but destroying the character and the beauty of an area seems to be a very high price indeed.

After some discussion and considering it was around 9:00 pm, they dropped me off at a motel on the northern edges of the town.

Peace River is a scenic, vibrant, urban centre in Alberta's northwest and is home to over 6,000 residents. The community is situated in the Peace River Valley and straddles the banks of the mighty Peace River. The town is within a five hours’ drive north of Edmonton and two hours northeast of Grande Prairie and is serviced with air, rail and bus links. 

 Peace River provides a wide range of services to the surrounding areas. Among these are an impressive combination of businesses including locally owned downtown stores and restaurants, as well as national and international retailers.In October, Peace River was awarded the 'Cultureville 2011' title in the prestigious competition that celebrates CBC's 75th Anniversary and Alberta Art Days. When accepting the award, Mayor Lorne Mann said it was an endorsement of Peace River's thriving community. (source http://www.peaceriver.ca/)


p.s. the couple had a wee dog in the back seat that mostly ignored me and a large dog in the back of the truck. I thought of Susan as I watched through the back window as the dog struggled to keep its balance as we went around curves etc. She would not have been happy.

On the Road Again 2012 #6

Hitchhiking is a strange process. On long days it can be potentially full of despair and frustrations coupled with sometimes relatively brief moments of excitement. I say "potentially" because the real trick of hitchhiking is not in the clothes that I wear or how nice my sign looks but rather in the art of being relaxed for long periods of time - of deleting (not just pretending it is not there) all sense of urgency about the next ride or where I am going to sleep that night. Hitchhiking is not just about that high one gets when a car stops and a ride is offered, it is also about managing the times in between. I suspect that those of us who sometimes display some of the characteristics of a mild addiction to this activity are those who have learned how to enjoy the alone times almost as much as when we are in a car.

I would have lots of time this trip to perfect that art of managing the "in between times".

Dennis, my next driver, was on the way back from a funeral (of his great uncle) in southern Saskatchewan. He had not seen his sister from Ontario, cousins or other family members for some time so the funeral appears to have turned into a family gathering/reunion and auction of the property. He was on his way back to his home town of Mackenzie B.C. 

(Mackenzie  has a population of 5,452. It is located in the Central Interior of British Columbia, lying at the bottom of the Omineca Mountain Range, with the Rocky Mountains to the east. Mackenzie is 120 miles (185 km) north of Prince George and 18 miles (27 km) west of the junction of Highway 39 and Highway 97).  ( source http://www.mackenziebc.com/).

Dennis was by profession a pipe fitter. He had lived and worked in the general area for over 30 years. For much of that time he had worked at a local pulp mill. It is always interesting talking to someone who has made their living at least in part because of clear cutting and the devastation of the old growth forest. Those who I have met see their industry as just that - an industry that uses the resources around them to survive. While almost all that I have met have an immense appreciation for the natural beauty that surrounds them, there is for them no disconnect between their love of the land (which I have found to be frequently far more real than some city tree-hugger) and the destruction of that beauty. I sometimes wonder if it is because they are part of the land and therefore can appreciate the life cycles of the forest or if it is because there appears to be so much untouched forest ahead of them that they never see the destruction behind them.

I don't think I have ever actually talked to a pipe fitter about what they did. It was interesting. Dennis had been re-hired to work at the mill after he had retired and the mill had been closed. Part of his job was to train the new workers who had been to a community college, had their papers as being a pipe fitter but in fact had little real experience in how to do the job. It sounded as if, at least from Dennis' mind, the colleges were doing a rather poor job of training the incoming batch of pipe fitters. I had no idea that pipe fitting which in itself is a rather simple trade is so complex in both in terms of its uses and the amount of creativity required to translate the design into something that works.

In spite of an interesting conversation that lasted for most of the three and half hours I was in his car, the thing that I will probably remember the most about Dennis was his teeth. Or rather the lack thereof. While I didn't stare too closely it appeared as if he only had four visible teeth in the front of his mouth. I suppose I shall wonder for some time whether he was just tired of wearing his dentures or if dental care in Northern BC was somewhat substandard.

Dennis let me out on the outskirts of Valleyview, Alberta. He was going strait to Dawson, I was turning left heading towards Yellowknife.

On the Road Again 2012 #5

As happens so often, what appears to be a really great spot for getting a ride turned out not to be as good as I thought. Susan had let me off at a small turn-out area where cars and trucks could pull of the road, dump their garbage into the waste bins, stretch their legs and then start driving again. Alberta may more of these turn-out areas than any other province. They are a great service for the public if for no other reason that they may reduce the amount of garbage on the highways.

This particular turn-out was a very popular one. It always had a couple of trucks and a few cars parked in it. I would guess that over the hour and half I was there perhaps a total of twenty vehicles used it. Which meant that it was a very busy and somewhat chaotic place for me. On the highway there were three lanes merging into two and therefore drivers were far more likely to be watching the traffic around them rather than looking for hitchhikers. I was hoping that perhaps a car that stopped for a break would look me over and offer a drive but most of the cars seemed to contain multiple passengers along with assorted cottage toys and therefore there was no room for me.

Finally a bright blue, new looking large pick up truck stopped and I hopped in. I like these trucks. There is lots of room in the back seat of the extended cab for my pack, the front seats are really comfortable and the drivers seemed to be inclined to travel well over the speed limit. I saw a lot of those trucks this trip. In spite of the fact that most of the ones that I saw zoomed right by me, on this trip I probably got more rides in large pick-ups than in any other type of vehicle.

My new driver, John was a young man who was off to some lake to get things, including his boat, ready for a party later that day. He looked far too young to have such nice toys! I was his first hitchhiker ever and he was even more excited about the ride than I was. I was grateful for the ride - I truly was but someone needs to give first time drivers some lessons on what to say. Saying that "I am only going up the road 20 minutes or so but there is an good intersection right there " sounds good and it will attract most hitchhikers into a car. The truth would be better such as ""I am only going up the road 20 minutes and  I am going turn off the highway on to a dirt road. It is in the middle of nowhere." I perhaps would have taken the ride but at least I would not have been shocked when he turned off the highway. It was far too short of a ride for me to get any sense of who John was other than a young man enjoying life.

There was no point me staying where he let me off so I walked up the highway for a kilometer or so until I was standing across from a restaurant/gas station on the other side of the divided highway. If nothing else it gave me something to watch as I waited for the next car to stop. It is frequently interesting watching the coming and goings of such places. I obviously can't hear conversations so I get to create stories of the families that stop and get out. For example I watched a couple transfer some suitcases and gear from a truck to a car and then eventually two children moved over as well. A man and a woman gave each other a long and what appeared to be an affection hug. Then they got into their vehicles and crossed the highway about seven to eight minutes apart. What was interesting that the male/dad was in the car with the kids and the woman/mother was in the truck alone.I must have played around for thirty minutes on all of the possible scenarios that would have a male and a female transfer kids and belongings and then both head north. It now sounds like a silly thing to do but mid-day on the Friday before a long weekend, in the middle of what felt like nowhere, approximately 1400 kilometers from my destination, under the hot sun - it kept me entertained.

What of the good things that my trip with John had done was getting me away from all of the local traffic.Where he had picked me there was so much traffic that was difficult to safely pick me up. The traffic twenty or so minutes up the road was much less and I certainly had lots of time to focus on each individual car or truck as it approached me. Finally one slowed down enough to look me over and decide that I was trustworthy enough or at least interesting enough to be worth the gamble.

On the Road Again 2012 #4

Susan was loud, opinionated, feisty and argumentative. She may have been academically uneducated but I suspect she was a superb organizer and a very hard worker. I have no doubt that she kept her promises to both her employers and her drivers. I would also guess that she also kept her word to those with whom she was fighting with. I would think that Susan would be capable of holding a grudge for some time. She would be a formidable enemy.

She was a great driver for me. She loved to talk about her business and its complexities. She saw it as an important job and worked hard to ensure that what she and her teams were escorting got there safely. Considering that one of her contracts was to pilot the trucks carrying the blades for wind turbines that are worth four million dollars, and doing so down roads that are filled with twists and turns and narrow bridges, it is an important job. I am glad that there are those who take it seriously.

Susan projected this persona of a "tough old broad" who took no crap from anyone. I think this was partially true but she was also a kind, caring soul who not only offered me a great ride, but who also cried when she saw a dead animal on the road or someone mistreating a dog. She was open and accepting of most people (although she did have a significant chip on her shoulder about Albertans and she like most Canadians struggled with finding a balance about appreciating and wanting new immigrants and trying to maintain a sense of Canadian identity) and in spite of working in a lonely profession she was very social.

Her relationship with her live house mate was complicated. They did not share a bed but it appeared that they shared almost everything else. When times were tough they supported each other -both emotionally and financially - they talked on the phone at least once a day no matter where they were (he too was a truck driver and they didn't seen each other for months at a time) and they appeared to share some common values and dreams. For example Linda was planning to go to California to see some motorbike races but cancelled her plans as she knew he was going to be home for a week.

Susan was going towards Jasper so she she was planning to let me off on the west side of Edmonton. I jokingly said as we were passing through the Edmonton "damn I missed seeing the big Mall!!" She offered to go back and let me off.  I however, was quite content to get out of the truck at what looked like a great spot.We shook hands and she was off and I once again was on my own.

As I stood there I realize how good my trip had been so far. Two rides and I had gone somewhere around 1,000 kilometer. It was only 11:30 on Friday. Not too shoddy at all!!

p.s. the brilliance of the Canola flowers through Manitoba and Saskatchewan was extraordinarily. I wish I had taken pictures of them. Fields and fields - perhaps hundreds of acres of these incredible yellow flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. And then every once in awhile there would be a flax field with its soft blue flowers just starting to show. Who says the Prairies are boring?

On the Road Again 2012 #3

I am, on occasion, some what apprehensive about where I am standing waiting for a ride. Sometimes the shoulder feels a bit narrow and when a big truck goes by it just feels a bit too close for comfort. Other times there is a serious drop off just past the shoulder and I worry about stumbling and then rolling down into a deep ditch. But in this location on the outskirts of Portage la Prairie I seriously thought about digging through my pack to find some strong rope to lash myself to the guard rails to ensure that I would not be blown across the highway. However as tying myself to the guard rail would be counter productive in terms of getting a ride, I decided to walk further down the road in the hopes that I could find some shelter from the wind. That might have been a good plan except for the fact that to do that I had to go up a small hill that was fully exposed to the wind. With the pack on my back it was all that I could do to walk. It felt as if that at any moment I could be swooped up like a bearded Dorothy and tossed to a different world, or at least to a different county. On the other side of the hill the land was wide open and if anything the wind felt even stronger. The Trans-Canada stretched out in front of me and I could see for miles. And for miles there did not appear to be a spot sheltered from the wind.

I was therefore more than pleased when a large pickup truck stopped. I was surprised that he had stopped because as it passed me it looked like a tow truck with the large lights in back and I thought I had seen a female driver. I was sort of right on both accounts. Linda was a woman and the truck was while not a tow truck, was a working truck. Susan owned a company that acted as pilots for over-large vehicles or rather trucks hauling over large materials or equipment. One sees that sort of traffic all of the time. A large truck with a special banner over the front bumper goes past hauling some large tractor and thirty feet behind there is a pick-up truck with flashing lights. I, like most people assumed that the job of the person following would be boring and easy. I was wrong. Over the next 1,000 km, spread over a day and a bit, I was to learn about the pilot's job.

Susan when she picked me up told me that she was going to Edmonton but she  would probably get no further than North Battleford. While I had heard of that town, I had not a clue where it was. I didn't care. I was out of the wind. Certainly by the time we got close to the "Battlefords" ( there are two of them, Battleford and North Battlefords but the sign says :"Welcome to the Battlefords") she was yawning. We stayed ( in separate rooms) in a Super 8 with me getting her trucker's discount. Susan went to bed early and I wandered across the street for a grill cheese sandwich.

We were on the road the next morning by 6:45.

On the Road Again 2012 #2

Continuing with the journey............ the train to Winnipeg arrived almost an hour early. The station wasn't "ready for us" so we were not allowed to disembark for 30 minutes. None-the-less I was still out of the train station by 7:40 and on my first bus by just before 8:00 AM.

I have always liked Winnipeg's bus system. The routes are direct and especially on a weekday, there seem to be lots of buses on the road. I have also liked bus travel in Winnipeg because the drivers have almost always been wonderfully helpful and frequently quite talkative to me. Riding an efficient, friendly and helpful transit system has been a great way to start this leg of the journey. My two bus drivers this time were not nearly as friendly as other times but then it was rush hour and the streets were busy. I was quite satisfied for them to do their job well. And when my stop was approaching, while I knew it was time to get off, it was nice of the driver to remind me that she had taken me as far as she could.

It was a grand day. There was a nice breeze, the sky was generally clear and I was off on another adventure. Could things get better than that? After the usually 30 minute walk to the highway, I dropped my pack, put on my smile and showed the drivers my sign that said "Edmonton". Because both "Edmonton and "Yellowknife" are long names I had created an extra large signs to make it easier for my potential drivers to see where I was going and hopefully to pique their curiosity enough to stop and offer me a drive. I had had such exceptional luck last year in getting quick rides that it was hard to temper my expectations as to the frequency and length of my rides.  In the dark days of winter, my travel fantasies are almost always about quick, long and enjoyable rides. I always seem to forget that for long periods I am in the middle of nowhere, talking to myself and every time a car goes by I (silently) beg for a ride.  I was fortunate that I only had to wait about twenty-five minutes for my first ride of the trip.There would be much longer waits in the future.

Dennis who was 67 was a fount of information about the area. While he was now retired he had been buying and selling land, doing deals with people and flipping houses for much of his life. As we drove the 81 kilometers between Winnipeg and Portage la Prairie he talked about the people he knew who owned property along the way, the deals that he had missed out on as a young man and the Mennonites who worked some of the land we were passing. It was a fascinating both because he had known so many people and because unlike perhaps one's perception of real estate people - Dennis seemed like a generous and caring man.

 I was sorry he had to let me out on the east end of Portage la Prairie (or just Portage as we local or frequent travellers call it). I was sorry for two reasons: one because I liked him and his stories and two because the Trans-Canada at the east end of Portage is a really crummy spot to get a ride. There is a lot of local traffic (or so it appears), there is a long curve that makes it difficult to find a good place to stand and there are too many cars that are going far too fast to stop. This year the spot was made even worse by the fact that it was windy. So windy that I had to tie my hat on my head so that it would not blow away, so windy that I had somewhat realistic visions of being blown across the highway in to be crushed by some transport truck.