On the Road Again 2012 #29

It was getting late in the afternoon and it was hot and dry. I had stood in this location at least twice before. This part of Canada is not the most visually interesting. The land is flat and the roads are straight. However, there was a large restaurant/gas station/ truck park on my right; just in front of me was the turn off to the big moose and I assume to downtown Moose Jaw. So there was lots of traffic and things to watch. But like so many other places that I have stood, most of the vehicles were local traffic and therefore were not about to pick me up. I had some hopes for the trucks that were pulling out of the parking area but none of them even looked my way. At some point I started to second guess my decision to get on the road again as opposed to waiting for Jay.

However, after about an hour and a half a large black pick up (yes another one of the huge trucks that are great to ride in as there is lots of room for my pack and for my legs to stretch out but consume mountains of gas). My driver was going to Regina. So at least I would end up in a major city that had a significant truck stop.  I was quite relieved.

Joe had just hitchhiked to Calgary to pick up this truck and so he was empathetic to hitchhikers. He, when he had move to Regina for a job as a roofer had not been able to afford to drive his truck east, but now after two months working he was able to fill his gas tank and I think, to do some minor repairs on it. It seemed a bit strange that one could not make money in Calgary as a roofer but one could in Regina. But many of my drivers have told me that Saskatchewan and Manitoba are booming and that there are more jobs than people. Unfortunately Jo had a bit of an accent that I could not place and I had some difficulty understanding him. We spent much of the 75 or so kilometers listening to the radio. I think that Jo was so happy to have his truck back that he really didn’t need conversation.

When he asked me where I wanted off, I misunderstood him. When he talked about it being near a number of gas stations and restaurants I assumed that he was referring to the strip of stores, hotels and gas stations at the east end of town. He wasn’t. He was talking about a few small stations at the west of end of town. I was a bit disappointed when I realized that I was nowhere near where I wanted to be. It was now getting close to 7:30. I could tell that it was going to get dark soon and I was stuck in a city that I did not know and one that in the past has not always been good to me. However I had no choice but to make the 30 minute walk back to the highway and look for a good spot to stand (Jo said it was only 15 minutes but he must walk faster than me. He also gave me his phone number so that if I got stuck in town, he said I could stay with him for the night… another great driver who was prepared to trust me- after only an hour of driving with him. How incredible!!)

I found a spot – chosen in part because it looked as if there was a spot to sleep – right in the middle of a large traffic cloverleaf- but it did have some low lying bushes to hide me from the car lights. It would, I thought, be interesting brushing my teeth the next morning with rush hour traffic zooming by me. I was ten minutes away from calling it a night when he another large four door pick-up truck picked me up. In the front seat were two young men. I suspected, looking at the age of my driver, that he had not had a driver’s license too long. They were just out for a drive. They were not joy riding or being silly and they certainly were sober. Neither of the young men had ever picked up a hitchhiker before and they were so excited about it. They had a thousand questions that just bubbled out. Even before I had answered their first question they had two more questions ready. They were happy to drive me to the east end of town and the Husky gas station.  It was a short ride but a great one. They really got me out of a jam. I hope that they will carefully pick up others. Perhaps they can start a trend in that part of the world.

As I was getting out of the back seat of the truck I felt obliged to warn them the hitchhiking could be a bit risky and that they should not drive home and tell their moms that they wanted to go out on the road. They both assured me that they were not going to tell their parents about me at all!

It had been a strange day. I had not travelled nearly as far as I had wanted to. Part of that was because Jay had been very (unusually so) conscious of his gas mileage and seldom went over 109 km an hour on a highway where I have frequently travelled at 125 km an hour. I had also spent a fair amount on the road watching cars going by me. But I had had three drives and learnt some things. My last two drivers had either offered me a place to stay or had gone out of their way just to help me out. Not too many mile in terms of the road but I had made, I think, three new friends. Which I guess means by any method of measurement one could use, that it had been a good day.

On the Road Again 2012 #28

I don't know why I get up early. I almost never get a ride first thing in the morning. I know myself well enough that if I didn't start to hitch until 10:00 in the morning I would spend the rest of the day wondering if I had missed that perfect ride while I was sleeping. So there I was standing on the road with my thumb stuck out at 7:15. I did not bother with breakfast as I had eaten well the day before.

My goal for the day was to get to Winnipeg although I knew that it would be far more likely that getting to Brandon was the best I could do. As the hours dragged on, my travel goals for the day became less and less ambitious. Finally just after 10:00 AM Jay stopped and picked me up. He was driving a large truck type vehicle. (It is tempting to figure out how much fuel I was party to consuming as I travelled across Canada- it would be a lot). Jay was off to a new job somewhere north of Regina and he was glad of the company He was in his young 30s, had colourful tattoos from the first knuckle of his hands up to his shoulders on both arms and  he was by profession both a welder and an electrician. He worked on the pipelines and loved his job. He was proud of what he did and how well he did it. It seemed as if he was in demand and frequently got calls to work on this rig or that project for a three month stint. While he had left it at home, he even had his own truck with all of the welding stuff. He said it was worth over $80-90,000. He obviously made good money.

He had worked just about everywhere in Alberta on almost every conceivable project. But there had been a price to pay. Jay told me a fair amount about his life and some of the troubles he had gotten into. He made it quite clear that what he was telling me was private. It was not something that he normally told people and it clearly was not for public consumption. I will respect his wishes. But it was interesting that Jay was able to identify that the reason why he felt as if he could talk was that he knew he would not see me again. While I have always known that that is why some of my drivers tell me things that they generally don’t tell their closest friends, Jay may have been my first driver who recognized the situation and articulated it.

Jay’s wife and his young son had also paid a high price for his chosen career and life style. He was frequently gone for months at a time and that makes it difficult to be in a relationship. His former wife was, by his account, just a farm girl who wanted a normal stable life. He had not been able to provide that.  It had only been a few weeks since the divorce proceeding had been finalized. And just that morning  Jay had said good bye to his young son. He was clearly attached to his son and to his wife. He, in spite of all of his comments about it being all over, still was attempting to make rules (for example about dating others) for both of them so that perhaps some reconciliation might be possible.

 I liked Jay. He was rough around the edges, far more interested in himself than anyone else and he had perhaps a slightly glorified vision of his past and his skills. He talked about his mentor who taught him how to weld pipe, about the guys that he had worked with, the complexities of balancing out safety with keeping up with production goals and the people that he had met along his journey. I learnt a lot from him.

As we passed Swift Current he mentioned that he had a female friend who was also a welder and who had just started a job somewhere near Swift Current. When we got to Moose Jaw he wanted to stop and take a picture of the huge moose in a tourist information park. I took a picture of him with the moose so he could send it to his son. Jay got a text from his female friend who was actually working somewhere east of Swift Current; then they called each other; then they decided that they had to see each other. She would drive from Swift Current to see him. She said it would take about an hour and half to get there. Jay said I was welcome to hang around and he would be glad to drive me to Regina when he had finished visiting.  But I didn’t think that would happen anytime soon and I had fears that I would be stuck spending my time under this three-four storey high moose while they did what ever. I was not completely convinced that it was or at least it was going to remain a purely platonic relationship. I did not feel comfortable being a third wheel in this potential Trans-Canada Highway liaison. So I grab my pack, shook Jay’s hand and headed back up to the highway. It was the middle of the afternoon, it was really hot and while I was only an hour away from Regina, I was still seven hours away from Winnipeg.

I don’t want to suggest that I was angry at Jay, because I wasn’t, but at that moment it did feel as if a deal we had negotiated had fallen through. Of course we didn’t really have a deal and I certainly nothing to offer him. All I could ever offer my drivers were my stories and my thoughts. Jay didn’t really need or want either.

On the Road Again 2012 #27

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.

On the Road Again @012 intermission - folk festivals

me home from my second folk festival of the year.  Now I know that summer is over.

The first folk festival was at Providence Farms on Vancouver Island and this weekend was the Shelter Valley Folk Festival near Grafton, just off the 401 near Cobourg. The two festivals have a lot in common. They are both in rather idyllic settings; they are both small and very family centered, and all of the performers tell the audience at both festivals that theirs is the best festivals with the nicest volunteers and audiences. I must confess that I find the last point a bit confusing as on occasion I see the same performer both out west and then later the same year back east. It makes it difficult to believe them. But such comments do please the crowds and make them feel special.

The major difference between the two festivals is that out west on both Friday and Saturday evening large dance bands are the only acts. Everyone there gets up and dances. Everyone who wants to.... the rest just go home or back to their campsite. (The camping area in the woods is really quite remarkable) Whereas at  Shelter Valley the mostly folk music goes on til 11:00.

Small folk festivals feel very much like living in a small town. People who have attended the festival for a long time are sometimes awarded a bit more status than newcomers. The one out west in particularly is quite "cliquey" (I suspect that is not a word), with for example the daughter of one of the founders doing both the opening and closing ceremonies and lots of what feel like inside jokes. But then some of them have been attending the festival for 28 years. It is not surprising that they people are close to each other. The one near Grafton is "only" nine years old and there appears to be much less of a hierarchy.

People who attend regularly usually camp in the same area. At both festivals I know people simply because we have "lived" across the path from each other for four to five year. I don't know their names nor do they know mine, but we chat about who we have seen and whether or not we liked them; the cost of tickets and the weather. Things that ordinary neighbours talk about. It is a nice feeling to be known and welcomed even if it is only for two and half days a year. This year I moved my tent to a new, slightly bigger spot ten feet up the path and one of my neighbours noticed immediately and commented on it. He wasn’t exactly crushed by my move,  but he did wondered why I had left the "old" neighbourhood.

I like folk festivals. I like the food, the people who attend and of course I like the music. At most festivals there are a few performers I know of or may have seen, but quite frequently I have never heard of most of the acts. And that is the exciting thing about festivals. There are always two or three beautiful surprises. I "discover" either an individual singer or group who have the most extraordinary voices or who perhaps writes the most amazing lyrics (or both). And then I follow them around to different workshops just to hear them. And then there are those occasions when in a workshop - performers who may never have met the others on the stage start to play together. Something organic in their mutual chemistry occurs and a special music is created. A music that can only exist when talented and generous musicians are having fun playing together. Those times are magical. People walk away from those workshop sessions with a smile and can talk about nothing else except for the music that started off being created for them, the audience, but ended up being music created only for that player who has been, for a few minutes, transported to a unique and beautiful world. Even a few years later people talk about those truly great moments when a handful of players created something so special that the memory of the sound and the look upon the players faces becomes burned forever into that part of our brain that is reserved for images of heaven.

I only buy two CDs at each festival. It is sometimes a very hard decision which ones to buy. There have been other years when I have not bought any because no one attracted me enough to spend $20. I not have yet listened to the ones I bought in July. It may be another month or two before I unwrap the cellophane and put them on the CD player. I am saving them for a special day, perhaps the first true day of fall. And on that cold, rainy day when summer seems so far in the past that one has to dig deep into the memory’s core just to retrieve a faint glimmer – those singers will warm my soul and bring those memories alive once again.

My singers this year are: Jon Brooks and Mary Gauthier who I heard at the Cowichan Folk  and Del Barber and the Once (a group from Newfoundland) who I heard just this weekend