On the Road Again # 26

I am now back in my apartment. I am obviously somewhat behind in my blog postings..... I will continue to discuss my trip in sequential order.

I awoke reasonable refreshed and ready to be on the road again. I had thought about staying in Winnipeg for a day and a half so that I could catch the east bound Via train on Monday afternoon. If I did I would be sure to get back to middle Ontario in time to make the wedding on Friday. While I like Winnipeg, I have never had much luck finding places to eat and I did not want to spend hours walking around with nothing to do. As well the thought of hanging around for 36 hours in a house that felt somewhat unwelcoming was not that attractive. Besides I had done so little hitchhiking this year that I wanted a few more rides before I hung up my pack for the season. So I made the decision to trust in the people who travel the roads.

The bus stop on Portage Street was only a few blocks away from the hostel.  Within 45 minutes of waking up I was at the necessary bus stop. Winnipeg has this really neat electronic system that tells you when the next bus is coming,  Unlike in other cities where there can be some anxiety as to whether or not the bus is coming or if one is even at the right stop, this system takes all the worry out of using  an unfamiliar bus system. The first bus driver was as helpful as all of Winnipeg's bus drivers have been to me. He without hesitation told me which bus I needed to get and where to make the connection. I got off of his bus ten minutes later, waited ten more minutes for the next bus and within half an hour I was at the end of the line. One could not ask for anything smoother. I do however, wish that there was a bus that got me closer to where I needed to be.

It is a long walk, at least an hour and a half, to where the Trans-Canada hooks up with the ring road.  The multi-lane highway was surprisingly busy for a Sunday and while on a couple of occasions I did try to hitchhike it just did not feel as if anyone was going to stop. It was going to be a warm day and withing the first 45 minutes of walking I was already wondering if I had made a mistake in deciding to hitchhike all of the way home. I had walked for well over a hour when I decided it was time to drop my pack, drink some water and stick my thumb out for awhile. While I didn't realize it at the time, I was only about two kilometers from the junction. I was delightfully surprised when a small car slowed and stop. I assumed that it was some guy out doing messages on a Sunday morning and that he would just drive me to the junction of Ring Road and the Trans-Canada. which would have been great.

I was wrong. The car was driven by a young woman and she was going all of the way to Vermillion Bay, Ontario which was a good three hour drive. I had stopped there before and I knew that there were restaurants and places to buy water. It also meant that I would be taken well past all of the tourist/cottager spots around Winnipeg. Getting a ride to the other side of Kenora meant that the traffic on the road would be more likely people heading east towards Thunder Bay. For a Sunday morning ride - I was pleased.

Susan was 29 years old and was heading home to her family in Red Lake which is 2-3 hours north of Vermillion Bay. Red Lake is a mining town that like all such towns in the north has gone through a number of bust and boom cycles. It is a one industry town and if you don't want to work at the mine, then other than a few service type jobs such as working in a store for minimum wage, there is nothing to do.

Susan was planning  to head to college in the fall. She was nervous about it as she had been out of school for some time. So we talked about that. Susan struck me as a hard working, organized person. She certainly seemed bright enough to do well in school. Hopefully I was able to give her some useful suggestions - but in fact she knew everything she needed to know to do well. She was committed, ambitious, and had a life plan. Unless something unforeseen occurs to derail her, she will do wonderfully. In fact I suspect that she could easily become a class leader. The PRN course was being held in her home town which makes all kinds of logical sense except for the fact that all of the students knew each other. I think post secondary education works better when one has the sense of starting something new, where old roles or personae can be changed. That is hard to do when everyone knows you.

We also talked about growing up in a rural area and the complexities of working and living in a mining town. Susan had worked for the mine for a couple of years and had had some employment difficulties in terms of being harassed etc. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when I hear these stories, but I am. I guess I expect that if the bosses are not enlightened at least the unions will be. The sad fact is that as long as our communities and our places of work are shaped by a patriarchal system, women will not have full access to the protection we all deserve.  It was an interesting conversation. I always enjoy talking to Northerners - they have an unique perspective of the country. It is not surprising that they so frequently feel as if the rest of the country does not understand them.

As always when I am in a car driven by an interesting person, the ride ended far too soon. But she was going north and I was heading east and then south.

On the Road Again 2013 # 25

I am now back in my apartment. I am obviously somewhat behind in my blog postings..... I will continue to discuss my trip in sequential order.

The hostel was an older house that in its time must have been quite magnificent. The carving on the staircase, the wood paneling and the size of the living/dining area all spoke of quite luxurious living. However like all hostels that use converted space it was a bit chopped up and cluttered looking. The room that I was given on the main floor was a strange elongated space with only one small window. It seemed to be over packed with furniture, some of which was not in very good shape. The room felt as if it had been or perhaps still was, used for storage. The hostel itself was located in an area that I think was a student ghetto. It was hard to tell as it was the weekend before Labour Day and there were relatively few students around. But it had that feel to it.  Just a few blocks away from the hostel were some extraordinarily beautiful and large homes along the river. They looked like the sort of places that perhaps tenured professors lived.

There were 6-7 people at the hostel when I arrived. Three or four of them were young Germans (at least I think that is the language they were speaking), two of whom were working there. There was a middle aged man who came and went and I suspect was either the owner or at least the manager and then there was a older man who spoke more than a few languages. I think I was the only uni-lingual individual in the house.They seemed to be all busy in the kitchen so I dropped my stuff off in the room, changed into sandals and went out to find a place to eat. Perhaps because it was a Saturday night but the few greasy spoons that were around- were closed. I walked the general area for 30 or do minutes trying to orientate myself but I was just too tired to keep on looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately the only food store in the area was also closed. I knew I had to eat so when I got back to the hostel I made some Chinese noodle soup. I always carry a few packages in my pack. It is lightweight, easy to make and I like the taste.

By the time the soup was ready, the other  folks were finished eating their meal and I sat down to eat alone. It was a strange place - I felt as if I had sort of invaded someone private space and that while they were happy to have my money - there was no need to be particularly welcoming. When I finished eating, I tried to start a conversation about bus routes etc. No one seemed to have a clue how the bus system worked except that as the next day was Sunday the system would not be working well, if at all. I went on-line and found a bus schedule. It appeared to me that there were buses and that I could get to where I needed to be. Usually hostels are fairly good about knowing how the public system works. I rely on those who work on hostels to help me. It is disappointing when they don't know and perhaps more importantly - give the impression that they do not care.

 It was only 9:00 but I was exhausted, in fact I was past the point of being tired. I would have been quite content to go to bed right then. But the middle age man put on a movie on the big flat screen.  I was in the front room on my tablet checking out bus schedules. I could have gotten up and moved to my room but I was too tired to move and so I ended up watching it. It was a silly thing about families and drug smuggling and.... The plot was instantly forgettable and while there were points at which I may have chuckled it really wasn't funny.  As soon as it was over, people started to disperse - I quietly drifted off to bed.

My roommate was the older, multilingual gentleman. He too was getting ready for bed.  We chatted for a few minutes. He told me that he use to hitchhike but now given his age (he was in his 70s) he took the train. The following day he was off on the Polar Bear Express to see the north. I admired his sense of adventure. I suspect that if we had been there longer we would have had an enjoyable chat. As it was it was short. Our conversation ended with him asking me if I minded leaving on the light as he would need to get up a number of times during the night. While normally that might bother me, I am sure that I was already asleep before my eyes closed.

On the Road Again 2013 # 24

I am now back in my apartment. I am obviously somewhat behind in my blog postings..... I will continue to discuss my trip in sequential order.


I bought some more water and walked the few hundred meters back to the highway. I was pleased with myself and life in general. Winnipeg was only 500 kilometers away. It was just after 10:00. How hard could it be to get to the next city by bed time? I was absolutely determined to get a shower and a good night's sleep in a real bed. 48 hours on the road (and counting) was long enough. My last ride had been a great ride but one of the interesting phenomena of hitchhiking (at least for me) is that no matter whow a great ride it has been, no matter how far we have driven or what great conversations we have had, as soon as I get out of the car my mind immediately turns to the next car coming down the road. Alice and I had managed to chat for almost 14 hours with no disagreements or friction. We had both shared bits and pieces of our lives and I think had been pretty honest about our feelings and our failures. I will for months if not years wonder how her court case turned out, whether of not she got to adopt her grandchildren.  But once my thumb is out, my sole focus is not on the past but upon getting another car to stop.

There was a fair amount of traffic on the highway. Unfortunately it seemed as if much of it was turning off the highway either going right towards Indian Head or left to I am not sure where. I was there for almost four hours. My head was buzzing and my fingertips were tingling from all of the caffeine I had drunk. I had not slept for 24+ hours, and the sleep the night before last had been sporadic because of the real or imagine bears near my campsite. I was not asleep on my feet but I do suspect that I might have mentally dozed a bit. The combination of a brain deprived of sleep but kept awake by caffeine  is not a good one for me. I didn't feel sick - but  I knew I was not functioning at anywhere near 100%. It was probably a good thing that I did not get a ride quickly. I was in no shape to fulfill my obligations of a hitchhiker.

Finally at about 2:30 a truck did stop for me. Ted was off to Winnipeg to visit his half sister. If I remember rightly they had found each other through social media and while they had chatted on line - they had never actually met before. He was very open about his life and how it happened that he had a sister who he didn't know. It certainly started off our four hour conversation in a fascinating way. Ted was quite excited about. Personally I would have been scared to death although I am not sure why.

Ted was one of the drivers - there are a surprising number of them- who had seen me and then had turned around to pick me up. That supports my theory that there would be more drivers picking up hitchhikers if they were reminded that there might be some hitchhikers on the road. There are so few of us out there, that drivers do not even think about the possibility.

Ted was a driver for a courier company. He spent most of his time picking up old postage machinery from various companies and returning it to the depot ( I was never clear as to why that job needed to be done in the first place). It was not a great job and Ted was not that excited about it. His first love was film making. He had been employed in the seemingly booming film industry in Saskatchewan and clearly enjoyed the opportunity to be creative. Unfortunate the Province of  Saskatchewan  had decided to cancel its tax strategy for the film companies and the film production companies had fairly quickly decided to move to other parts of Canada where they could get get better tax breaks. People like Ted all of a sudden became unemployable. What a poor decision on the part of the bureaucrats in the government.

We spent part of our trip together talking about possible plots for films that he wanted to make including one about hitchhiking and haunted houses. It would not be a horror movie but rather a semi-documentary that juxtaposed the people one meets on the road with the emotional experience of visiting houses where the spirits of people who lived there, still reside.  It may sound a bit weird now, but it was a great conversation. Ted was very bright, creative and a great conversationalist. He was one of those people who one feels immediately very attracted to. It felt as if we had know each other for years. I would have been delighted if he had been going all of the way to Sudbury.

At some point, we got off the highway and went to a Co-op store. Ted's girlfriend was a fan of the Roughriders football team. She was looking for a special pair of sunglasses in the team colours. He had been told that this Co-op store might have them. They did have a lot of team souvenirs - but unfortunately no sunglasses. We got back on the road and continued to chat about books and life and all kinds of stuff until we got to Winnipeg. I was of course excited and pleased that I would get to sleep in a bed, but I liked Ted so much that I think if he had suggested that we have supper first - I would have said yes. It felt as if we had so much more to talk about. I had never thought about it before but it would be fun to do a film script with someone.

 I, of course, had not reserved a bed at the hostel as I had had no idea whether or not I would make it. Ted kindly used his cell phone to look up the hostels number and let me call them. He then used his GPS to find the place and got me right to the front door. As neither he nor I knew Winnipeg, that took some time and not once did he get frustrated at spending an extra 15-20 minutes trying to get me to a place where I could sleep. Ted was a good man and I appreciated his extra service more than most. I was exhausted and all that I wanted to do was to grab a quick bite to eat at some greasy spoon and then fall asleep. The only thing I wanted to think about was if I should have a shower now or in the morning.