On the Road again 2013 Addendum

At some point as I lay in bed last night or early this morning I realized that I had not talked about some of my drivers. This summer I did a lot of hitchhiking on both Vancouver and Salt Spring Islands. Some of these rides were only five minutes, some for almost an hour. Without those drivers I would not have been able to travel around as easily as I did.

On Salt Spring, the Vesuvius ferry terminal is probably only a 15 minute drive from Ganges. About half way along there are the four corners, where on one corner is a large sports field, on the other corner a fire hall and on another corner an old but still active wooden movie theater. From here one can either go to the north end of the island or turn left towards the ferry. More often than not I get a ride from a spot just outside of Ganges to the four corners and then another ride directly to the ferry. During those short rides my driver and I seldom get much past talking about the weather. On occasion one of those rides is not only going to the ferry but are going across to Duncan. That means that I get a ride on the other side as well. One of those drivers this year was a transplant from Australia. As we had a 30 minute wait for the ferry we had a great conversation about politics and teaching and sociology. He had been one of the professors on the dissertation committee of one of my professors from Trent University. So we had a lot to talk about. It was a really pleasant afternoon.

Getting a drive from the ferry into Ganges was always a bit tricky. I don't think I have ever gotten a ride from someone who has been on the ferry. By the time I can get myself into a safe spot to stand - they have long disembarked. But I seldom have to wait too long, or at least it is such a lovely place to be that I don't mind waiting.But again the trip is so short that I never really get to know the driver. They have recently done a lot road work around Ganges. As in most cases when towns improve the roads, they have not made hitchhiking any easier by installing sidewalks where the shoulders use to be.

Getting a ride from the Croften side into Duncan is much more problematic. Again, by the time that I get to a safe spot to stand - most of the cars that were on the ferry have long driven by. It is also not quite as pleasant a place to stand. There are some folks who spend their time on the ferry knocking on car windows asking for a ride. I think it works well for them. I have never been comfortable doing that. It quite frankly feels too much like begging.  So I walk up a small hill until the road flattens out and wait until someone is going my way. There are at least two ways of getting from Croften to Duncan. The shortest route that most of the locals use is confusing and if I ever got let out half way I am not too sure if I could find my way home. So I take the long way and sometimes it does take me a long time to get a ride.

I also made a trip into Victoria and got a couple of rides relatively easily. Most memorable was from a young mother with her under 3 year old daughter. They were from Campbell River and were going down to Victoria for a doctor's appointment. That is about a three hour drive. While I was surprised that a mom stopped for me - I think she just wanted a break from her daughter who, by the time I got picked up, was understandably getting a bit cranky. So the daughter and I played some game that involved her throwing a stuff animal on the floor and then crying until I picked it up and gave it to her. Repeat as often as needed or desired by the child in the car seat.

I suspect that there were perhaps another 10-15 drives that I had this summer. I am grateful to all of those people who picked me up, cleaned the car seat so there was room for me and my stuff - all for a 10 minute drive. I wish I could bottle whatever inspired them to stop.  The world needs more of it.  But is the people at the ends of my travels that I need to thank the most. My daughter in Sudbury and my son and his wife in Duncan who throughout the year pick me up or deliver me to the various train stations, or bus, ferry or airplane terminals that I arrive at or depart from. I am quite sure that none of them ever dreamed that they were be chauffeuring their dad as much as they do. And best of all they do it with such grace and humour that not once have I ever felt that I was imposing on them.  I am sure there are times when it feels to them as if I am. So thanks kids. If I don't say thank you loud enough or often enough - THANK YOU!!

Now I am done.

On the Road Again 2013 # 29

And so that is my story of how I went from Sudbury to Vancouver Island, travelled around a bit and then came home. Nothing particularly extraordinary or amazing - just what I have been doing for the past few years. Actually when I think about it, I have been travelling for quite a few years. If perhaps the stories are getting a bit boring to the reader or that eventually that all of the rides start to seem to be the same, that is only because I lack the ability to find the words so that I can share the feeling I get when I am on the road. It is, in part, the sense of absolute freedom combined with the total lack of control over any part of my existence that I find so exhilarating. But that is only part of why I do it.

It may be that hitchhiking is just my way of finding adventure. Perhaps people who get involved in extreme sports or climb mountains or kayak in the Arctic Ocean get the same kind of high as I do when after a few minutes or eight hours standing on the side of the road, a vehicle stops and some kind soul offers me a ride. Maybe it is just a simple as I am spending an extended time in my second childhood. I don`t know what it is - Lord knows I have lots of time to think about it when I am on the road and yet I don`t. Whether my pack is on my back or beside me on the shoulder; whether I am climbing what seems an impossibly high hill to get to a safe spot to stand or rambling along a pretty logging road I don`t think very much at all about why I am doing it. I am just doing it and that seems to be a good enough reason. There are times when it is raining, when a cold wind is blowing, or when I am stuck in a spot where I know (or at least I think I know) that I am not going to get a ride for awhile that I curse my stupidity or my silliness at some decision I have made. But I never regret doing what I am doing.

If I have to define myself - I tell people that I am a dad, a granddad and a hitchhiker. All of the other attributes don't really matter to me; they don't define me. At some point every year I wonder how much longer I will be able to travel this way; for how much longer will my body be able to manage the walking, the pack and the hard ground. But I know that every year sometime around February the urge to pack my bag and start travelling will be all consuming. I know I will have no choice but to start travelling again. It is what I am.


I have however, thought a lot about why it has taken me so long to get this story done. It is now almost mid-November and I have just finished the tale. It feels as if I have taken twice as long as I normally do. There are perhaps a couple of reasons. One is that school continues to consume me. I have a great schedule and I am teaching subjects that I like but the marking and the preparation takes a lot of my time. Secondly I have been occupied with wool a lot this fall. I started going to the Saturday Farmer's market to sell my wares and much to my delight I have been selling stuff. So much so that I have had to work relatively hard to replenish my stock. Because I had to get ready for a craft show this past weekend - I have spent most of my free time especially in the last month playing with wool. But I think the primary reason why I have been so slow in writing is that I have been wearing headphones and my capacity to think about what I want to write has been limited.

I live in an apartment with my landlady below me and a couple of young people above me. I am respectful of how much noise I make and therefore I like to keep my stereo fairly low. However, carding can be noisy and the loom room is quite far away from the speakers. So my choice has been to either have the music or the talking book on really loud - or to wear my wireless headphones. I have chosen the latter option. Because of the headphone,  the words or the music are so totally within my head that it is difficult to think about anything other than the physical task that I am doing. I wonder if that is why the arts of conversation or of political debate are dying out. People have in their ear buds and  the capacity to think is destroyed. I wonder if that is why so many of my drivers absolutely crave conversation. So many people spend all of their free time with the music being directed into their brains to the exclusion of all other stimuli (the best headphones are designed to cancel out all other noise) that they don't need to think or to talk with anyone else.

At any rate I am done for another year. I am glad that I am finished that story. In a few months I will start thinking about the next one. I am thinking about going to the Yukon nest year.........

On the Road Again 2013 # 28

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.

Ted had been on a car trip to visit Edmonton and was on his way home. He had, on his way west, gone through Sault St. Marie and wanted to go the more northern route on the way home. While it would have been so much easier for me if he had wanted to go through Sudbury, I was quite content to travel with him as far east as Nipigon. I would decide then whether to stay on highway 11 and go through North Bay or get out and go down #17. That was four hours away and given the fact that it was getting late I knew that I would not need to make a decision tonight.

There are times when some of my conversations with the driver of what ever car I am in are quite focused and stay on one subject. There are other times when either the driver or I do most of the talking. But I think between Ted and I the conversation was pretty equal although we did bounce around a lot. We knew that we were going to be together for awhile and therefore there was no rush to get all of our stories out quickly. Ted was always quite enjoyable because he had no axe to grind. Unlike some of my other drivers he had no pet peeve that he had been been storing up for all of those miles, almost bursting to get it out; impatient to share it with someone.So our conversation sort of meandered along.

We had a lot to talk about and the miles flew by quite nicely. Ted was a teacher in the correctional system. I don't think he told me which prison he worked at or if he did I didn't make note of it. Ted had some interesting stories about his career in the prisons . He had a perspective that I have never thought about before. When one thinks about prisons there are usually just two main characters -the inmates and the guards but in fact there is a small group of people who are neither. That is - those who provide the educational and other programs to the inmates. From what Ted said - neither of the groups, especially the guards gave a lot of respect to those professionals. It was a fascinating conversation and I learned a lot. Not that I understood all of the policies he talked about but at least I understood what happened. Things were also a lot more complicated then I assumed. For example the number of steps that the system needs to take to ensure that some prisoners never get in contact with each other surprised me. I guess I just assumed that they were not that careful.

Ted was also very passionate about his family history and had dome a lot of research about his Arcadian answers. In fact part of the reason for this trip was so that he could visit some of his relatives across Canada. I was more than a bit envious that he had so many relatives and knew how he was connected to them. Some of them the connections went back to the 1700s. I could see how following a family tree could be so time consuming and so absorbing.

We got to Kakabeka Falls well after dark. I was tired. It had been a long day. Ted was more than just tired. He had wanted to get to Thunder Bay and we were close enough. He really needed to stop.We chose a motel (The Telstar motel) and checked into two separate rooms. Ted did offer to share a room, but I wanted some private space. It felt as if it had been a long time since I had been in a room by myself. Both Ted and I used our technology to pass messages out to the outside world via the internet, I walked for a bit to stretch my legs and then went to bed. I was a bit nervous. The last time I had been in this general area and had found a motel late at night, my driver had abandoned me the next morning. I slept well and was up early the next morning, haunting the area around his car. At around 7:15 I bang on his door as we had agreed - he was up but just barely.

While it had been 24 hours since I had eaten a meal I was afraid to go have breakfast. I hung around and waited under the assumption that we would eat together. When Ted got out of his room- we left right away. He preferred to drive for awhile and then eat. Pity. I should have eaten at the restaurant. It would have been better meal than the one I ate at some Tim Horton's this side of Thunder Bay.

As we passed the turn-off to the Sault I thought about getting out and travelling south along #17. But in fact there was no guarantee that I would get a ride. So far, at the rate I was going, I was assured that I would be home late that night. If I got out, I might get a ride quickly or not for hours. As much as I wanted to go along the shore of Lake Superior - I wanted to get home more - in good time. Good company and a nice car going generally in my direction. I would have been a fool to get out.

That day was much the same as our previous time together. Lots to talk about lots of things including dating and when there were the odd quiet bits - that was fine too. One of the things that I remember talking about was the number of women riding Harleys. In the past it was relatively rare to see women driving their own motor bikes. Not only had there been a couple driving their own bikes next door to me at the motel, but I had noticed more than a few times coming east groups of 3-4 women riding together. I wonder if it is because Harley Davidson are making sightly smaller bikes that the women can manage.

I do not know why but it seems to me that on the way west I frequently get a drive from someone who is a crazy fast driver, but on the way east I frequently get a long ride that is a bit slow. Ted, while he had destination targets to reach, was not a fast driver. In fact he was a bit slow and took more breaks than I would have. I don't think he really cared about seeing the towns he stopped in, so he didn't care if he got there late at night. At one point when I called my daughter I thought I would be able to make the last bus to Sudbury. It should have been possible. However by the time it was dark it was clear that we would not be in North Bay until late. With her help we got a motel for Ted and she came and got me.

As I said goodbye to Ted it struck me once again that virtually all of these relationships that I have with my drivers - in spite of the hundreds if not thousands of miles that we travel together (Ted and I traveled about 1500 kilometers together) that they almost always end the same way - a quick handshake and then they are gone. What a strange way to meet people and to travel.

It felt like cheating - I should have/ could have just waited at the bus station until the first bus north in the morning, but I was tired - my trip was done and I could find no reason to sleep outside one more night.