On the Road Again 2015 #11

I awoke to a gorgeous morning. One could tell that it was going to be a hot one, but at 6:00 AM, the air was fresh, crisp and clean. I had not been able to see it the night before, but the front yard I had slept in was enclosed by a fairly high wooden fence. It felt quite private. While there were houses on either side, there was an empty field across the road. It all had a sense of being a rural area as opposed to an over crowded tourist area. Perhaps my impressions of the town were a bit misguided.

 I lay in my sleeping bag for a while, wondering if my getting a ride, and being such a bad guest last night meant that I should hang around for awhile. But I decided not. So I went into the house, found the bathroom, brushed my teeth, packed up my stuff and left. My driver had given me clear directions as to where to find the end of town. They were good directions, I just didn't follow them. So I ended up walking around for a bit before I figured out what he meant. If there had been a place open to get breakfast, I would have stopped, but it was July 1st and Kelowna wasn't ready to party so early in the morning.

My driver from the night before had been right ..... it was a good place to hitch from or at least it would have been if there had been lots of traffic. I suspect that it was just too early for a high volume of traffic. I think I was there for almost an hour before I car stopped for me.

My new driver was a guy in his mid thirties. He worked as a salesman for a restaurant equipment firm. According to him, while business was not booming, it was nice and steady. I think he was the natural salesman type of person. He didn't need to be pushy or overly aggressive, he was well spoken, knew his product, liked the people he dealt with and perhaps most importantly, he liked his job. He was off on a six hour bike trip.

The first step was to hide his bike near where he wanted to start from, then drive to the small town of Hope, leave his car there, hitchhike back up to the bike and then bike down to where his car was. It sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn't. He had completed other parts of the Trans-Canada Trail in the area using the same procedure. This was his last segment. To suggest that he was looking forward to the trip would be an understatement. He was really excited and spent a fair amount of time talking about it. It was fun to spend time with someone who was passionate about what he was doing.

We also talked about his 14-15 year old daughter. She didn't live with him, but clearly he was doing his best to be a good dad. He was really proud of the fact that she knew how important this ride was for him and was supportive of him taking a day off from their time together for him to do it.

He let me out for a bit at a potential hitchhiking spot while he hid his bike (I am not too sure if he trusted me a 100%). While I did stick out my thumb whenever there was a car, I was not too serious as I knew he would pick me up and continue down to Hope - which he did twenty minutes later. We continued on to Hope, he let me out at a place where he could leave his car, I wished him a great ride, he said good luck getting to the ferry terminal and we separated. It was a good ride for a number of reasons. I got it early in the morning, I enjoyed his company and perhaps most important, while it was still hot in Hope, it would not get nearly as warm as it would in Kelowna. It felt like a good start to the day.