On the Road Again 2015 #16

I was in no rush as I got off the ferry. From my reading of the bus schedule to Lion's Bay, I had at least an hour to waste. Which was fine by me..... it would give me time to get myself psychologically adjusted to being on the road again. The downside of this hour's wait was that it had started to rain. I was not that happy about getting wet before I even started the trip. I need not have worried about getting a little bit wet.

I had read the bus schedule wrong - there was a bus going the short distance to Lion's Bay at 8:25, an hour earlier than I thought.  I was really excited to be getting my trip off to an early start. The bus driver, however, was particularly helpful. When I asked if he knew of some good hitchhiking spots along the way - the answer was a blunt "no". I could in part understand his answer. While there were a few wider spots in the shoulder - none of them looked that safe to me.  I stayed on the bus as far north as it went in part because it was, by that time, raining so hard that the bus's windshield wipers could not keep the windows clear.  When the driver informed me that the next stop was the last stop, I hoisted my bag onto one shoulder and prepared to enter the deluge.

After getting off the bus, I walked a couple of hundred meters back to the highway. Fortunately along the way, I had to go under an underpass where it was dry. I put on the pack's nylon, supposedly waterproof cover, took my fleece and my raincoat out of my pack, put them one and trudged into the windy, wet and just generally miserable weather. It was wretched. The wind was nasty, driving the rain into the crevices between the coat and my neck. Within minutes my pants were wet and within half an hour the money in my wallet was wet. I took off my glasses and stuck them into the front pocket of my shirt. There was no point wearing them - they were so wet that I could not see out of them. There were pools of water on the highway - a highway that generally goes up - there was just nowhere left for the water to run to. Cars zipping by me splashed me, trucks going by me drenched me. I am not sure if the vast majority of cars could even see me. It was raining that hard. I would have gone back to the underpass to get away from the rain if I had thought that there was slightest possibility that it would clear up in the next hour or so. But as I looked over the ocean, all I could see was more and more cloud being pushed down upon the mountain (and therefore me). It was about that point that I considered e-mailing Noah and asking for a reservation on the Ark.

If I had been driving by I am not too sure if I would have stopped for me. The sight lines were not great, there was a limited space in which to stop and I was wet enough to soak a seat. Plus my pack was probably so wet that where ever it was placed - that seat would have been saturated with water as well. But after well over an hour and a half of standing there - not knowing what else to do - being buffeted by winds that almost bowled me over - a van did stop. My first driver of the return trip home got out of his vehicle, made room for my pack in the back of his van and we were off. He was only going as far as Squamish - just a short hop away but I would have been grateful for a ride only half as long. He was a house painter and in the short time together we talked about Squamish, how it was expanding (he had as much work as he could handle) and what those changes meant for the community. Near the end of our 30-40 minutes together he pulled into a parking lot and said he was just going to get some coffee. I stayed in the van - I was so cold that I could not stop shaking. I saw no point in getting out just so that I could get wetter and colder. He came back with two cups of coffee- one was for me. I was grateful. I am not a coffee drinker - not unless I need to stay awake, but having something warm in my hands was quite delightful. The generosity of this driver was just the first in what would prove to be a long list of people who gave, or at least offered to give me things they thought I needed.

He drove me to the far end of Squamish and let me out. I had never tried to hitch with a coffee cup but I did not want to leave it behind; I didn't want him to think I was ungrateful - so I brought it with me. It proved to be awkward to carry and so I poured out the coffee and stuck the empty cup in my pack.