On the Road Again 2015 #33

It was a glorious morning. It had rained lightly earlier but by 11:00 my rain jacket was put away and my sleeves rolled up. The shoulder was wide and drivers could see me well before they would need to stop. There were a few house scattered across the road from me. On my side of the road there was an auto repair/parts dealership and a propane/fireplace dealer. It felt like a good spot.

Three hours later the spot had long lost its charm. The weather had passed from warm to hot, there seemed to be lots of cars passing by but none had stopped. By the fourth hour I was starting to wonder if Kenora was going to be my Wawa, if I was going to end up staying the winter there. When I stand outside places of businesses for a long time,  the people who work there, see me standing there. It can feel a bit embarrassing. If there are regular people coming and going such as the cars delivering parts for the parts dealership, we start to wave at each other. It feels as if I am becoming a fixture. That's not what I want to be! I am sure that they wonder about me and sometimes, as I stand there,  their lives start to look attractive.

But once again, any temptation to become irritated at the world in general or specifically at the uncooperative drivers going by me, dissipated when the generosity of strangers reminded me what a wonderful world it was.

After being there for about three or more hours, I noticed a young lady pulling up at the parts place. She gave a hug to one guy, chatted with a few others, handed them all something and left. On her way out of the parking lot she stopped, got out, walked over to me and offered me a couple of ice crème sandwiches. I assume that she had been dropping off a treat for her boyfriend/husband and his co-workers and decided to give some to me too. I would have liked to have taken both bars but it was so hot on the side of the road that I knew that the second one would have melted long before I finished the first one, so I just took one. She was very sweet and I was grateful for the gesture.

About an hour later a slightly older woman who worked at the propane place came out with a bottle of cold water. She mentioned that they had noticed me standing there and hoped that I would get a ride soon, but in the meantime they thought that I could use some water. They were right, I had been nursing my water and had a fair amount left, but it was lukewarm. While I had avoided buying bottled water for much of my trip, the cold water in my mouth felt pretty good.

While I am always appreciative of the generosity of my fellow travellers - it is in fact one of the reasons why I travel,  it seemed to me that on this trip I had been exposed, far more than usual, to a number of people who didn't offer me a ride but instead offered something else. To folks at the Regina Husky and the two people just outside of Kenora - I could only say thank you. Which seems a rather a limited thing to say when they had offered me the precious gifts of hope and reassurance.

Shortly after my cold water was delivered, a vehicle stopped and the driver offered me a ride to just past the point where the Trans-Canada hooked up with the by-pass. Again it was not the mega ride I was hoping for. Surely there was someone going at least to Thunder Bay and beyond. But I figured any spot had to be better than where I was. Perhaps all of the long distance drivers were taking the by-pass to avoid going through downtown Kenora. If nothing else it was ice to sit down for a little bit.

It was in fact a longer ride than I anticipated. The two roads don't reconnect for some distance past Kenora. When I am a passenger I don't pay much attention to the where I am going. I usually figure that that is the driver's job. Perhaps I should pay more attention as to the various routes although knowing what I now know, I am still not too sure if next time I would get out at the beginning of the by-pass and risk sleeping outside or go through Kenora.

My driver had a cottage down some road and he let me out just before he turned off. Once again it was getting well past mid day and I was in the middle of nowhere.