Friday, July 10, 2015
On the Road Again 2015 # 8
At some point in the wee dark hours of the morning I was awakened by rain hitting my bivy sack, and a rather impressive thunder and lightning storm. Or rather it would have been impressive if I had had time to enjoy it. As it was, I was struggling to find the zipper to close up the hood of the sack. It had been a clear night and I had left the canopy open. I should have known better. The bivy sack is, even in the daylight, somewhat claustrophobic. There is not a lot of room to move and in the dark finding a small zipper is a bit of a challenge. Consequently the top of my sleeping bag got a bit wet as did the inside of my sack. It made the rest of the night a touch uncomfortable.
I was awake and up by 6:00. The sun was sort of up, trucks were moving around me and I felt somewhat exposed to the world. I say the sun was "sort of" up because ever since just west of Brandon the sky had be hazy - almost like driving through a light fog. The smoke was from fires burning further north. It irritated our eyes and while there was not an overpowering smell, the taste of smoke lingered in our throats. The smoke would be visable to just around Calgary.
Al did not have to be on the road until 8:30. However I am use to truckers getting up early, doing their log book and then starting whenever they want to. I assumed that Al after six or so hours of sleep would be up and ready to roll. So I hung around and did not try to find a ride. I thought about it, but I am a great believer that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I had a guaranteed ride to Calgary and perhaps to near Vancouver. While going through the Rockies in a truck is not my favourite method (due to slowness) it was better than being stuck somewhere east of Calgary. At some pont during that long morning of doing nothing. I started to wonder if using that particular bit of logic had been a mistake.
I ate a egg/muffin from Tim Hortons. While it is not a great breakfast, the taste is always consistent. No matter where you are in Canada - it will always taste the same. It was my first hot meal since leaving Sudbury. In fact it was my first food since leaving Winnipeg the day before. After eating it far too quickly, I wandered around the parking lot and the roadway, trying to look either as if I was not lurking or that I was not impatient. I am not too sure if I was successful in this as I got some strange stares.
There was a lot of activity on the road where the truck was parked. Tim Horton's was busy with both the truckers who stopped for a coffee and the locals who were picking up their morning fix of caffeine before heading off to their jobs. I am always surprised at how truckers can sleep through the chaos of a parking lot. With their black out curtains in place they really are quite isolated from the world. For me, travelling is a once a year adventure and it is not surprising that I am a bit impatient/excited to travel on. For truckers, this is their life. There is no more real excitement for them each morning than any other worker getting up for the day.
Waiting for someone else is boring. I wanted to get going. I suppose I should have gone into Timmy's and used the computer but I kept on hoping that we would be leaving soon. Al got up just after 8:00, grabbed something to eat, and then sat in his truck until 8:30 when he was "allowed" to leave. Shortly after getting started he contacted his boss and found out that he was not going to Vancouver. He would let me out at the truck stop in Calgary which he assured me was a great place to get a ride. I once again wondered if I had misjudged the situatin; if I would have been better off getting a ride two or three hours earlier.
Of course when we got to the truck stop, while there were lots of trucks coming and going, there was really no place to stand where they could see me and have a chance to stop. So I found a bus station and made the somewhat arduous trek to the west end of Calgary. There was some road construction at the west end of the city and consequently I had to walk a lot further then normal to get to a good spot.
I never blame a driver for where he lets me out. They are not hitchhikers and I can't expect them to know what a good spot, nor to be able to get me there. It had been a great ride. We had lots to talk about. We had a real conversation with lots of give and take. While academically I was clearly better educated, he was a very experienced guy who spent a lot of time thinking about things. He was naturally inquisitive and not at all reluctant to say that he didn't know something. His knowledge of trucking was extensive and I was able to add to my knowledge of that lifestyle.But he could not explain to me what doubly clutching or a split shift was or meant. But then no trucker has been able to explain it to me. This is because of my incapacity to understand thing mechanical, not their inability to explain.
We had passed on the road two other hitchhikers and their dog. We both agreed that they would have a hard time getting a ride. I was surprised to meet them on a bus in Calgary. However they got off just before me and I never saw them again.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
On the Road Again 2015 #7
One of the joys of hitchhiking is that rush one gets after waiting for some time for a ride, feeling just a little bit frustrated and then all of a sudden - a car stops and a ride is offered . There really is nothing quite like it. When the car stops - all is forgiven, the sun shines and one's faith in humanity is completely restored. I am not in anyway complaining, but when one gets a ride withing five minutes of sticking the thumb out -the rush is not quite the same. On the other hand, having a trucker stop and offer me a ride meant that I was going to get a lot further down the road than I thought I would.
The truck was messier inside than most I have travelled in, but the driver was super friendly. I won't mention the name of the company he drove for, but within a few minutes, in a response to something I said, he made it clear that his company did not allow hitchhikers. He just didn't care what they liked. I think he picked up people whenever the spirit moved him. While Al was not that old, perhaps in his mid thirties, he really seemed to belong to that old breed of truckers who saw themselves not so much as "kings of the road" but as "knights of the road". He bemoaned the fact that truckers no longer stopped to help out a car on the side of the road; that they no longer talked to each other on CB radios -warning each other of dangers ahead (in spite of the smoke from forest fires heavy in the air, I heard no one in the 15 or so hours I was with Al use the radio).
One of the reasons for this radio silence is that cell phones work so much better for long conversations than do CB radios. The radios are only truly effective when one can see the truck you are talking to, whereas as long as there is a tower near by, on a cell phone you can talk to someone half way around the world. Of course one needs to know the other persons phone number for this system to work.The other reason that truck drivers may be a bit insulated from everyone is the use of computers.
Al no longer had to fill out a log book. It was all done electronically. The computer told him when he could drive and when he had to stop. There could be no "fudging" of when he started, stopped or when he took his breaks. Everything he did was recorded. Given the fact that his truck was limited to 105 kilometers an hour, and that he got paid by the numbers of kilometers driven, stopping to help someone or staying extra long in the coffee shop was not really an option. The only time we sat around and waited was when, after a night's sleep, he had to wait 15 minutes before he was allowed start his driving.
Al did not know how far he could drive me.He had a load of office furniture that needed to get near Vancouver but he was no sure if he was going drop that load off in Calgary and pick up another going north. Al was a long distance driver - on this trip he might not be back until the end of July. According to Al, because there was such a shortage of drivers, it was more efficient to use someone more local for the relatively short haul from Calgary to Vancouver. However - for today he was going to Redcliff - a little town just the other side of Medicine Hat. Al was very clear that while he was glad to drive me as far as he was going, he would not let me sleep in his truck. A hitchhiker had stolen some money once and so was uncomfortable having someone in the truck with him while he was sleeping.
Other than the reduced speed (cars were zipping by us) it was a good ride. Al drank lots of coffee, so there were just the right number of stops along the way - each just long enough for me to stretch my legs. We had lots to talk about. Al had never finished high school (although he was working on his grade 12). He had been driving some kind of truck for most his life. I suspect that truck driving is one of the few jobs left in Canada where one can make some sort of a living wage with a high school diploma. On the other hand, Al did not make that much money and seemed to have few possessions other than his Ford 150 pick-up truck. Because he was away so much and had no family, when he was in Winnipeg, he just stayed with a friend.
I could never figure out whether Al was a closet liberal who was uncomfortable expressing his values, or if he was really a bit of a racist and a red neck who didn't want to argue with me. Regardless we covered a lot of ground talking about the human condition and why some people (including the government) seem to make such silly decisions. While we didn't even come close to solving all or even any of the world's problems, it was a highly enjoyable time. The hours flew by quickly and before I knew it it was after 1:00 AM and Al was pulling in looking for a spot to sleep for the night. The truck stop was full, so he parked, along with a few other trucks along the side of the road near a Tim Hortons. He looked in the back, and offered to clean up the top bunk. Given how much time it would take and how tired we both were, I decided to sleep outside. It was a beautiful night, balmy, just a few clouds in the sky and a bit of a breeze. There was not much room on the side of the road, the grass was dried out and the ground was hard. But there was enough room for me and I knew it would only be for a few hours. I almost didn't bother putting up the bivy sack.
By 3:00AM I was really glad that I did - but sorry that I had not zipped it all the way up.
The truck was messier inside than most I have travelled in, but the driver was super friendly. I won't mention the name of the company he drove for, but within a few minutes, in a response to something I said, he made it clear that his company did not allow hitchhikers. He just didn't care what they liked. I think he picked up people whenever the spirit moved him. While Al was not that old, perhaps in his mid thirties, he really seemed to belong to that old breed of truckers who saw themselves not so much as "kings of the road" but as "knights of the road". He bemoaned the fact that truckers no longer stopped to help out a car on the side of the road; that they no longer talked to each other on CB radios -warning each other of dangers ahead (in spite of the smoke from forest fires heavy in the air, I heard no one in the 15 or so hours I was with Al use the radio).
One of the reasons for this radio silence is that cell phones work so much better for long conversations than do CB radios. The radios are only truly effective when one can see the truck you are talking to, whereas as long as there is a tower near by, on a cell phone you can talk to someone half way around the world. Of course one needs to know the other persons phone number for this system to work.The other reason that truck drivers may be a bit insulated from everyone is the use of computers.
Al no longer had to fill out a log book. It was all done electronically. The computer told him when he could drive and when he had to stop. There could be no "fudging" of when he started, stopped or when he took his breaks. Everything he did was recorded. Given the fact that his truck was limited to 105 kilometers an hour, and that he got paid by the numbers of kilometers driven, stopping to help someone or staying extra long in the coffee shop was not really an option. The only time we sat around and waited was when, after a night's sleep, he had to wait 15 minutes before he was allowed start his driving.
Al did not know how far he could drive me.He had a load of office furniture that needed to get near Vancouver but he was no sure if he was going drop that load off in Calgary and pick up another going north. Al was a long distance driver - on this trip he might not be back until the end of July. According to Al, because there was such a shortage of drivers, it was more efficient to use someone more local for the relatively short haul from Calgary to Vancouver. However - for today he was going to Redcliff - a little town just the other side of Medicine Hat. Al was very clear that while he was glad to drive me as far as he was going, he would not let me sleep in his truck. A hitchhiker had stolen some money once and so was uncomfortable having someone in the truck with him while he was sleeping.
Other than the reduced speed (cars were zipping by us) it was a good ride. Al drank lots of coffee, so there were just the right number of stops along the way - each just long enough for me to stretch my legs. We had lots to talk about. Al had never finished high school (although he was working on his grade 12). He had been driving some kind of truck for most his life. I suspect that truck driving is one of the few jobs left in Canada where one can make some sort of a living wage with a high school diploma. On the other hand, Al did not make that much money and seemed to have few possessions other than his Ford 150 pick-up truck. Because he was away so much and had no family, when he was in Winnipeg, he just stayed with a friend.
I could never figure out whether Al was a closet liberal who was uncomfortable expressing his values, or if he was really a bit of a racist and a red neck who didn't want to argue with me. Regardless we covered a lot of ground talking about the human condition and why some people (including the government) seem to make such silly decisions. While we didn't even come close to solving all or even any of the world's problems, it was a highly enjoyable time. The hours flew by quickly and before I knew it it was after 1:00 AM and Al was pulling in looking for a spot to sleep for the night. The truck stop was full, so he parked, along with a few other trucks along the side of the road near a Tim Hortons. He looked in the back, and offered to clean up the top bunk. Given how much time it would take and how tired we both were, I decided to sleep outside. It was a beautiful night, balmy, just a few clouds in the sky and a bit of a breeze. There was not much room on the side of the road, the grass was dried out and the ground was hard. But there was enough room for me and I knew it would only be for a few hours. I almost didn't bother putting up the bivy sack.
By 3:00AM I was really glad that I did - but sorry that I had not zipped it all the way up.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
On the Road Again 2015 # 6
I am always surprised as to how willing my drivers are to disclose personal information, sometimes within minutes of me getting into their vehicle. My first driver of the 2015 hitchhiking season was no different. He was a young man, perhaps in his late 20s. As soon as we had got past the hi and the thank you, he started to tell me about his chronic insomnia that was at least in part caused by his anxiety disorder. He also squeezed in a few comments suggesting that he had had a pretty unhappy childhood. I suppose it was all interesting information but there were so many more things that we could have talked about including the weather, his profession (IT specialist) or he even could have asked about why I hitchhike. As I have mentioned before, I sometimes wonder if this willing-ness to share personal details with strangers is at least partially because we are all so isolated from each other.
It was not that it wasn't an interesting conversation, it was just that there was little for me to contribute. My driver was off to Brandon for some sort of sleep assessment to determine exactly what the problem was, although quite frankly it seemed to be clear that when he became anxious, or under pressure, it was impossible for him to sleep. He told me that sometimes he went 24 hours without sleep and then when he did sleep, his sleep patterns became distorted. While neither of us could remember the right word, I think what happened was that his circadian rhythm became disrupted by stress and without medication, he never got that rhythm back. I also suspected that the more he worried about not sleeping, his stress levels increased and therefore making it even harder for him to sleep. From what he said, there were times where it must have felt as if he was on a never ending cycle of being sleep deprived.
He said that he had scored rather highly on an IQ test. He was proud of that but admitted (as all current research suggests) that he just could not function intellectually when he was sleep deprived. Fortunately he had been employed when this problem had started to manifest itself and therefore had been eligible for both short and then long term disability. He was now on a disability pension until the problem could be sorted out and hopefully fixed. While he had had a significant other in his life, he was at present, living alone. From what he told me, I think he may have been a bit of a loner. He told a few stories that suggested that he might not be the most socially skilled individual.
There was another passenger..... his dog who looked to be of a mixed border collie type. It was an exceptionally well trained dog. It was quiet when I got in (although I did have some initial concern that it might try to get out as I was placing my pack in the back seat). It had the look of a dog that would at the very least, demand to have its head hanging out the window, but in fact it seldom moved from its blanket on the seat behind the driver. My driver was certainly very fond of the dog and said that he could never leave the dog alone for five or six hours.
Considering how late I started, I had anticipated the possibility that I might not get past Brandon. However, because I got picked up fairly quickly and because he drove at slightly above the speed limit, we got to Brandon in good time. It was a real bonus that he drove me to the west end of town, thereby saving me a half hours walk.
As I may have mentioned before, the traffic flow at the west end of Brandon can be a bit chaotic as there are two service roads and a cross road that leads to downtown that all merge into the Trans-Canada.The chaos is made worse because there are truck stops on both sides of the road. However I was there for anymore than five minutes when a truck coming out of the Tim Hortons blew his horn and waved me over.
It was not that it wasn't an interesting conversation, it was just that there was little for me to contribute. My driver was off to Brandon for some sort of sleep assessment to determine exactly what the problem was, although quite frankly it seemed to be clear that when he became anxious, or under pressure, it was impossible for him to sleep. He told me that sometimes he went 24 hours without sleep and then when he did sleep, his sleep patterns became distorted. While neither of us could remember the right word, I think what happened was that his circadian rhythm became disrupted by stress and without medication, he never got that rhythm back. I also suspected that the more he worried about not sleeping, his stress levels increased and therefore making it even harder for him to sleep. From what he said, there were times where it must have felt as if he was on a never ending cycle of being sleep deprived.
He said that he had scored rather highly on an IQ test. He was proud of that but admitted (as all current research suggests) that he just could not function intellectually when he was sleep deprived. Fortunately he had been employed when this problem had started to manifest itself and therefore had been eligible for both short and then long term disability. He was now on a disability pension until the problem could be sorted out and hopefully fixed. While he had had a significant other in his life, he was at present, living alone. From what he told me, I think he may have been a bit of a loner. He told a few stories that suggested that he might not be the most socially skilled individual.
There was another passenger..... his dog who looked to be of a mixed border collie type. It was an exceptionally well trained dog. It was quiet when I got in (although I did have some initial concern that it might try to get out as I was placing my pack in the back seat). It had the look of a dog that would at the very least, demand to have its head hanging out the window, but in fact it seldom moved from its blanket on the seat behind the driver. My driver was certainly very fond of the dog and said that he could never leave the dog alone for five or six hours.
Considering how late I started, I had anticipated the possibility that I might not get past Brandon. However, because I got picked up fairly quickly and because he drove at slightly above the speed limit, we got to Brandon in good time. It was a real bonus that he drove me to the west end of town, thereby saving me a half hours walk.
As I may have mentioned before, the traffic flow at the west end of Brandon can be a bit chaotic as there are two service roads and a cross road that leads to downtown that all merge into the Trans-Canada.The chaos is made worse because there are truck stops on both sides of the road. However I was there for anymore than five minutes when a truck coming out of the Tim Hortons blew his horn and waved me over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)