On the Road Again 2015 Interim #5

I like city buses. Well, that is not quite true. The seats are not all that comfortable, buses can be noisy, they take forever to get to where I want to go, my movements are confined by the bus's schedule and route and I have absolutely no control over anything that happens on the bus. In fact using the public transportation system is not always fun. But I do like the idea of public transit. I like the idea of everyone paying a bit of money to get to where we need to go. I like the idea that in terms of the environment, city bus travel is a great way of travelling distances that are too far to walk. And I like that while on a bus there is a sense that I belong to a greater community than usual. For me the negatives of city bus travel are far out weighed by the positives.

My six year old grandson had never been on a bus. I suppose that in this day and age that is not all that surprising or all that unusual. My son, other than the school bus, never rode a bus until he left home to go to college in the city. I am pretty sure that my daughter-in-law who was also raised in a rural area has never ridden a city bus. For trips around the town it is so much more convenient to get into one of their two (admittedly old and falling apart) vehicles than to plan their brief trip around a bus schedule that at best is inconvenient.
I decided that it was time that my grandson saw what bus travel was like. He might always live in a city or town and like so many others, decide that he does need/can not afford a car or like me, to be lazy enough to enjoy someone else driving him around. He had always lived with the convenience of a car it would, I thought, be fun for him to ride a bus.

It is not often that I get the chance to see a brand new experience through the eyes of a young boy. While I do engage in new activities, those activities are almost always extensions of a previous experience. All of the new skills that I have developed in the past 10 years in weaving, hitchhiking, wood carving or teaching are the result of 60 plus years of living. None of those activities was, in itself, a completely new experience.

For my grandson, riding on a bus was a completely different experience - one that was unique from any previous adventure. Everything was new - from having to get ready to a specific schedule, (and then having to wait for the bus}, where to sit, or what to look at. There were countless questions to be asked such as why were there black straps hanging from bars or if there were no seat belts, wasn't it dangerous or my favourite -  did the bus stop at Tim Hortons? All of those questions ( and so many more) were completely outside his realm of knowledge.

I think that adults forget how complicated the world is. We have long ago lost the sense that there really are brand new things to learn, things that are so unique, that we need to develop a completely new set of skills just to function. Our entire educational system is based on the concept of building blocks, of learning new skills that are based on previously learned skills.  It is good to be reminded that sometimes we just need to trust that we will learn and adapt even when what we are diving into is outside of anything that we have learnt. I am not saying that taking one's first bus ride is a particularly remarkable experience or that because of it my grandson's world is forever changed in a profound way. But it was a learning experience and perhaps most importantly for all learning experiences...... it was fun. In fact it was so much fun that we went for another even longer bus trip the next day.

On the Road Again 2015 Interim #4

I have, in the past, made a few comments as to the ever increasing difficulty in hitchhiking on Salt Spring Island. I have hypothesized that as people move to the island because of its charm, culture and sense of community, these newcomers have chosen not to engage in one of the activities that made SSI so unique. It has been frustrating in the last 10-12 years to see more and more SUVs with only one person in it, pass me by.

I may have been wrong abut my assumptions.

I have spent 9-10 days on Salt Spring this summer and the travel back and forth between Vesuvius , Ganges and Fulford has been great. I don't think that I have waited more than five minutes for a ride all summer. I think there are a number of reasons for this sudden change in hitchhiking luck. One is that there is now a superb bus system on Salt Spring. While it would be nice if the buses ran more frequently, it is a highly reliable and affordable system. I think that many of the people who use to hitch, now have the option to take the bus, thereby reducing the number of people with their thumbs out. However, I suspect there are many like me who stick their thumbs out at a bus stop while waiting for the bus to come. I think I got on the bus just as often as I got a ride from a stranger.

Secondly, while I kept no record, I suspect that at least some of my most frustrating hitchhiking experiences on the island happened on the weekend or during peak times. It is highly possible that many of the people passing me by were in fact tourist, not locals. I had much better luck this year hitching throughout the week, and hitching when it was likely that people were going to where I wanted to go. This year I stopped worrying about the ferry traffic, in fact I made it a point to not hitchhike when it was likely that cars coming off or going on the the ferry would be racing by.

But there is a possible third reason. I look different than I use to. My beard is far more grey than it use to be. Perhaps I have gone from a dishevelled, bearded, road weary traveller to someone who might look as dishevelled and as road weary as ever, but who now looks old and therefore worthy of rescuing. I would, of course, like to pretend that I am more attractive or at least more interesting looking than I use to be. But that, even to me, would be stretching the imagination.

Regardless of the reasons why, I must apologize to the drivers of Salt Spring for maligning their willingness to pick me up. The fault may have been all mine.