On the Road Again 2015 #19

I was not at that windy corner of highways 97 and 99 long before an older pickup truck with two people in the front seat stopped just ahead of me. I think I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times a truck with two in the front seat has stopped for me. As a matter of fact I can only remember it happening once or twice. I threw my pack in the back, the passenger scooted over and I got in. They were only going to Cache Creek but at least they would get me on the right highway going north to Kamloops.  It was a very short ride but I did get a chance to talk to them about construction in the area (they were doing some building renovations in the area). The older man told me that they had looked at some buildings in which the 10x10 wooden sills had been placed in the ground in the mid 1800s. In spite of the fact that they were resting on the ground, the land was so dry that there was virtually no rot in the wood. On the West Coast, such wood would not last ten years before it started to rot.

As I was getting out in Cache Creek, my driver asked me if I knew where I was, and how to get to Kamloops. I assured him that I did. As I started to walk, it became apparent that I didn't. I had been here before, but it had been years ago and I had come in from a different direction going towards the coast. However I figured it out with a minimal of back tracking. I could not help but notice that there were a number of older motels - a couple looked just a little bit run down and/or seedy. They looked like my kind of place. While Cache Creek was not my intended goal for the night, it was 6:30-7:00, it was cloudy and therefore looking dark and I was tired. I needed to get my stuff unpacked, dry whatever had gotten wet and make myself looked presentable. I suspected that by this time I looked like kind of some wild man. The wind was strong enough that my beard was flying in two different directions - not the look I was going for.

I decided I would walk to the outskirts of town and stick out my thumb for an hour. If there were no rides by 7:30 or so - I would call it a night. There were relatively few cars going by and I suspected that most of them were local traffic. At my agreed upon time, with some pleasure, I hoisted the pack on my back and made ready to walk back to the nearest motel. I was looking forward to a hot shower, a bit to eat and then a nice long sleep. It had been a long day.

And then a SUV coming from the north, did a u-turn in front of me , stopped and waved me over. I don't want to sound ungrateful - but I was looking forward to my quiet evening. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into a car - perhaps for only a short ride that would take me away from my dreams of a motel bed. But get in I did.

On the Road Again 2015 #18

I have stood at the Darcy turnoff a number of times. This spot has always been interesting in that there are usually lots of hitchhikers looking for rides. Virtually all of them have been local residents of the First Nation community. They get rides easily, I usually have to spend a number of hours standing there before I get picked up. It is also a place where in the past I have seen bears, had to sleep out in a field and at least on one occasion decided to walk a long distance. The shoulder, except at the turn does not exist. There is nowhere else for miles for a car to stop safely.

Just before I got out of my previous ride, I had noticed (something I had never seen before although I am sure it has always been there) a motel and a restaurant just before the turnoff. While it was not nearly late enough to consider stopping for the night, I decided that if I couldn't get a ride - that was where I was staying. I was too wet and cold to sleep outside. I had initially planned on walking along the road until, a few miles down it, there was another hitchhiking spot. Two years I had got picked up there and so I thought I would try it again. But it was raining, the narrow verge on the side of the road had puddles on it, my feet were getting wetter and wetter. Every time a car passed me, I was reminded that I really needed to be on the other side of the road, walking facing the oncoming traffic. I decided to walk back to the corner.

The good news was that there was a bus shelter for me to stand under. It blocked a bit of the wind and at least I was no longer standing in the rain. I kept a careful watch out for cars turning. I needed to get of the shelter quickly so that I did not shock anyone by just popping out of nowhere. The corner was not as busy as usual. I suspect the local folks had more brains than me and had decided that that day was not a good day to travel. An older woman and a younger man walked by. We chatted for a few minutes and then kept on going to hitch a bit further down. I suggested that they stay in the shelter with me - they said "no - they were use to the rain". Before she left the woman offered me a peach from a bag she was carrying. It was not the best peach I had ever tasted but it was pretty damn good.

 Finally after being there for almost two hours a car stopped. He was going almost to Cache Creek. It was not the long ride that I had been hoping for but it was a pretty good start. One of the first things my driver told me as we (actually just me) were complaining about the weather was that by the time I got out, we would be in the desert and a lot warmer. He was right about the temperature and the lessening of rain.

 

I learn at least one thing from all of my drivers. Everyone I meet has a point of view or a particular bit of knowledge that either fascinates me or adds to my repertoire of knowledge. I am frequently surprised when, as part of a conversation with someone, a fact learnt on some lonely highway pops into the conversation - adding a critical piece to the dialogue. I take some pride in the fact that, while my basic values have remained unchanged, I look at least at some aspects of life from a different perspective because of my drivers. This is no more true than my next driver.

He was a forester by profession, which meant that he did a fair amount of traveling as he helped determine which forest were ready to be clear cut. He was a defender of cutting down forests. He believed that if the forest is managed properly, that within ten years of being cut, things are back to normal again. He was also a father of three young girls, two of whom were in school - enrolled in French immersion. He and his wife had taken the girls on a trip to Quebec this summer so that they would realize that French was a living language - not just something that they studied in school. As interesting as all of that was - what grabbed my attention was that he had meet his Russian bride on-line.

Immediately my mind flashed to lurid tales of mail order brides, of men agreeing to marrying someone they have never met because they were so desperate, and of the brides leaving them as soon as they had citizenship. Although I didn't say any of that, I think my driver was use to all of those reactions. But as we talked about it and the amount of dialogue they had before she immigrated, it started to make sense. As my driver said - many Canadian couples meet in a bar or somewhere similar, like each other, go to bed and eventually marry while their hormones are still raging. There has been little time for that couple to get to know each other, to explore values and beliefs without the sex getting in the way. He argued that because they wrote and talked for so long (I think it was for months) before they met, they had had the time to get to know each other before the temptations of sex influenced their feelings. He argued that his marriage was on a much firmer base than most. The conversation naturally flowed into arranged marriages and internet dating in general. I am not too sure if I would ever have considered marrying someone from another country that I meet on the internet...... but I certainly have changed my mind on whether or not it is a viable option.

Towards the end, he started to ask some strange questions about conspiracy theories. I think he believed in some of them and was perhaps disappointed that I didn't. He had left the questions until we were almost at the point where he was turning off and I would be getting out. I don't know if that was intentional or not.

He let me out about eight miles from Cache Creek and the road to Kamloops. Just before he drove away, he offered me an apple. Again not the best apple I have ever eaten, but I appreciated the gesture. It felt somehow as this simple gift was in some small way, recognition that it had been as good of a drive for him as it had been for me.

I was substantially drier than I had been when I got into the car, and the air was warmer. It was cloudy but not raining. The wind however had picked up and the dry sand beat against my face.

On the Road Again 2015 #17

The road heading north from Squamish looked to have fairly narrow shoulders but with a large grassy verge running alongside. It appeared as if there would be lots of room for a driver to stop. However, what was not a obvious was that there was a four inch drop between the pavement and the grass. Any driver who could see this drop off would be reluctant to pull over. With wet pavement and slippery grass - it could have been dangerous.  So I walked for a couple of hundred meters until the shoulder levelled out a bit.

It was still raining, I was still wet and cold. The cars were still going by just as fast, but at least I seemed to be getting splashed less frequently. I felt pretty miserable and I am sure I looked that way. It is hard to maintain a positive attitude when one's teeth are chattering. Not only was I wet right through, but I had lost much of the time advantage in taking the early bus. In fact it looked as if I was not going to get into Whistler much sooner than I would have if I had taken the Greyhound bus into Vancouver and made the connection to Whistler. If I had done that, I would have spent a long time on the bus but at least I would have been dry.

In spite of my bedraggled looks and the sad vibes that I was emanating, a car did stop for me. My driver, a women a few years younger than me, was just going up to Whistler for a lunch date. She had come all of the way from the Sunshine Coast to see an old friend. It is a short drive from Whistler to Squamish, but in that time we talked about her limited hitchhiking experiences,  managed to agree that the world needed to change its dietary habits, and that climate change was a serious problem. She was a nice lady and told me that she would have liked to have driven me further up the road but she was already late for her luncheon date. I was let off at the beginning of Whistler, a spot that we both knew was not a great place to start off from. While it was too bad that we couldn't have travelled further - I was glad to have met her. I wasn't much warmer or drier on the outside - but I was optimistic about the future - I knew I couldn't get any wetter or colder. If my first two drivers had been such great people - surely all the rest would be as well. I was right about the latter but wrong about the former.

It wasn't a great spot to stick out my thumb.  So I walked for a bit and never really found a better spot. I stood for a long time by the side of the road, The shoulders looked sandy and soft. In hindsight I should have realized that anyone local would have not wanted to pull over in case they got stuck. The shoulders were not really that soft - but from the highway they probably looked that way. A person with a French-Canadian accent walking by told me that no one ever got a ride there and I need to walk back towards the lights. I had been there an hour earlier and it had not looked like a great spot to me, but I trusted in the local wisdom and walked back. Within a few minutes I get a ride from a gentleman who offered to drive me to the other end of town. I didn't refuse.

It was a short ride and other than talking about the weather etc. there was not much time to get to know each other. While he didn't say so - I think he went a few kilometres out of his way- just to help me out. Three rides to travel 100 kilometres. I could tell it was going to be a long day.

My next two rides were just short rides. The first was to Pemberton. My driver was a young lady who was very interested in the local fauna and in the environment. She had already picked up another hitchhiker, a older gentleman from a local First Nations community. It was interesting to sit in the back seat and year him talk about how the weather patterns were changing, what we are doing to the earth and about the animals in the area. I was particularly interested in his description of "red coyotes" who he said were a cross between dogs, coyotes and wolves. From what he said, it appeared as if these animal were quite dangerous as they hunted in larger backs, were bigger than coyotes and had little fear of humans. That sounded like a bad combination. As so often happens - I wish I could have talked some more to these two folks.

My next drive, which happened fairly quickly, was to the Darcy Lake Road turnoff. My driver was an older , somewhat rough looking character driving a beat up car. He was, by his own words, a former addict. But, in spite of his appearance and manner, he was a considerate person who chose not to smoke in the car while I was with him. One should never judge a book by its cover. Even the roughest looking person can have, and in my experience does have, a heart just ready to give. He let me out at the corner - near the white church where I have stood so often before.

Refugees #2

In the past ten or so days, there has been an overwhelming, almost sickly sweet response to the picture of the three year old Syrian refugee who died in the attempt to achieve the safety of another country. All of a sudden the entire Northern Hemisphere is wallowing in someone else's grief, holding vigils, demanding some kind of action from their governments - wondering what the governments can do to solve this problem. The public response has been that of a group of people who just found out last week that hundreds of thousands of people are risking their lives to escape the chaos and oppression of their homeland. Where have all of those concerned world citizens been for the last two years? Under what rock have they been hiding?  I would not have thought that there was enough sand for so many people to burying their heads into.

The number and the desperation of the world's refugees is not a new problem. On May 17th of this year I wrote a blog about Canada's woefully poor response to the number of refugees. Previously to that on February 8th, 2014, I mentioned the number of people in Syria needing assistance. I discussed the issue at least two years ago in all my classes that I could figure out how to squeeze the topic into. I find myself almost offended that people are now getting on a band wagon that (1) should never have needed to exist and (2) should have left the station (to mix metaphors) a long time ago. For Canadian politicians to now say "oh - the government needs to do something", is the worse sort of political manipulation for votes.  We should all be embarrassed.

Where were all of those people two or three years ago. Why weren't people demanding their government accept more refugees into our country? Why did we accept the government's stance that it was doing all that it could, when in fact it was doing less than any previous government? How it all good conscience could we have accepted the sometimes blatant racist attitude that suggested that all people from the Middle East were potentially (and sometimes likely) terrorist? Why have so many of us, done so little to help? And why are we not doing something now?

It is a two prong problem. One is that the government expects the majority of refugees to be privately sponsored. That is, that collectively churches, and community groups need to raise sufficient funds to support individuals or families until they are on their feet. Secondly, the government retains the sole right to decide who can come to Canada and who can't. While it would appear from some reports that there are groups out there who are prepared and capable of supporting families, the Canadian Government has been woefully inadequate in screening applicants. Screening is a complex business when civil service staffing has been significantly reduced and when refugees who are escaping with only the clothes on their backs - frequently do not have clear proof as to who they say they are.

However the solution to the problem is not just to open our doors and accept everyone. The refugees from Syria and all of those other countries are needed by their countries to assist in the re-building process. The last thing those countries need is to have their most courageous and ambitious citizens to leave. While in the short term the only solution maybe to accept more refugees, we need to as a country and as a global community stop telling people how to run their lives and to start to provide real and meaningful assistance. For example - why is Canada's emergency response team (DART) not in the camps providing the technology so that all can have clean water? Yes it would be expensive - but not as expensive as sending six jets to bomb buildings and the people in them. Why are we not sending over the resources and skills so that there can be more teacher training? Why are we, instead of bombing, not helping people develop the resources to resist the voices of terrorists. Those voices are only attractive because there appear to be no alternatives. Surely the greatest gift we can give is the belief that there are alternatives and the tools to make it happen.

And finally, and perhaps most radically - why don't we cancel Christmas this year? According the Globe and Mail, the average Canadian anticipated spending $1800 on Christmas in 2013. Other sources such as the Star suggested that it would only be half of that in 2014. Regardless of which is the right number - it is a lot of money. Let's not buy presents - especially for anyone over the age of 16-18. Let's not plan Christmas vacation to a warmer climate or to go skiing. Let's plan on giving that money to organizations who have the capacity to support refugees if they come to Canada; let's give money to people who live and work in the Middle East, people who know the needs of the people who live there. Let's stop listening to those people whose primary interest is in making money, enhancing their status or maintaining their jobs.

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.