On the Road Again 2015 #23

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. It was just before 8:00AM and I was but one bus ride short of being on the east side of Calgary. I don't think I have ever been able to be on that particular road, that early in the morning. I was looking forward to not having to make my usual long walk from the bus stop to the Trans-Canada at the end of town. Silly me.

When I got on the bus, I asked the driver if he could let me out at the stop furthest along the Trans-Canada as I was hitchhiking towards Winnipeg. He said he would. I put my pack in the storage area across from him and sat down in a seat where I could look out the window. I made sure that the bus driver could see me every time he looked back.  It was a pleasant ride in that we went through some attractive, generally well maintained areas of the city. 

Usually once I am on a bus, and the driver has told me that he will tell me when I need to get off, I relax a bit and enjoy the ride. I was doing so when I started to realize that we were passing homes, stores and schools that I had seen already once that day. I went up to the bus driver to ask if "we" had missed my stop. He said "yes - sorry - it was the last one". He let me off at the next stop, and off I went. I was more than a bit put out. Either he had forgotten about my request or he had not known which bus stop I was referring to. Regardless, he had lied to me. We had not just missed my bus stop. The spot where he had let me out was nowhere near the Trans-Canada. He had let me out at spot that was closer to the C-Train station where we had started, than to my needed destination.

So I walked and walked. I walked for at least 45 minutes. I recognized in some vague way where I was and so managed to at least head in the right direction. It was a nice day and if I had not been carrying the pack, it would have been quite enjoyable. It also would have been more enjoyable if I had not been so irritated at the driver. I have had more mis-direction/bad direction from bus drivers in Calgary than in any other city. I sometimes wonder if the concept of anyone wanting to leave their fair city is so incomprehensible to them that they are incapable of telling a stranger how to leave. They really need to train the drivers better.

Eventually I came to the Trans-Canada and headed east. As I have written in other years, it is a long bloody walk to get to a point where it is both safe and useful to drop my pack and stick out my thumb. At any time of day, there are hundreds and hundreds of cars going past. The vast majority of them are local traffic, people who are going only a short distance They do not stop and in fact increase the congestion.chaos making it harder for anyone else to stop. One needs to walk past the entrance/exit ramps to the Stoney Mountain Trail (Calgary's ring road) to at least have some of that traffic filtered out. Fortunately the shoulders are very wide. There is lots of room to walk - except of course when one needs to cross over an entrance/exit ramp. That can get a bit sketchy in part because with a pack on your back, it is difficult to turn one's head and get a good view of the cars speeding up or down the ramp. I am always very, very careful when crossing a road where cars are doing 80+ kilometres an hour.

I stood at my chosen spot for over three hours - once again proving that the early bird does not always get the worm. I had arrived in Calgary at 7:00AM, with the 45 minutes I used to figure out the transit system, the long bus drive back to almost where I had started from, the well over an hour walk to get to my spot and the time spent there doing nothing - I had used almost up half of the day. There has to be a better way through Calgary.

Eventually I did get a ride - a ride that was going all the way to Gull Lake.

On the Road Again 3025 #22

Few things in life actually happen the way we envision them to happen. The restaurant at the Golden Husky was closed, the night time manager of the gas station/convenience store was not particularly friendly (to be fair I must have look like a mad man with my hair and beard all over the place and I was trying to nap in the vestibule) and there was a nasty wind that went right through the parts of my clothing that were still damp. I was quite convinced that I would get a ride out in the morning but that was a four hour wait and it was shaping up to be a miserable wait.

Then sometime around 3:00AM, the Greyhound bus from Vancouver to Calgary pulled in for a brief stop. I realized that while a bus seat would not be as comfortable as a motel bed, it would be warm, dry and probably cheaper. It would have the added advantage of getting me to Calgary by 7:00 AM. It seemed to be a logical - perhaps a brilliant thought.  Getting on the bus and driving through what remained of the night to Calgary -  would save money, time and allow me to get at least some sleep.  I walked up the driver, asked if there was room, and upon hearing that there was, I gave him my driver's licence as some form of insurance or a promise to buy a ticket in Calgary. I of course, had to wait until all of the other passengers had gotten back on so that I did not take someone's seat. I assumed that I would end up sitting beside someone who was less than excited about having a seat mate at 4:00 in the morning. I was pleasantly surprised that there was a whole seat available. Within a few minutes of the bus leaving I was sound asleep. Sleeping on a bus is not great. Unlike the train, the seats are too small to curl up on, the backs do not go back far enough (and besides doing so crushes the legs of the person behind you) and there is nowhere to rest one's head. On the other hand - it was a lot better than sleeping in the vestibule of a gas station.

The bus got to the Calgary bus station on time, I went into the station to buy my ticket, went out to the bus and gave it to the bus driver. As I picked up my pack, I mentioned, just in passing, to a supervisor how professional and how polite the bus driver had been to me. She was surprised - I suppose they do not get many nice comments. Which is a shame. Most of them to a pretty good job. I saw her talk to the bus driver and then he came over and thanked me for my comments. While I did not expect him to say anything to me - it was a rather pleasant feeling to realize that I, because of a thank you, had become part of this circle of politeness. I had helped the bus driver feel good about his job, and in return he had rewarded and reinforced my behaviour. We should all do that more often.

I was pretty excited - I was right beside a C-train station. I knew that without too much hassle I would be on a city bus heading to the east part of town. I took a few minutes to brush my teeth, my beard and my hair. I think I looked my usual, if not presentable, at least interesting self.

It took me a few minutes to figure out which direction I needed to go on the train. I always have a hard time reading the diagrams/maps that are posted on the train station wall. There are just too many choices and I do not know the names of the streets etc. I have used the Calgary transit system a number of times and in general I think I understand it. This time I managed to get going the right way, to get off at the right stop and to walk to the right bus stop, almost. A driver told me that I needed to get on the north bus rather than the south bus. I thanked him and as I was walking away. he called out to me and suggested that I get back on the C-train, go back one stop and get a different bus than I usual do - one that would get me even closer to the Trans-Canada. That sounded like a plan. The only problem was that I would need to climb the stairs back up the train platform...... again, as on so many times on this journey, I was thankful that I had lightened my pack.

On the Road Again 2015 #21

Banff - if I did get a ride that far, it would be the second furthest I had travelled in one day heading east. Such a ride would ensure that I would not get stuck at the other end of Kamloops, or outside Salmon Arms or at any of the other small towns along the way. It would mean that, once again I would have travelled home through the Rockies in the dark. It would also mean that I would not get to sleep that day. I had been thinking about getting dry and warm ever since just east of Whistler. But every time I came close to calling it a day - someone picked me up. I was not complaining but it did feel as if there was something out there who did not want me to get warm and dry and rested.

However I am not a fool. If someone offers me a ride that covers almost 500 kilometres - especially when I am in the middle of a scary highway walk facing another hour or two or maybe even three of walking - I take it. I am glad that I did. It was an interesting ride. My driver had come from Port Alberni on Vancouver Island (I could have just got a ride from him all of the way) and was off to meet a friend from France to do some mountain climbing.  By the end of the day he would have driven for well over fifteen hours. He picked me up at least in part because he needed some company to keep him awake. I was glad to do so.

My newest driver was almost 30. He was, by profession, a denturist but he had "retired" early. He had decided that he, along with his girlfriend who was a nurse, would sell off their possessions and travel for awhile. There were off to New Zealand for a year, but my young adventurer had already climbed a number of the higher peaks in South and Central America. They had decided that they wanted to get the most out of life when they were young and healthy; that there were no guarantees that if they worked hard and saved money, that by the time they could afford to retire that they would be healthy enough to do the kind of adventuring that they wanted to do. So they had put any long term planning off for awhile and were setting out in a month or two to see the world.

I certainly admire that perspective. I think however I am too much of the "ant" as opposed to the "grasshopper"(see Aesop's Fables ). It is too deeply ingrained into my psyche to plan ahead, to prepare for the future, to ensure that I have something "tucked away for the rainy season" to ever think of giving it all up, move to another country and to not worry about how I could afford to get my teeth fixed next year. We talked about the pros and cons of each other's life style. I think he understood my point of view, but having kids and settling down was just too far away for him to even think about.

My driver was supremely confident - my notes done the next day suggest that he was just a bit too full of himself. In hindsight I wonder if he was really all that confident or if he had a need to tell his stories and perhaps, legitimately, to brag about his accomplishments in order to have someone validate his life plan.  Regardless, if he had done all that he had said he had done, he was an impressive young man. I admire his enthusiasm, his courage, and his belief in himself. But I worry about folks like him. What do they do when they reach their limit, when either there are no more mountains to climb or hills to snowboard down? What do they do when their adventures start to cost more and more money or their health becomes just a little bit more fragile? When they are in their 40s, how do they start over - or do they never ever stay in one place - forever to look for the next adventure like a junkie looking for a fix.

It was a great ride - he had lots of stories to tell about his adventures, about the hills he had climbed and of the friends he had meet. We continued my conversation about social media. The young lady he was meeting in Banff was someone with whom he had met once, had maintained a connection with on Facebook and was now going to spend a day with. He was young - he could not imagine a life without social media. And I can't fully imagine a life where social media is the primary method of creating relationships. We could have traveled for a million miles and never agreed on that topic. But it really didn't matter, we were just together for a great drive through the darken mountains. We both knew we would in all likelihood never be in contact again.  When I got out - we did not exchange Facebook addresses.

We also talked about camping equipment. He was a great proponent of using light weight hammocks with mosquito nets and a tarp over it all. It was an interesting comparison between my little bivy sack and the hammock. Neither one did everything - pity.

I thought about Banff and realized that at 3:00 in the morning there was no where that I could be let off at that would provide warmth, shelter or food. So I asked to be let off at Golden - where I knew there would be at least the Husky open and I could use their bathroom and get a sandwich and a tea. I had the sense that folks in Banff would prefer it if homeless looking people like me didn't hang out in their downtown core. I was sorry to get out at Golden. My driver, who had done a great job driving through a very dark night with the occasional reduced lanes due to construction and continuing rain, was tired. He admitted that he might not have gotten as far if I had not been with him. That was certainly true for both of us. But I needed to get warm and I knew at Banff I would spend a miserable 3-4 hours on the side of the road waiting for daylight.

So one more time that day - I said my thanks for the ride and the company, grab my pack and waved good-bye. I was looking forward to some warmth and to their bathroom.

 

On the Road Again 2015 #20

I don't mean to sound as if I was not grateful - because I am always grateful when anyone stops to offer a ride. But those motels in Cache Creek looked awfully tempting. I really just wanted to get warm and dry. None-the-less I ran towards the large but very dirty stopped Toyota SUV, opened the back door to throw in my pack, realized that there were two in the front seat and pushed my pack over so I could squeeze in. I could have just as easily put my stuff in the third row of soft leather seating. The first thing that the passenger said to me was -" you have got ahead of us three times today - we decided it was time to pick you up". A strange comment - I could not figure out how I had passed them three times, or how they knew that.

The two were journalist, one was an American from the mid-west and contributed to an on-line hunting magazine and the other was a Canadian who knew the general area. He never said who he wrote for. Toyota had given them (and 9 other pairs of journalist from around Canada and the USA) a vehicle in Vancouver that morning. They had to get to Kamloops by 9:00PM. How they got there and what they did with the vehicle in the 12 hours was up to them. So the two young journalists had done some off-roading and some exploring, which explained why it was so dirty.  They would pass me and then go off to try some back roads. I would get a ride and then get ahead of them.

 It was a pretty luxurious vehicle - they said that it along with all of the bells and whistles (including a pretty high end music system from Sony) was worth about $58,000. They also said that there was a piece or two of plastic missing from the front end - they had bottomed out a few times. They told me that after they returned the vehicle in Kamloops, it would be passed on to other drivers and eventually the SUVs would end up in New Mexico. Toyota paid all of the expenses including hotel/food and flying the various drivers in and then back home again. I think one local journalist was always paired with someone who knew the area. Apparently none of the drivers were automobile writers, some of them (and the guys spoke disparagingly about them) were from home maker magazines whose idea of excitement "was day without the kids". None of writers were obliged to write about their experiences or to praise the vehicle. As the American write explained - he usually writes about $15 or $20 items. He was not sure how he would ever figure out how to even mention his ride for the day.

It was a fun ride. I was fascinated by this process of self advertisement on the part of Toyota. No wonder cars are so expensive - although to be fair it was very nice and very large. One could have put my little Toyota in the back half of the SUV. I had lots of questions about the process and what it was like to get to drive a brand new car. It sounded like a lot of fun. It was, I should note, noisier in the middle seat than I would have thought. But perhaps that was related to the missing pieces.

But the guys were running out of time, didn't know Kamloops at all and had no sense that where they let me out was a terrible and dangerous spot. It was dark by this time, there were a number of over-passes to cross that had small shoulders and very low barriers. In some places it felt as if I could almost touch the vehicles passing me.  The barriers might have stopped a car from going over but they were no higher than my hips. If for some reason I tripped or fell - I would be flipped over on to the pavement below the overpass in a heartbeat. I would not have survived.

There were motels in Kamloops - but they were on the other side of town - at least a half hour drive at full speed. I didn't want to be walking along side the highway, but it was far too dangerous to hitch and so the only answer was to walk. It wasn't cold, the wind had died down and it would have been quite pleasant if I had not being carrying a pack and if cars were not zipping by five feet from me. I think I walked faster than I have ever before. I was determined to get somewhere safe, and preferable warm and dry that night. Every time I thought I was making some progress, I would go around a long curve and see more lights. It felt as if the end of the town were moving away from me. It was going to be a long walk.

Then, in a widening of the road, an older model of a Jeep Cherokee slowed and pulled over. It was a fair distance a head of me and I assumed that a driver had just pulled over to make a phone call or something. When I saw his back-up lights come on - I could not believe it. Someone was offering me a ride. Maybe to the end of town. I went up to his side window and said hi. I am a bit more cautious getting into a car a night. He said - " I'm going to Banff - do you need a ride?"