On the Road Again 2015 #36

The "big" truck stop in Upsala was big only in that there was a lot of parking for the big trucks. There was only one diesel pump and it was manned by an attendant (Husky and Petro-Canada are all self-serve).  The gas pumps were open 24 hours a day and while the restaurant was closing as I got there, the convenience store remained open. I was quite frankly getting desperate. At the rate I was going, I would not get to Sudbury in time to get back to Peterborough for my medical appointments. I decided that if I could get to Thunder Bay, I would take the Greyhound bus to Sudbury. I hate giving up early. But I had not calculated into my planning that I was travelling two-three weeks later than other times, which meant that the sun was setting just too early. (15 or 18 days makes a surprisingly big difference in terms of when the sun sets - especially in the fall) .  I had also, by leaving later than normal, missed any long distance travellers heading east.

I tried to hitch from the truck stop. It was getting dark and even with a flashlight showing my sign, I knew that people could not see me.  It was silly for me to try. It was also dangerous. I looked for a place to sleep. The area around the parking lot was rocky and uneven. The only place that was reasonable smooth was a patch of long grass underneath the large, partially lit sign advertising Tempo gas. I dozed for a bit but it was difficult to sleep as every time a truck pulled in, it went within ten feet of my head. The place that I was lying was surrounded by boulders so I knew no truck would run over me. It was just noisy. And then it started to rain.

I spent the rest of the night sitting under the overhand at the side of the building. The gas attendant was friendly and invited me in to the convenience store. I did that for a bit but there was nowhere to sit and it felt more important that I sit than to stay warm. I kept on looking at my watch and doing the math. I knew there was a Greyhound bus leaving Thunder Bay around 9:00. People would not be able to see me on the highway until 5:30 AM. If I got a ride right away - I could make it but it would be tight. I knew I would have to get really lucky to get to the bus station on time.r

At some time around 4:00 AM, a taxi pulled up and a young man got out with all of his bags. We talked for a bit and he told me he was off to the college in Thunder Bay. He was going by bus.  When the Greyhound bus heading south came an hour later (it was running late) I talked to the bus driver who agreed to let me on. He was not quite as accommodating as the bus driver in Golden. Not only did I have to give him my driver's licence but also all of the money in my wallet. He was not rude or inconsiderate - he just did not doing anything to make me feel welcome.

The bus was almost full. I sat beside someone who was not at all happy that I was taking up the seat beside him. I suspect that he had had it to himself since Winnipeg. We got to the Thunder Bay bus station, I paid for my ticket from Upsala, gave it to the driver, went back to buy a ticket to Sudbury and found out that there were no seats left. The bus that was leaving in a few minutes was full! I could have stayed at the truck stop and gotten a ride at the very least into Thunder Bay, but perhaps even further. There was nothing for me to do but to wait for the next bus - 12 hours later.  I could have gotten a bus to the highway but that could have taken an hour or two. I would then still have had to try to get a ride south. It seemed to be a better gamble to hang around Thunder Bay and take the bus. So I did.

I really wanted to eat breakfast so I checked my pack and tried to find a restaurant - I couldn't find anything. There was a mall with all food court "restaurants", but other than that I found noting. Eventually at 11:00 I found a restaurant called Moxies. It was just opening. It was a pretty classy place. The waitresses were all really dressed up, the booths were quite luxurious (especially considering that eight hours earlier I had been sleeping on the ground in the middle of an old, tired truck park) and the menu looked fancy. I was their only customer. They had a variety of egg dishes. I did a bit of negotiating with my waitress to trade the bacon for some more eggs, wrote up some notes, had a good meal and tried to relax.

If I had thought about it, I would/should have gotten on a bus and headed down to the waterfront. I am sure there would have been some restaurants open in that area and it would have been a far more pleasant day looking at Lake Superior than walking around a mall and sitting on the little bits of grass that surrounded the parking lot. But I didn't think of it until well after noon and by that point I was too tired and too anxious to stray too far from the bus station. At one point I was laying down on the grass across from the station when a van stopped and a lady got out to make sure I was okay. Once again I was reminded that the world is full of good people.

Eventually the bus came, I got a seat by the window and prepared myself for the thirteen or fourteen hour trip. I had a passenger beside me which meant that it was harder for me to sleep, but I was tired enough that I dozed throughout the trip. She was very quiet except when she was on her cell phone. Then I think, the whole bus could hear her.

The Greyhound bus had Wi-Fi. Which was strange - the bus station didn't have it. This meant that most people were able to occupy themselves texting or whatever for most of the trip. I have always found buses to be somewhat isolating at the best of times. Now that most people have their own entertainment devices with them, I think there is probably even less inter-passenger conversation. Each seat also has, just below the window, a plug to recharge one's device. This is a bit awkward as it means that the passenger by the window potentially has the other passenger's charging cord running across their lap.

The bus was not full, although I had heard the ticket seller tell someone that it was. Or rather it was not full  until Espanola - which is just a few miles from Sudbury. If I had realized that a full bus just means that at some point in the trip the bus will be full, I perhaps could have gotten on the morning bus and would have gotten most of the way home. Next time I will know to ask the right question.

Greyhound is reducing the number of trips across Canada from two trips to one a day. I don't know what people are going to do. It is by far the cheapest way to travel. For many people it is the only way that they can travel.

On the Road Again 2015 #35

I have stood a few times at the top of the hill just outside of Dryden. There is a little park across the road and on my side a very nice looking motel. I remember the last time I stood in this spot, a young man was washing his older black Trans-Am. This time a slightly older young man was washing a black Trans-Am. I was tempted to leave my pack and ask him if he was the same guy I had seen two years earlier. I didn't. It was getting towards dusk and I still had hopes that I would make it to Thunder Bay. It was after all, only four hours away.

An older car eventually stopped, the driver said that he going to Upsala - a small town, two hours down the road that had two large truck stops. I got in. Maybe this time I would get lucky at a truck stop.  My driver was originally from Newfoundland but had lived in Northern Ontario for a long time. He stuttered. That is not that unusual - I stutter - but what struck me as unusual was his absolute comfort with his speech difficulties. Not once in our two hours together did he demonstrate any embarrassment or attempt to find another, easier to say word. I can usually recognize others who stutter. We all have a common technique in talking in more complex sentences as we work around words that we know or anticipate that we will have a hard time over. He didn't.

We stopped once for a few minutes at a small mobile home park so that he could drop off a tenancy agreement. His partner and her children were moving into town so that the kids could go to a better school. He was going to stay in Upsala as it was more convenient for his work. I don't think the couple were separating - she was just doing something that the kids needed. Although the kids were not his biologically - he was okay with paying the extra housing costs. He had other children from another relationship and seems to have been as equally as caring and as generous. I think he was the type of guy who is so open and honest that he cannot conceive of the possibility that there were other people in the world who might take advantage of him. Like one of my other drivers, he imagined that he would be working until he died to make enough money to support those who he cared about.

He worked as a truck driver for a road construction crew. There is always some highway work during the road building season. He was busy during that time and I suspect that he made pretty good living. Of course, during the colder months he was unemployed although I think he occasionally drove road plough. We spent a fair amount of time talking about how big companies that are run by people who need to watch the bottom line, may know nothing about what it takes to get the job done. It felt as if he was under some pressure to either break trucking rules in terms of number of hours worked or else get yelled at by his bosses when he didn't make as many trips as they expected.

We also talked about his visit with his mother before her death in Newfoundland and the fact that his dad, whom he had never gotten along with, was not well. He really did not want to go home, but he had promised his mother that he would. I am always surprised that there are so many people who seem to have chosen to have at best, minimal contact with their families.  While it was none of my business, I as I was getting out of the car encouraged him to go home to see his Dad.

On the Road Again 2015 #34

The driver had let me out just to the west of highway 71 - a road that leads to the USA. There appeared to be a lot of cars coming from that direction, all of which were heading towards Kenora. At least 50% of all of the cars that past me going east turned onto that road.  I decided to walk past the turn off just to make sure that there was not an exit ramp from 71 that I could not see.  I didn't want to miss any traffic. There wasn't, but me walking a couple of hundred yards at least gotten me to  spot with a  better shoulder and less traffic. As I was standing there a young man, with a cardboard sign walked past me. He asked me how longer I had been standing there, I said "not very long"; I asked him where he was heading to - he said "Hamilton". And he kept on walking. I thought at first that he was just being polite and walking far enough ahead so that he would not interfere with any of my potential rides - but no, he kept on walking until I could no longer see him.

There are many spots along the Trans-Canada where one can feel somewhat lonely, almost lost or even that you might be the last person on the planet. I have for example, stood on sections of the Trans-Canada somewhere between Winnipeg and Calgary and not seen a car coming or going in either direction for five or ten minutes at a time, but standing on highway 17 somewhere east of Kenora has to be one of those places, even when there are transport trucks rushing by, that makes one feel rather alone. I think it is in part because that highway as it winds its way around the hundreds of lakes or through sections carved from the Pre-Cambrian shield feels hard. There is no softness in the landscape, there is no give. Its beauty is majestic. But there is a crispness to the atmosphere that provides no filter to the harshness and the potential loneliness of the land.

After being there for an hour or so a large pickup truck pulling a tent trailer stopped. The driver was heading to Red Lake. The turnoff to Red Lake is at Vermillion Bay. I had been to that corner a number of times and while once again it was not a very long ride, it did get me to a place where there was water, food and if I wanted to, a number of options as to where to sleep. My driver had come from somewhere west of Winnipeg after dropping off his adult daughter and a friend. They had been camping and now he was heading back home. We had not driven very far when we passed the young walker. He was in a very dangerous spot where the shoulder was almost non-existent. My driver cursed a bit, checked his rear view mirror, saw that there were no vehicles coming up behind him and pulled over. He mumbled to himself "hurry up - I can't stay here" but as far as I could tell, the young man didn't run. Even I run when a vehicle stops for me and I am carrying a pack. The guy got into the back and we were off.

It was than an hours drive to the turn off at Vermillion Bay but during that time we managed to talk about gold mining (which is why Red Lake exists), the fact that the company do not treat people very well or at least that there are not enough services or housing to meet the people's needs and about immigration. MY diver had some misconceptions about Canada's immigration policy. When I talked about the fact that none of my students ever had sufficient qualifications to be immigrants to Canada he was surprised. Hopefully I changed his mind a little bit. He was not a racist but his honest beliefs about how easy it was to get into Canada would certainly support other racist thoughts.

As we got close to Vermillion Bay, our driver decided that he would go a bit further and drop us off on the far side of Dryden. It was only another thirty or so extra kilometres, but it meant that I would not face the likelihood of one more short drive from someone who was just going to Dryden. It also meant that I would not face the possibility of having to walk through Dryden which if nothing else is time consuming and boring. The driver said a number of times that if he wasn't hauling the large tent trailer, he would drive us to Thunder Bay. The man just liked driving and I think was enjoying my company.

 The young person in the back seat did contribute to our conversation. He did tell us that he had had his pack stolen by the friend he was hitchhiking with. He didn't tell us why he was going to southern Ontario or what he had been doing out west. If the driver had been hoping for some conversation or stimulation to keep him awake, he would not have got it from the young hitchhiker.

We were driven to the Wall-Mart parking lot at the south end of Dryden. The young man said that that was great as he had to go in and buy a sleeping bag. Our driver said that he had an extra one in the trailer. So he undid all of the clamps, cranked up the tent enough to get at the storage area, pulled out what looked like a fairly expensive sleeping bag, handed it to the guy, and then repacked everything. While I was anxious to get going, and I knew nothing about tent trailers, I stayed and helped as best I could. The young man did nothing. He did say thank you - but it was at best a minimal response to what had been a generous gift and a very useful ride.

I bough water at the gas station and he bought some junk food. As we walked up the hill on the other side of town I could not help but to mention to my fellow traveller that one of the reasons that we got the extra miles from the driver was that he was enjoying the conversation. I suggested that it was our job as hitchhikers to entertain our drivers. He didn't say much in response. I suppose I was a bit irritated. I really think he should have, if nothing else acted a lot more grateful for the sleeping bag, and he should have the man get it out etc. But perhaps I should have been more supportive.

When I stopped at the top of the hill and said this is where I was going to stand. He kept on walking.

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.

On the Road Again 2015 #32

The motel's "office" was in a corner of the gas station/convenience store/ take out chicken/restaurant building. Once I found the desk the owner/manager was efficient about getting me registered. Once again, I was surprised that they didn't seem to care that I had arrived with no visible means of transportation. I had a MasterCard and that is all they need to confirm that I was a good person. The room was bit more expensive than I had planned on but I was in no position to do some comparison shopping. I signed in, checked out the room - which was really quite nice with a very fancy bathroom, put on my sandals and went back next door to grab a bite to eat before the restaurant closed. Given that the previous day I had had such a great Denver sandwich at the restaurant at Gull Lake and that there was little else on the menu that I could have, I ordered another one. Unfortunately this one was not quite as good and the fries were clearly from a bag and just not as tasty. There were two waitresses, I think they could have been sisters, who were friendly enough but it felt as if they would have been happier if I had bought some of the rather strange looking, dried out, unusually coloured fried chicken in the display case and left. The fact that one of them started to sweep and then mop the dining room floor only reinforced that feeling

 As I was leaving, I heard one of the waitresses say to someone that she was off to Sault Saint Marie tomorrow morning. She was complaining that her bus left at 4:30 in the morning. It did cross my mind that perhaps I should just get on the bus and get a ride all the way to Sudbury. I was enjoying the rides, but it just felt as if it was taking too long. That I was spending as much time standing on the side of the road as I was in people's cars.

After supper I went for a brief walk down to look out at the lake. Lake of the Woods is a beautiful lake that is visited by people from around North America and the world. I know there is a down town area - I have driven through it a number of times. In hindsight I may have been better off getting my driver to let me off there, but I was not sure if there were cheap or for that fact, any accommodations. I suppose if I had had more time I could have checked. It was a lovely evening and I had a pleasant walk. I didn't see anyone and there didn't seem as if there was anywhere to walk to so I went back to my room, tried to watch TV for a bit, checked my email, did some notes and went to bed early.

I was up early the next morning, skipped breakfast and had my thumb stuck out by just after 7:00. I really didn't know which way to go. I had spoken to the motel clerk/owner the night before who said that while the by-pass was used by some people, the Trans-Canada went right through town. When we looked at the map together, it was really a rather long walk back to the by-pass. I remembered, perhaps far too late, one of my cardinal rules of hitchhiking- "don't get off the highway". I was off the highway and had no choice but to hope that I could get a ride through town.

I stood at what felt like a reasonable spot for an hour, there were lots of cars, they were not going fast, but I had the sense that most of them were local - just going into town. In some frustration, I walked a bit further out of town, crossed the road and tried hitching west, back out to the by-pass. I was there for probably half an hour when I walked even further west to a good looking spot, crossed over again and tried to go through town. I never do that. I am sure if anyone had noticed me they would have thought that I really didn't know what I was doing. And they would have been right. Other times I have been more decisive, but my long stay at the Regina truck stop had made feel a bit less secure, a little bit less secure in my ability to hitchhike. I was starting to second guess myself and that is never a good thing.

Finally a older gentleman in a small pickup truck stopped and offered to drive me to the other end of town. He had no plans for the day and not for the first time in his life, had decided to give someone a drive who needed to get through Kenora. He had a couple of interesting stories of other hitchhikers including one where he ended up lending his canoe to a hitchhiker from Germany (who had his Ph.D) so that he (the hitchhiker) could spend some time camping in the area. I think he would have been delighted if I had expressed any interest in seeing his home or the lake. I am sure I could have stayed with him for a night or two. It would have been fun to share some stories - I suspect that some of his would have not been completely true and mine might have had the odd exaggeration in them.

However, I was on the homeward stretch. It was far too early in the day to even think about stopping. He let me out a mile or so just outside of town. It looked like a great spot.