On the Road Again 2017 Epilogue

For such a short trip (2.5 days from Winnipeg to the west coast), the notes took forever to get to the page. It was frustrating knowing that I needed/wanted to get them posted and yet there always seemed to be something more interesting to do.

Part of the problem is that, after 14-15 trips, writing about the journey is just not as interesting as it was the first few times. The people who pick me up are just a wonderful, the Canadian scenery continues to inspire and delight me and at least once every trip I do something that is, at the very least, somewhat unique to hitchhiking (i.e. sleeping outside a gas station). But there is no doubt that some of the romance is gone. I like hitchhiking, that activity at least in part defines who I am, I just don't like writing about it as much.

The other part of the problem - and I knew this - is that when I weave or spin and listen to an audio book, my brain focuses on the text that I am hearing. It seldom wanders off in some other direction. I don't think about anything else other than what the author has written. On the other hand when I listen to music, especially stuff that I have heard before, my brain wanders all over the place - in other words I think. It is so much easier to write about something when I have thought about it before I sit down at the computer. I have listen to music more this week than usual. It feels as if the creative juices might still be percolating somewhere deep in my being.

However the turnaround point for me to get back to writing consistently was attending this year's Rainbow Gathering on Vancouver Island. There were a few times when the conversation turned to hitching and why we did it. At the full moon celebration we were telling stories and I told the story about Reg (someone I met in Sault St. Marie more than a few thousand miles ago) and about the following year when I saw an angel in the sky  - people liked the story. I was reminded that I like telling stories. It is not up to me to decide whether or not a story is boring or exciting, whether or not I had fun is not the point. The best that I can do is to reflect what I saw, did and heard. Whether or not the reader (if there is one) enjoys it or not - I hope they do - is up to them.

I am many things - a dad, a grand dad, a spinner/weaver, an occasional struggling writer, a retired social service worker....but I am also a hitchhiker and storyteller. I need to learn to keep them all in balance.

Every year - at least once during the trip - I wonder if this is my last trip. It can be hard on my aging body. But all things being equal - next year look for an old man with a long grey beard, a beaten up hat and a smile on his face somewhere along the Trans-Canada. That will be me. Pick me up and I will tell you a story or two.

On the Road Again 2017 #16

Sleeping on a narrow strip of beaten down/dried up grass between two road ways is perhaps not the best place to get a good night's sleep. On the other hand it was immeasurably better than walking around a Husky truck stop for 7-8 hours so I was not complaining. I got up just as the sun was rising and went through the usual morning rituals of stuffing my sleeping bag and bevy sack back into their respective bags, getting dressed, brushing my hair and in general trying to look near respectable for my public. And as always, in spite of the vehicles passing by, no one made any comments or in fact gave any signs that they even noticed me. I use the convenience store's bathroom, brushed my teeth, made sure that my shirt was  tucked in and hiked back to the highway. I was really hoping that I would catch some early morning commuter who wanted to get to Vancouver quickly. I eventually did much better than that.

There were not as many cars getting onto the highway as I had anticipated.  On other times I have stood at a similar exit on the outskirts of Kamloops and got a ride quickly - here I had to wait for almost an hour. But perhaps that was a good thing....I may have need that much time to properly wake up. I had debated getting something to eat at the Wendy's attached to the convenience store but I decided that there was nothing there that I wanted.  In hindsight so tea would have been nice and perhaps even useful.

Finally a vehicle stopped, I threw in my pack in the back seat and jump in the front. One of the first things my driver said to me was that he and his wife and seen me the previous afternoon and he had wondered then if he would see me on the road somewhere. I wish he had invited me to sleep on his front lawn - it would have saved me the hassle of sleeping at the Petro-Canada. The best news of the day (although it was pretty early in the day) was that my driver was going to Nanaimo - which meant I had a drive right to the ferry! That felt pretty good. The second best news of the day was that my driver was a great conversationalist, he had a job that I had never even considered anyone doing and he was a very nice guy. Who could ask for anything more?

Bob built bridges. More specifically he worked with a crew who built/repaired the bridges over the rivers and creeks on logging roads. I had probably driven over some of the bridges he had built. I had never thought about the amount of skill it would take to make something that could support the weight of those massive log trucks loaded with green timber. It was an interesting conversation and in comparison to one of my previous drivers, I appreciated the sense of team work and camaraderie that Bob talked about. He had a genuine respect for his bosses and  fellow workers. I don't think it was always a fun job, and I am sure that there were times when it was sheer drudgery but he made it sound as if at the end of each project they all felt good about each other. Nice. While a lot of our conversation during the four and half hour drive focused on the bridge building, we wandered through a range of other topics including relationships (Bob had, according to him, a great partner) previous lives where at least one of us had made questionable choices, the driving habits of others and how fortunate we were to live in such a great place.

There are times when I am with a driver where it feels as if the driver is at best, tolerating me and my lifestyle. We get along just fine, have a great conversation but there is a sense that the driver just does not "get me". I am not too sure if Bob "got me", but he clearly had no desire to judge me. It was a good drive, one that I would gladly do again.

We got to the ferry terminal, had to wait for an hour or so for the next ferry, got on - I bought him breakfast, we chatted some more and then as we got near to Nanaimo, we shook hands and went our separate ways -he to his car and then to head north, me to the terminal and hopefully a Greyhound bus to Duncan.

On The Road Again 2017 #15

It was just mid afternoon when I was let out by my German tourists at Sicamous which is about 130 kilometres east of Kamloops. That meant that I should have been/could have been in Kamloops well before supper time. With any luck I could have easily been in Hope before dark. If the gods of hitchhiking had been smiling upon me in a particularly magnificent way, I could have even be at the ferry terminal at Horseshow Bay - ready to catch the first ferry the following morning. Unfortunately such sometimes beneficial gods were ,if not ignoring me, certainly looking the other way as I stood on the highway watching the cars go by.

It was a long and sometimes frustrating 130 kilometre trip. I had at least four rides - three of which promised to get me to a better spot - just down the road. All of my drivers were male, two of them had an a passion or at least some skill in fixing cars, two of them went out of their way to drive me that just a little bit further to a perceived safer part of the highway, two of them were somewhat chauvinistic and bombastic. Perhaps if we had had more time together, I would have got to know them better but 10-20 kilometres in a vehicle is barely enough time to say hi. Standing on the road was hot, it was a bit boring and at least two of the spots that I ended up at, it felt dangerous. Part of the problem was that much of the traffic was local. The drivers were not going very far and most had no desired to pick up a passenger for few miles ride. The other part of the problem was that some people were driving really fast - some were clearly driving fast because they wanted to get ahead of the next person (before the highway reduced to two lanes) and others seemed to be driving fast because it was fun. There were, for example, a number of expensive looking sport cars that appeared as if they were racing each other.

It had been a long day. In terms of sleep I had not had any since my night in Portage 40 hours earlier. I had only eaten once in the past 24 hours. I had enough water - but I just wanted to sit down in a nice car, have a friendly chat with the driver and get somewhere reasonably quiet for the night. As it became clear that I would not get to Hope and perhaps not even to Kamloops that night, I started to look around for a place to sleep. I was standing beside a field that had a van with a for sale on it, a small wooden shed that advertised garden sheds for sale and tucked into the far corner a number of Canada Post rural mail boxes. It was a busy site but it felt as if it would quieten down at dark and I could put up my little tent and get a good night's sleep. I had got to the point where I was almost wishing it would get dark quicker so that I could get into my sleeping bag. However the gods were not done with me and I finally got a ride to Kamloops. The driver was perhaps a bit of a chauvinist, certainly like to talk and drove faster than I do. But he went a bit out of his way and got me to an exit on the south end of Kamloops. For that I was very grateful. I could see a big Petro-Canada truck stop just across the bi-pass and if I could not get a ride quickly, I knew I had a safe place to eat and to spend the night.

I had a few offers of a ride but they were all just going a bit down the road - I had heard that too many times in the last few hours and wisely declined those rides. It was getting dark, it looked like rain, so I hoisted my pack up for the last time that day and walked to the truck stop. It was a big station with a large convenience store. However the restaurant was a Wendy's and there was no food offered that I could eat. I grabbed an egg salad sandwich from the store along with a cranberry juice, walked around for a bit looking for a place to sleep, used their bathroom and then set up my bevy sack on a narrow strip of grass, under a pine tree with a entrance/exit roads on either side.

It was a bit surreal sleeping in a spot where truck and car head lights frequently flashed upon my shelter. Because I was under that tree and in the shadows I don't think they ever noticed me. If they did, they didn't say anything. It was not a great night's sleep, but it a lot better than I had had the night before - so I was grateful.