On the Road Again (heading east (#10)

My driver was my third Native Canadian teacher of my trip home. He was going to Vermilion Bay, just a few hours down the road, to pick blueberries. Like the woman in BC who was off to air dry salmon by the river, this driver's family had been picking blueberries for personal use and for selling from this locations for generations. In my travels I seem to frequently get the driver I need. This ride was exactly what I needed. Not just because he was going in the right direction but he was the perfect person to vent to.

I was not in a good mood. It had been a long day and some of the people that I had interacted with had not been nice to me. The OPP officer and the people who played silly games with me had frustrated me and had reduced in some way my usually boundless faith in human nature.

So as soon as I got into the vehicle I started to talk about my day. I don't usually dump on my drivers - or at least not first thing. But I did this time. My driver was gentle and understanding. As I talked through the day, my tension reduced and I started to relax. We stopped briefly  in Kenora for a coffee for my driver and a juice for me., we got directions.

While I suspect that this driver and the elder who picked me up just outside of Whistler were about the same age, they had quite completely different attitudes about the "plight" of First Nations communities and individuals. My present driver unlike my driver in BC who stated quite clearly that his community had to accept some responsibility for the current state of affairs, was far more angry and not inclined to accept anything I said as being true. I wondered later if there is a difference in the First Nation experience in Northern Ontario as opposed to B.C. Perhaps the racism and the discrimination was less or at least different out west. I think it has been a consistent experience that I have gotten along better with individuals of First Nation ancestry in the western part of the country than I have with those from central Canada.  There was no time where thought my ride was in jeopardy, but there were times when he was quite forceful in making his point.

He was an interesting man, he had a not-so-gentle humour about him as he teased me and pushed me to answer his questions about what I believed and how I lived my life. I didn't mind. It was good for me. Interestingly he was the second driver who questioned my daughter's need to know where I was occasionally.

As we approached Vermilion Bay he asked me where I wanted to get out. He was planning on heading down some side road and I was a bit uncomfortable being in Northern Ontario, well past 10:00 PM heading down a side road. I was quite frankly, not too sure where I was. And then, out of the darkness, in what felt like the middle of nowhere, on our left, there was a motel, and it was still open. I asked him to stop, we shook hands, I thanked him for bringing me back to some sense of being balanced and got out of the car. He smiled and said something to the fact that we always get what we need. I dashed across the highway and got a room. It was a great place. The person who took my money was friendly, the shower worked great and the bed was comfortable. It had been a long few days since Whistler where I had slept in a bed and had a shower. I was happy again.

A minor rant

I don't hate computers - in fact I find them to be useful tools in both my professional and private life. I have had one since the days of the Radio Shack TRS-80 and the VIC 20. But computers, or rather those who insist that I need a better one - drive me crazy.

I was quite happy with Windows 98 and the associated software. I need a typewriter and occasionally a spreadsheet - the machine that does those things does not need to be upgraded every 2 years. For the past few weeks I have been struggling with my computer. All that I wanted to do was to make it a bit faster.

I tried to run Ubuntu which is an open source operating system - worked great except it would not run my canon printer. I tried to re-install Windows XP on a newly formatted hard drive but Windows would not let me format my C drive. It drove me crazy and made me grumpy.

It is finally done and all is well but why did Bill Gates and the boys and girls who work for him decided that I could not be trusted with DOS? Life was so much easier when one needed to use common sense to and some intelligence to operate a computer. Someone has decided that we are all dummies and therefore the best solution is for us to trust someone else to decide what is best for us.

I am not too sure which is worse - being treated like I am stupid or feeling stupid taking so long to figure out a way around the problem.

On the Road Again (heading east) #9

It had turned out to be a lovely but warm day. I was in some ways envious of those young couples and families who were off to play in the water. Still I was delighted to be away from the road construction.

After watching cars go by for about 45 minutes an old Winnebago type vehicle pulled up. Every hitchhiker I know dreams of getting a long ride in a well fitted home on wheels. I have only ever had one other ride in any type of a travel-home and it wasn't very big.  The one that stopped just ahead of me looked in pretty bad shape but I am never one to turn my nose up at a ride.  Inside was a mess. It was clear that the four young people had been traveling in it for awhile. In fact three of them had driven from the west coast and the fourth passenger was a hitchhiker that they had picked up a few days ago.  They were off to some sort of music festival not too far down the road. I could never get them to tell me what kind. I don't think they knew.  It wasn't a very long ride but it was a strange one.

There was nowhere for me to sit so I stood up in the side door well. The door rattled behind me and I was fairly sure that if I fell against it, it would pop open. No one talked to me. The young people just totally ignored my presence after sharing with me the barest of information of who they were. 20 minutes down the road we reached their turn off and out I got. In the middle of nowhere.  There were a fair number of cars on the road but well over half of them were turning up the same little road that the travel-home had gone up. It looked to be an interesting mixture of people. There were large 4X4 trucks with dirt bikes in the back, a few vans with flowers painted on them and lots of normal sedans with folks looking fairly nicely dressed. I think if someone had suggested that I go have a look I might have done that. I was that curious. In hindsight I suspect it was some sort of electronic music, rave sort of thing and therefore I am glad that I didn't spend any money going in.

As I stood there I started to noticed that more drivers and passengers were noticing me than usual. There were more waves, but there were also more middle finger salutes and other rude gestures than normal. I even had a few cars slow down so that people could yell out insults. It was particular strange in that some of the folks doing this were not teenagers but people who looked to be in the late 30s or older.

I eventually got a drive by a teacher who was driving to a tourist area called Falcon Lake. It was an hour or so down the road but I was glad of the ride. It was a pleasant ride not the least because he was very generous with the bottles of cold water that he had. I drank 2 bottles in the time that I was with him.  I had been rather careful with my water and was clearly a bit dehydrated. I also needed to flush some of that sand out of my mouth.  It was quite a luxury having access to all that water. He was off to play some golf and then camp at the Provincial Campsite for the rest of the weekend. I think  Falcon Lake is one of Winnipeg's major getaway sites.

After he left me out and turned down the road to the camp I recognized where we were. Last year when I was driving with a young man who was having difficulties with his sports car we had stopped at the garage to see if we could get some parts for the car. It was a nice spot. Lots of green grass to look at, great shoulders to stand on and enough of a straight road so that drivers could get a good look at me. It was however a bit discouraging that not only did no one stop, but there were a couple of times when a driver's behaviour was somewhat disturbing. Most memorable was the time when a late model car with an old man and someone I assumed to be his wife pulled over. As I ran up to the car, two teenagers popped up in the back seat and started to laugh at me as the car pulled away. I guess I can understand this kind of juvenile behaviour when a teenager does it, but it is much harder to accept a father teasing me this way with his kids in the car. Not the kind of lessons that a parent should teach his children.

I was also discouraged in that I had had such great luck until today and I was disappointed that it was not continuing. I clearly had become to optimistic about my hitchhiking skills. At one point I decided to walk up a long hill just to see if there was anything worth while on the other side. I thought perhaps there might be a town or a motel or something. There wasn't and so I walked back down the road to my spot just outside what I thought were the Falcon Lake campgrounds.

About 6:30 I decided to find a place to sleep and so went into the campgrounds. It was a big area with a garage/store, some play grounds tent camping and a motel. The lake looked really nice and I was quite content to stay for the evening. Unfortunately  the camp grounds were full and the motel wanted $130.00 a night. I went up to an OPP office and asked if he had any suggestions because if not I was going to sleep on the side of the road. His only answer was that he didn't think that was a good idea and that I should get back on the road. I did mention to him that it would be dark in a hour and that it was dangerous to hitch in the dark. He didn't care - he just told me to "try harder!!" I felt as if I had been run out of town. I bought some water and went out to try my luck one more time. I then noticed that the spot where I planned on sleeping had been taken over by a couple of deer and their fawns. I was kind of looking forward to sleeping there.

However just after the sun set and literally five minutes before I was ready to pack it in for the day a van stopped and offered me a ride. To stay there with the deer was tempting, and a large part of me did not want to prove the OPP officer that he was right - but a ride is a ride - so I got into the vehicle.

Sometimes life just sucks

Last weekend I went to a funeral. It was for someone who I had last worked worked with 6 - 7 years ago, before I went back to school. We had somehow lost touch with each other as I have with most of my friends from that era. Not for any particular reason. People change and especially in this day and age, it is all to easy to drift apart.

I generally try to live my life without regretting things I cannot change. I try not to feel bad for all thjose things that I didn't do. But I have spent the last week regretting that I didn't stay in touch - that I didn't make the effort to be there when I could have been and perhaps should have been.

And now I have just heard that another friend has died. I wasn't there for her either. It doesn't matter that I didn't know that perhaps I could have helped. All that matters is that I didn't call and see how she was.

They were both remarkable people and the world will be poorer without them. Perhaps their last gift to me is the reminder that I need to reach out and to stay connected.

On the Road Again (heading east) #8

I didn't sleep well that night The ground was rough and the weeds were thick and stalky. It is always difficult to find a space to sleep when it is dark, not just because one can't tell if the ground is even, but also it hard to get things organized. I suppose I could use my flashlight more but I don't want to attract attention as I am getting ready to go to bed. I always know that I am trespassing and I don't want to attract the attention of people who are bored and who are looking for excitement.

By 5:30 AM the next morning I was up and packing my gear into my pack. I made use of the Flying J's bathroom to clean up and then went and had breakfast. Once again I was amazed that no one noticed me, or at least acted as if I didn't belong. I felt grubby and more than a little bit road stained. It had been a long two days.  I am not sure if I would have served me breakfast without making sure that I could pay for it. But they did and I ate my fill at the buffet. The parking lot outside looked full. I was surprised that the large restaurant was almost empty except for a older couple and a trucker who was grumbling at being stuck in Winnipeg because his load was not ready.

As soon as I finished eating I hoisted the pack on my back and walked for about 20 minutes to the nearest bus stop. There were lots of cars going onto the ring road that circles Winnipeg, but I made the assumption that most of them were just local drivers who would not be going very far. I suppose I could have stayed there for awhile but it made more sense to take a bus across the city to the east end. It was a smooth bus trip and almost with no waiting for connections I was quickly at the other end of the city.

When I had gotten up there had been a thick fog and looked like it might rain all day but by 8:00 when I was on the east side of Winnipeg, it had started to clear to become somewhat muggy. I was glad that it was not going to rain but I could have done without the mosquitoes. Last year I had made the same across town bus trip and had gotten a ride very quickly. I assumed, in part because I had had such great rides out west and back again, that it would be that easy again this time. I terribly wrong.

There were lots of cars but they all appeared to be local traffic or else contained  families.  It was Saturday and I should not have expected very much. I walked for a fair distance, always looking for that perfect spot where the shoulder and sight lines were be in perfect harmony. I was also looking for the ring road. I wanted to get past it so that the majority of cars passing me would be heading east towards Ontario. I finally got a ride from a older man in a pickup truck who was going just down the road but who said that he could get me to a good spot where there were some stop-lights. I knew the spot he was talking about and was glad. I was wrong - I was thinking of another spot and where he let me off was not good at all. It was in the middle of a construction zone.

It was dirty, every time a big truck went by a bucketful of dust was thrown at my face. I could feel the dirt between my teeth. Drivers were clearly irritated at the highway being reduced to one lane traffic and having to deal with dump trucks. They were not going to stop for me. It was really quite miserable. I was stuck there as the sign said the construction lasted for another 15 kilometers. I don;t mind walking for a bit, but 15 kilometers was a bit much. There was some occasional entertainment from some ATVers who were riding in the ditches along the highway. It was pretty swampy in the bottom and they were having a great time. They at least were dirtier than me.

Finally the driver of one of the dump trucks that had been passing me all morning felt sorry for me and gave me a drive to the end of the construction. He was a very generous guy who genuinely felt bad for me and wanted to help. In spite of the fact that I have been stuck in road construction areas before it was the first time I had got a ride from such a trucker. I agreed with him that it was dangerous for both me and the trucks to have me standing there. He suggested that it should be a policy that truckers give hitchhikers a ride to get them out of the way. I could not have agreed more!

He let me out just outside a campground that also had a waterslide which was where everyone who had been passing me had been going. To the west of this campsite - there was lots of traffic, to the east there was almost none.  No wonder why no one had stopped for me. It was going to be a long Saturday.

On the Road Again (heading east) #7

I like Medicine Hat - I don't like walking through it but I like the corner I stand at on the east side of that city. Great shoulders, good visibility and enough stuff happening that it remains interesting. But I was tired and I felt dirty. It would have been nice to stop except as I have found out other times, there is no where to stop. The east side of Medicine Hat is an expensive place to sleep.

I fairly quickly got a short drive down the road a piece - which probably was not the best decision in terms of being in a good spot but I was on such a roll in terms of getting great rides, I didn't want to lose the rhythm. I didn't write down where I ended up but I think it was somewhere near Dunmore Alberta. My notes say it was hot and the air still smell of smoke.

I wasn't there very long when I got a ride. It was perhaps the dumbest ride of the year and perhaps even of my whole hitchhiking career. Allen (yes I had two drivers named Josh and 2 named Allen this year) was drunk. In my defence I didn't know that when I got in, but within 10 minutes there was no doubt. He was drinking vodka mixed with I think coffee and that certainly masked the smell. He was a bit incoherent. I thought at first that he just had trouble speaking, or that perhaps English was not his first language ( yes I know I am not very bright).

He was bragging about his car - which was a General Motors vehicle called a Cobalt. What made it unique however was that it was a made in the USA car and therefore had a different trim package and a speedometer that read miles not kilometers. I am use to drivers bragging about their cars and have learnt that I do not need to respond to their comments except to agree with them, so I suppose that I could say that I was not really listening to him. I was probably thinking about the fact that he was off to Winnipeg and seemed willing to take me with him.

When I realized that he was drunk, I convinced him to stop the car and let me drive which he did surprisingly easily once he accepted the fact that I was not going drive any further. So for the next 2-3 hours I had to put up with him criticizing my driving and his silly rants about the world. But he did stop drinking. We stopped in Swift Current and he wanted to drive. I said fine, but I was not prepared to go with him so he relinquished the keys and let me drive for another few hours. At some point near dusk he once again said that he wanted to drive.  I was tired and would have had to stop soon. I knew he had not been drinking for a number of hours so I deemed it safe.

Our conversations were disjointed. I don't know why but it frequently feels as if some of my shorter drives leave so much not talked about while some of the long cross country rides are the ones that lack substance. So many times on this trip and on other trips I have wished that I could have travelled further with specific drivers, and I have had my share of drivers with whom I was bored after the first hour. Part of this feeling of dissatisfaction derives in part (I think) from the driver not being interested in me or any of my comments. I don't care what we talk about, but I do like to be part of the conversation.

Allen had been in Calgary visiting a daughter that he had not seen for 16 or so years. I have to admire his courage for making the attempt to reconnect with her. I told him that. I didn't tell him that I could not understand how one could lose contact in the first place. Allen,of course, blamed the girl's mother, and if half of the stories were at least partially true, there may have been some justification for his belief. I am always careful not argue about people's interpretations of their past lives. I barely understand my own, I am certainly not going to try to understand anyone elses. But if I needed to believe his stories about his former wife, then I needed also to believe all of his stories about his girlfriends. It is not surprising that she left him. He had another daughter in Winnipeg. I am not sure if she was his biological daughter or just the daughter of his girl friend. They talked on the phone a few times and there appeared to be genuine affection on his part.

 I don't think we stayed on one topic for more than 10 minutes at a time although we frequently re-visited each story. The conversation got a bit better after he napped for a few hours but it was never stimulating. He had had a difficult week in Calgary and I think he was genuinely grieving leaving his daughter. I think he needed the company and I was available. It strikes me that while it would appear that picking up a hitchhiker may appear to be a selfless act. That people pick up someone on the side of the road to help. This is only partially true. I think some, if not most pick people up for selfish reasons. I am not complaining either way.

We got to Winnipeg about 1:30 in the morning. he let me off and I went behind the Flying J gas station, found a piece of flat ground, tucked my sleeping bag into my tiny tent and drifted off to sleep. My last sights and sounds were the trucks humming in the distance as their drivers slept and the bright metal halide lamps floating like spaceships above the parking lot.

On the Road Again (heading east) #6

It was almost 4:30 when I felt rain drops. Fortunately at about the same time as I was starting to stuff my sleeping bag into my pack, I heard Allen starting to move around in the truck.Two or three minutes the door opened and I got in. We said good morning and we were off. I barely had time to run my fingers through my beard before we were on the highway. At some point during the all too brief night I had looked up and noticed some stars. I was excited in that it meant that the sky was clearing and that the smoke was gone. However my excitement was premature and by the dawn's early light it was clear that the smoke would visible for most of the day. I decided to bypass Canmore and head straight through to Calgary.

By just after 7:00 I was standing by a bus stop somewhere in the outskirts of Calgary waiting for a bus that would take me downtown. As it happens so often when I leave a driver, my goodbye to Allen was brief and I suspect did not adequately thank him for the great ride.But I had a bus to catch and he had a delivery to make. I think he was planning on dropping of the equipment and then heading back to Vancouver as soon as he could. With any luck, he could have been home by late that night.

I have in the past, expressed somewhat unfavourable opinions of the Calgary bus system and the drivers. Perhaps I should apologize. It is a great system once you master it, and I have. I got downtown, got on the right C train and then got off at Rundle Station. The number 48 bus got me to the the east side of town and I was ready to hit the road again. But I was not ready psychologically. The trip had been too fast. I had not, because of the smoke been able to say good bye to the Rockies. For me being in Calgary heading east means that my summer is over. Being  in Calgary means that I have to grow up a little bit and get back to that other world I inhabit for nine months of the year. I, quite frankly, did not like it.

It is a relatively long walk from the last bus stop in Calgary to the outskirts of town. Fortunately the road passes by a mall and so I stopped for breakfast. At McDonald's! It seemed to be the only place open. It is quick, the food, especially after not having eaten for 30 hours, tastes OK and I knew no one would care or even notice if I cleaned myself up in their bathroom. Besides I needed time to acclimatize to be on flat land. Still I was on a roll and I did not want to waste the luck that had been coming my way, so after doing the best I could with my appearance and eating the breakfast far too quickly, I was off again.

The weather was gray and somewhat dismal. People on the train had been complaining about the smell of smoke and newspapers had the forest fires as the lead story. It was a lot better than in Rockies, but it was still quite noticeable. The dull looking skies matched my mood. The road construction that has been going on for years, and which has sometimes made it difficult to get to the Trans-Canada has been almost finished and so it was much easier walking.

By just after 8:30 my thumb was stuck out on the side of the road. Part of me was rather pleased with myself. I had, on the way west, got through Calgary with no problems and now I had gone east with similar ease. I had gotten some great rides without a lot of waiting and 24 hours after leaving Whistler I was on the other side of Calgary. It looked as if my trip east was going to be as fast as my trip west.

My first ride was to Strathmore which is less than a hour from Calgary. But it was a good start. My driver was an older man driving a big pickup. He worked near Fort McMurry and was just down visiting family. For most of the time we discussed/argued gun control and other issues that frequently seem to divide the country. I certainly understood his point of view although I may have shaken his gun control stance just a touch when I mentioned that a significant proportion of murders happen with families and were done using a gun. There was not enough time to cover all that we could have.While some of my friends on the west coast might have thought him a bit of a "red neck", he wasn't. He was just another Canadian who had a point of view. He was willing to explain those points of views and he was certainly ready to listen to mine. I enjoyed his company. By 10:15 I was on the other side of Strathmore waiting for a ride.

It was cool with a nasty wind so I put on my bright orange waterproof wind jacket. I don't like wearing it as it is completely water proof and therefore I sweat in it. But it does keep me dry and warm. I stood in that spot for a long time. Almost for three hours. Three hours compared to other years was not really a long time but this year the traveling had been so good it may have be the longest up to that point that I stood in one spot. But finally a car stopped. It was a older but mint condition Mercedes.

My driver whose name was Josh was a doctor who specialized in palliative care. He was going to Medicine Hat and wanted to talk to someone to help the time go by faster. For a ride to Medicine Hat, which was two and a bit hours down the road, I would have talked about anything. And we did. In fact we talked about so much that I can't remember much of the conversation. I think that is partially because the good doctor was a bit scattered - we bounced from topic to topic - never really finishing a conversation. Perhaps he was a bit starved for company or perhaps he was just one of those folks who needed to bubble over - talking about a myriad of things.

I am not even too sure what his history was. He seems to have moved around a lot and worked in a number of medical fields. But we talked about the great car ( that he had bought second hand off the proverbial lady who had only driven it to church), his kids, his job, schools and whether they worked or not and  of course my life on the road. In spite of the chaotic nature of the conversationl it was entertaining and fun. With all due respect to my other drivers and friends - it had been awhile since I had had a semi-academic discussion. So it was fun to have to think and talk about things a little more clearly.

There were a couple of times when he touched my knee - all within context of making a point but I was a little bit uncomfortable. After the second time I happened to mention that I was somewhat tactile senitive and he never did it again. That may have just been a coincidence. He copuld have been one of the folks who like to touch. He was glad to drive me to the east end of Medicine Hat which meant that I did not have to either walk through the city or to figure out their bus system. By just after 3:00 I was ready to look for another drive.