On the Road Again (heading east) #12

The hotel was too expensive. But if I wanted to make an early start in the morning,there was no where else to stay near the highway. I had stayed there last year and knew that the breakfast was not worth the rather exorbitant cost - so I skipped that meal and headed out, once again walking along the shoulder of the Trans-Canada. While I am not sure if the spot I choose to stand was actually outside of the town limits, I am fairly sure that no pedestrians were allowed to be there. However there was lots of room to stand and for cars to stop so I didn't see a problem. The police that passed by me didn't see a problem either.

It was a nice day - which was good, because it was going to be a long day - and perhaps the strangest 24 hours of the trip. Around 10:20 I got a short ride from Tom who was a builder/designer who was just heading a few miles down the road to see a house he was working on. He let me out a a gas station/corner grocery store which again had lots of room to stand and watch the traffic. If I have a choice I prefer to be let out at such places. One because it means that I can get more water if I need it and secondly it gives me something to look at when the traffic is slow. And it was slow. As is always the case, once one is well outside the city limits, the traffic which may have been almost non-stop dries up to a small trickle of vehicles. I had lots of time to kick stones and sing to myself.  It wasn't until 11:45 that I got my next drive.

This may have been my favourite short drive of the trip. He was an Hungarian who was well into his 70s. He had been a mine engineer (I think) and had chosen to retire in the north country. He spent his winters in Toronto but all summer he was quite content to be north of Superior. He was clearly a well educated, well read man. He was delighted to hear that I studied sociology and for the next 45 minutes we talked about philosophy and politics and society. He was delightful. We laughed and teased each other, talked about women, argued about everything and in general had a great time. He said that if could have afforded it, it would have driven me all the way to Sudbury. He was a bit of a rascal - he said that he wished he could have a young girl to live with him who could talk about philosophy.

It is not often that I get to talk about Rousseau and Pascal to my drivers, but I relish the opportunities when they come.

The drive end all too soon. He was going a bit further but he said that the spot where he was turning off was in the middle of nowhere and he thought I would be better off where there was the possibility of a car slowing down to get gas.

He let me out across from one of the strangest building I have ever seen. I had stopped here before on one of my trips, but I never got a really good look at it. The building which functions as a gas station and mineral store (amongst other things I suspect) has these rather incredible mural painted on the three sides that I could see. Even more unusually - there is a park beside the building with some strange obelisk type structures such as the one shown in the picture to the right. I have not a clue what it was or why someone but it there. I suppose i could have asked, but other than to buy some water, I didn't leave my post - just in case the one car that would stop for me, came by at the exact moment that I was across the road chatting to the owners. It felt like cruel and unusual punishment that there was also a chip truck across the highway as well. I had not had a decent french fry since leaving Ontario 2 months ago - and I was sorely tempted.

I was there for quite awhile - there was not a lot of traffic and none of the cars that stopped to get gas, or fries or shop in the store looked at me. Still watching the folks come and go entertained me for a while. Finally a car did stop. It had Oregon plates, the back seat and trunk were full of camping gear and there was a kayak roped to the roof. The driver who looked to be about my age got out, made some room in the back for my pack and I was ready for my next adventurer. If I had known how this ride turned, I would still have taken the ride, I just would not have been so excited.

My driver was off to Toronto. He had been touring though part of Canada and the US, looking at kayak routes. We knew some common areas including the west coast of BC and it was pleasant talking about various water routes. There was one small glitch in his plans. He wanted to stop at a specific spot and put his kayak into Lake Superior for a few hours paddle. He had no problems me waiting for him, and I was glad to spend time by the lake at Rossport knowing that I would have a ride to Sudbury. Finally, the one long ride I needed to get home! We stopped at this rather charming little village with some small bed and breakfast places and a few restaurants. He decided that he was hungry so we went in to one place and had a ok

After about an hour or so, he did come back - we loaded up the kayak and put everything back in the car and were off. By this time it was getting late. I think it was probably close to 4:00.  While perhaps if I had stayed on the highway I could have got another ride - I was at this point content with my decision.

He had spent much of his adult life working as a technical writer but that market had dried up and so he had gone back to school to learn how to be a para-legal. He fact he was waiting to hear about an interview that he had for internship. He had had an interesting life and was a good conversationalist. he had been married, but  had been divorced for a number of years. he had lots of friends many of whom sounded quite interesting. We had lots to talk about and the miles went along quite smoothly.

As the sun started to set he asked about finding a place to stay for the night. He said he wasn't tired yet but would be in a few hours. I suggested that Sault St. Marie was too far away but that we could easily make Wawa. He very quickly became concerned saying that he didn't have to go through the Sault and suggested that I was leading him astray. I told him that there was no other way to get from where we were to Toronto except to go through the Sault. He didn't believe me - he was positive that he had seen another way to do it. As we left the shore of Lake Superior and headed inland, he naturally assumed that we were finished with the lake. he was again somewhat disbelieving when I said that he was only 1/2 way down the east side of the lake.

As we went through White River - I got to tell my Winnie the Pooh story - I love telling that story. I am not too sure if he believed me about that either. While it wasn't exactly tense in the car, things were definitely less friendly than they had been. We finally got to Wawa, found a motel that had 2 rooms open, moved our stuff in and then went out to find somewhere to eat. All that we could find was a Mr. Sub - which was just fine for me. I brought my map into the restaurant and as we ate I showed him our route. He kept on insisting that there was another way. As we said good night - he told me that he had some emails to do the next morning but hoped we would be ready to go by 7:30 or so.

I had a quick shower and quickly fell asleep.

The next morning I got up - stuck my head into his room where he was working on his laptop - said hi and went back to my room - with the door open. I read some magazines and every 10 or 15 minutes I stuck my head out the door to make sure that he was not waiting for me. Finally by around 8:30 I went down the hall - his door was closed so I went downstairs only to find his car was gone and my hat, map, and water bottle on the steps. He had left without me!!!!

I will never know why he did that. It seemed like an incredibly cruel thing - especially as I had told of the tales of people being stuck in Wawa for days as they waited for a ride.I can't remember ever being as angry as I was that morning. As I threw on my pack and started to tromp down the road - I coursed and swore and planned all kinds of mean minded underhanded things to do him if I ever saw him again.

But of course I never did.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

North to Sudbury

This past weekend I went to Sudbury. While teaching until noon on Friday and then leaving from the school just after 12:30 was a bit of a rush- it was well worth it. For the most part the roads were great and the traffic was pretty light. The only bad time was when a long line of us got behind a snow plow and we all ended up going slower than normal. From what I could see 20 cars back, the plow was not doing much. Up near Huntsville, they clearly had got a lot of heavy snow and for a few miles the landscape was rather magical.


The above shot was taken while I was driving. I wasn't using a cell phone camera so I guess it was legal.  As you can see the road is quite bare.

Had a great time with the grand kids. On Friday night I went book shopping with my 5 year old grandson. He asked for some books for his birthday - so we went to Chapters and he picked his two books and then "paid" for them with his gift card. It was fun and it was a pleasure to see him take it so seriously.

Of course I would have preferred not to use Chapters - but I am not too sure if there is another book store in Sudbury, and the selection at Chapters was great. He spent at least 30 minutes choosing.

   On Saturday at lunch time he had his birthday party where they made crowns, and then decorated gingerbread men or trees and then made their pizzas and then they decorated their cup cakes. A good time was had by all!!!

Later that afternoon I got to watch my 9 year old granddaughter play indoor soccer which was an interesting experience. I left early Sunday morning. It was a busy 36 hours - but I am glad I went.

Oh yes I had a shower in a most glorious shower - in the basement bathroom that my daughter designed and built. She had a bit of help, but most of it she did herself - the tiling especially was amazing. I don't think I have seen a finer bathroom that one she built.

I am a lucky guy.

Weaving sales

For the last month or so I have been somewhat consumed in the production of stuff to sell. I have spent much of my spare time washing, carding, spinning and dying wool so that I could make some small items that folks would want to buy. I love playing with wool. It is satisfying and productive. When I have got a fleece washed or spun - I know that I have accomplished someting that is measurable. When I play with colour and I like the colour that I produce - it is exciting. I never quite know what the final colour will look like when it is woven and when it works - I feel good. That is why I spin and weave - it makes me feel good.

baby blankets

But I also need to sell stuff - if for no other reason than I need to pay for my supplies. Of course there is also the problem of what to do with the stuff I produce if I don't sell it. My walls are full of wall hangings and racks of throw rugs. I don't have any room left for new projects. So a show is a good thing.

large (44X60) rug

This weekend a couple of us on the same street had a bit of a show. Attendance was very poor - perhaps there should have been more advertisment - perhaps we needed a few more homes to be opened up, perhaps the economy is not doing as well as people think or perhaps no one felt like shopping. Its hard to know what goes on in the minds of people. Regardless of the reasons I did not sell as much as I would have liked to. I did however make enough to pay for the 6 fleeces that I have bought in the past 8 months, for the dye and perhaps even for the all of the hot water I used in washing the wool. I met some nice people and some of them said some rather nice things about my rugs or blankets. So it was satisfying from that point of view.

some  purses/bags

Actually - all in all it wasn't a bad weekend - talked to some people, made some money and got some valadation on my craft skills. I started think that it had almost been a waste of time - but now I think it was just fine - i am a lucky guy.

On the Road Again (heading east) #11

I had a great night's sleep and the next morning I was up early and read to walk down the road. Just a few hundred yards east of my hotel there was a gas station/restaurant. I stopped in and had a quick breakfast amongst the tourists and the fisherman.  Across from the the restaurant was an abandoned motel with a large parking lot. This meant that there was lots of room for me to stand and watch the cars zip past me. It was a grand day. Sunny but it didn't feel like it was going to get too hot. I was sure that by the end of the day I would be in Thunder Bay. It was a long ride but I knew that I could do it. The drudgery and boredom of yesterday was gone. My optimism had returned. The sand from the construction was washed out my hair and brushed from my teeth. I was fairly sure that most of the cars that were going to past me - would be going some distance. I knew it might be awhile, but it would be a good ride when it came.

I was wrong- not that it was a bad ride - there are no bad rides if they get me a bit closer to my destination but it was not nearly as long as I would have liked. My driver was just going to Dryden which was no more than an hour and half away.He was off to see his mother and then take her to church. As we talked I learned the he had been in the army as a MP but had been out for some time. He had a son of whom he was very proud of. We spent much of our time talking about raising kids in the 21st century and what values are important. I am always surprised that in spite of all of the talk about Dads still not being as involved as they should be in their children's lives, how many of my conversations are about their children and what they do with them. It is quite extraordinary and very enjoyable. If he had not had plans with his mother, I think he would have driven me further just for the pleasure of having a conversation.

He drove me to the southern end of Dryden. I then had to walk for 10 or 15 minutes to get to a decent spot. I was there for quite awhile. Long enough at least to start looking at the motel just down the road, wondering if I was going to get a ride, or if I was going to be stuck in this town until Monday morning. But a ride eventually did come and this time it was to Thunder Bay.

My driver was in the army. His base was in New Brunswick but his wife and children lived in Manitoba ( I think - I seemed to have taken rather poor notes in this last section of travel). He had been home for a visit and now was going bac to work. He was stopping in Thunder Bay to spend a the night with a friend's mother and then they were going to continue on to New Brunswick the nest morning. This struck me as very generous to offer to drive someone he didn't know all the way to New Brunswick. The was room in the car for me but he said he wanted to ask his new travel partner how she felft with a stranger in the back seat. That made sense to me.

As he let me off on the highway, he said that he hopefully would see me the next morning. If I had been smart I would have asked for his phone number, it would have made it so much easier. Because it was not yet dark, I walked to the edge of town and tried to get a ride. That was dumb. It was dumb in part because I  had to walk 2 kilometers along a road that  I was not suppose to be on and then after standing on the side of the road for just over an hour, I had to walk back in the dark to the nearest hotel. By the time I got there and checked in, it was after 9:00 and all of the restaurants were closed.

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.