On the Road Again 2011 - Blog 16

It is always, at least for me, a strange feeling to cross into the USA. The border people ask questions, that while they are not unreasonably invasive,are asked in a manner that is both rude and aggressive. They also frequently manage to do so in a way that suggest that they are immeasurably bored by the whole process.

Travel within the Gulf Islands can be complicated both in terms of making the various ferries as there appears to be little attempt to coordinate their schedules and the various terminals are not always located near each other. For example we needed to make a specific ferry that left Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring to go to Victoria on Vancouver Island. We then needed to drive 20 minutes to Sidney to catch the ferry to Andacortes north of Seattle.

It was in Sidney BC that we had our little chat with the Canadian and American custom people. We had rehearsed the answer to the question (which would have been a valid question for anyone who knew where we were going to ask) " why didn't you go directly to Vancouver from Salt Spring?" It would have been both faster and it would have been cheaper. There were two answers...one was that Sally for good reasons, has a firm belief that people who go to Gatherings have an increased risk of being harassed by the border people. If we took a more indirect route with a destination other than the Gathering, or harassment potential would be reduced. The other reason for taking the two ferries was that we were not going directly to the Gathering.

Somehow everyone in the van except for me, knew that we were not going directly to the southern part of Washington State. Sally has a former worker and a good friend who now lives on Orcas Island. She had arranged to visit her for two nights. So we got off at Friday Harbour, meet Sally's friend and had a very nice meal in a Chinese restaurant. The town of Friday Harbour was busy and quite alive with music, places to eat and lots of tourists.

After supper we got onto another ferry and went to Orcas Island and then to the house. It was an interesting house, or at least how it got built was interesting. There were six houses on a crescent, all of which looked similar. The couple had joined some sort of a co-operative. All of the families had bought the land and had signed agreements as to how they would build and perhaps more importantly when they would be finished. There was a not-for-profit housing agency that assisted them in all phases of the building including what materials to use,  and where to get them. The agency also, I think, assisted with some of the financing. The families built their homes with the assistance of professionals (e.g. electricians) - they helped each other out and  in the process became good friends. They are now officially a condo board so they will stay connected forever. It is a good system. While the houses were a bit too uniform for my taste, they were individually brightly painted. The lot sizes were good, and the interiors were all different. People who could never have afforded to buy a house, now can. And they did it themselves. There should be more such opportunities.

On the Saturday we went to the local market. It was a highly localized affair with all of the vendors and most of the customers all knowing each other. The crafts were great and generally very reasonably priced. The fresh food looked absolutely wonderful. Later we went to the local pioneer museum where we had a guided tour. Very interesting.

As nice as the house was, and as great as the island was, after a day, I was ready to leave.                           

On the Road Again 2011 - Blog 18

I was excited. Finally after a couple years I was going to another Gathering. The last time I had gone to a National, it was to do research for my thesis. I had promised to provide some feedback. Now I would be able to do it.  It is a special feeling to be going home after a few years.

The next morning I was up bright and early -in fact I was ready to go by just after 7:30. I should have known better. Sally is not a morning person. Her morning routines are complex and I suspect tiring and hard on her and her helpers.. We had agreed the previous night that we were going to have an early start. I believed them. The others were not breakfast people, so I went alone to eat while they were assisting Sally. The little restaurant attached the the campground/ motel only had one employee. She both took our orders and, cook the breakfast and served the meal. Perhaps that is why they used paper plates and plastic utensils- so the she did have to do the dishes as well. The breakfast was good and as the restaurant was a local hangout, I got to observe some old guys sit around and gossip.

There are, I am sure, thousands if not millions of similar places across North America. Perhaps such places exist in every corner of the world. I don't know because I have not visited every corner, but I have eaten breakfast in small restaurants from Newfoundland to West Virginia to Salt Spring Island. And in all of them, older men gathered for coffee before they start their day. Sometimes the group is comprised of mainly retirees, other times the group appears to me a mixture of older guys who are still working and those who are not. The working men are first to leave knowing, I am sure, that they are going to be talked about as soon as they leave. The men meet because they are good friends and because they share so many common cultural values. Within some groups younger men do, on occasion, attend but it frequently seems to me that they have a lesser status.

By the time I finished my breakfast (which included  eavesdropping on the conversation until the old guys had left) I sort of hoped that we would be nearly ready to get the van packed. Of course they  were not ready and they had decided to have breakfast. I spent the time pacing around the van. It was almost 12:00 before we pulled out of the driveway.

The drive to the main gate of the Gathering was spectacular. Unlike some other Gatherings I have been to, it was easy to find and the roads were great. No logging roads, or long stretches of a dirt road with stones as sharp as knives - for almost all of the way, it was well paved with no cracks or pot holes. Of course it was going into a National Forest and our roads into Algonquin or Banff National parks are just as good. But what made the road so spectacular was the view of St. Helen's. One could easily see where literally the mountain " blew it's top". It is completely flat on the top. Quite amazing.

When we got to where people had started to park their cars, we just kept on going on the assumption that (1) that the wheelchair would be our pass to parking as close to the trail head as possible and (2) that the people managing the parking would know Sally. I was right on both accounts. We got as close anyone got because of the chair and people we waiting and ready to help unpack the car.

It was so much easier than the last time Sally and I travelled to a Gathering. This time it was only about a 20 minute walk along a relatively level dirt road from where we left the van until we got to where Sally would likely stay. Once the van was unpacked and I knew approximately where Sally was going to be, I kept going trying to get to "my kitchen", the kitchen I am most comfortable with, the kitchen I did my research at.  It is called Instant Soup.

On the Road Again 2011 - Blog 17

Finally we were on our way to the Gathering.

But it was such slow travelling. Part of the reason for the trip feeling as if it was taking forever taking was that Sally needs a fair amount of time to get ready in the morning. But the other part of the problem was that her workers did not feel the same sense of urgency that I did. I wanted to get to the Gathering. I knew that in spite of all the comments on the various web sites about relatively easy access, there was no guarantee that it would be easy. I did not want to get there in the dark. And while there had been no comments on the web about police harassment, I knew that there such harassment was always possible to occur at any moment especially during the set up phase. To get caught up in an incident, especially if it was getting dark would have been a nightmare. I, of course, am a bit of a worrier. I need not have bothered. Nothing I could have said would have made the young workers hurry. So we spent almost an hour in Anacortes after getting of the ferry shopping for stuff like organic fruit, toilet paper and clothespins. All stuff that could have been bought the day before. Wandering around an strange town looking for stores is not a good use of a traveller's time.

The traffic down the interstate even when we were bypassing Seattle was never that bad. Two of the workers had been down this road before and so there was little confusion as to where we were going. Three or four hours later we were off on to the secondary highway. Once again we were obligated to stop to buy food. Another 45 minutes wasted. It was hard to just sit there and not say something. But it wasn't my car and I was not driving, so I kept my mouth shut. For most of the time while the others were out shopping, I stayed with Sally, and that is always a pleasure.

Just outside the town of Cougar, Washington, we decided that we needed to stop for the night.It was too late for us to get to the Gathering. If we had not wasted those few hours shopping, we could have perhaps made it. But we didn't and in hindsight perhaps it worked out for the best.

The place that we chose (it was in fact the only choice) was great. There were a number of cabins and lots of spaces for tents and RVs. There was a small swimming pool and an equally small restaurant. And perhaps most importantly, it was cheap. For $100.00 we got a room that had a bunk bed, a single and a queen size bed. The two young female workers slept in the queen, Sally in the single, I and Sally's male worker used the bunk bed. It was a good good deal, the cabin was interestingly furnished and the owners were very nice.

There were a lot of families at the campsite. Some of them had come for a family reunion and were staying a few extra days, other groups were there because this was where people registered to climb Mount St. Helen's. There was a nice,peaceful feeling to this place. It was a good place for a shower and a good night's sleep before getting lost in that special place called the National Gathering.

On the Road 2011 #15

It was, of course, great to be in my second home. It was nice to be able to open up my box that I had mailed to myself and to have a wider range of clothing to wear. It was great to have a bed to sleep in, and even better it was quite wonderful to know where I was going to sleep that night. There was of course the immeasurable bonus of being able to hang out with my son, daughter-in-law and grandson. But there were times during those first few days of being in Duncan that I felt something was missing. I had in fact had this feeling ever since I had gotten on the ferry at Horseshoe Bay. For awhile I could not figure out what it was and then I realized - I was missing my adventure!

I was grateful for the rides and would not have wanted to change a single part of my trip. Everything had gone so smoothly. It could not have been better organized if I had hired a tour guide to arrange the rides. I had made it across the western half of Canada in what I thought was record time. No one I have spoken to has hitchhiked that distance any where near as fast. Most have never heard of anyone coming close. So I felt pretty good about my luck. BUT nothing exciting had happened. Now I want to be clear (in case the Hitchhiking Gods are reading this), if I had a choice between really good rides (if a bit boring) with no waiting between, or wonderful exciting rides with day long waits in between - I think I would chose the former. Although if I was allowed to be picky something in the middle would be nice.

All of that says that either I am getting old and my sense of adventure is less,or perhaps now that I have a clear destination in mind, the old saying about it is not the destination that matters, it is the journey....perhaps is no longer true for me. If the latter is the case - I feel bit sad. Sad because I will still be wanting the adventure, but not be prepared to do the work.

Non-the-less I was more than prepared to relax and enjoy my family. And I did for a few days. But I had plans to make and places I wanted to do to. One of the reasons that I had left so early from Ontario was that I wanted to go to the Rainbow Family's National Gathering in Washington (USA). I didn't know how I was going to get there and so spent some time looking at bus and train schedules. Just before I had left Peterborough I had talked to my friend Sally on Salt Spring about finding someone who was going and who had room for both her workers and all of her stuff (Sally was injured in a bicycle accident some years ago and is now a quadriplegic). It seemed unlikely that such a vehicle would appear. When called her from my son's four days before she wanted to leave, there was no van.

I went to Salt Spring Island on a Wednesday in part to tell her that I had decided to go down by bus or train. Just ten minutes before I had gotten there, someone had offered her a van for the trip. There was going to be room for me. Things always work in mysterious ways around Sally and her household. I stayed for supper, slept on the floor and the next morning took the first ferry back to Vancouver Island. I packed up my camping gear, gave the folks a quick hug good bye and I was back on Salt Spring Island in time for supper. (This was Thursday in case you are confused about timing)

When the van was delivered it was filthy. We had to work to hard to clean it but by just after noon on Friday we were off for the first set of ferries that would get us to the State of Washington. In the van there was of course Sally in the front seat, one of her workers driving and three of us in the back. Which sounds as if there would be a lot of room. But Sally does not travel light, not only was there the wheel chair and her bedding (encased in a tarp) tied to the roof but inside there were three drums, a guitar, a mandolin, a wok to cook popcorn with, glass jars to carry the popcorn and assorted packs for clothing and other stuff. It was perhaps not surprisingly, crowded in there. What made things a bit more complicated was that the back door didn't open at all and the two side doors had child locks that could not be released from the inside and therefore those of us in the back had to wait to be let out. But were off to a Gathering and that was all that mattered. According to the map, it was only 9 hours drive away. How long could it take?

On the Road Blog #14

The Sky-Train and bus connections to the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay were easy to manage and I only need to ask for directions once. I was pretty please with myself when I got to the terminal to find out that the next ferry would be leaving in about 30 minutes. At this rate I was going to be in Duncan well before noon. Silly me. I should have known that things could not continue to go as smoothly as they had in the past few days.

I do not know Nanaimo well. In fact I barely know it all. Last year I had spent an evening there waiting for an early morning ferry to Horseshoe Bay heading home via Whistler. As I usually do when I am in new city, I had spent a few hours walking around the town. I thought that I had gotten a sense of how the city was laid out. I was wrong.

After getting off the ferry I could have, I should have, taken the city bus that was waiting outside the ferry terminal. It would have probably got me to the Greyhound bus station in good time. I could have then had a nice quiet inner-city bus ride to Duncan and then with a ten minute walk, been at my son's home in short order with no fuss or a large expenditure of energy. But I did not do that, instead I decided without much thought and with the sure assumption that as my hitching had been so good, it would continue to be good, to hitch to Duncan.

As I have said, it was not a well thought out plan. I ended up walking for a long way through the city and I was never too sure where I was. There were a couple of streets that looked as if they could head towards the highway but they were all steeply uphill so I kept on walking. At one point an older man in a power wheelchair started to follow me, yelling abuses at me, accusing me of not working and being a bum. His comments were quite harsh and somewhat bothersome. I didn't bother to stop and talk to him. While I was curious as to know what had got him going, I was not curious enough to be exposed to any more of his foul abusive language. It all seemed so irrational that I did not think that a dialogue would do much good. It is the first time in all of my travels that I have been confronted this way. Occasionally drivers somewhere along the Trans-Canada will yell something out, but never have I been exposed to something so personally directed.It was unnerving and unsettling.

Eventually I got to the outskirts of the city and there was a spot that looked like great spot to stand both in terms of how wide the shoulder was and visibility. Unfortunately there was a person standing there already. So I had to walk bit further down the road to another spot that was not quite as good. There were lots of cars but none of them stopped. I was there for about 45 minutes before the other hitchhiker got a ride. I walked back down the road to his spot and stuck out my thumb. It was another 20 or so minutes before a car stopped for me.

My new driver said that he was in a rush as he had to make the ferry to Vancouver. Because I had just left one ferry terminal, I made the assumption that he was going to the terminal in Victoria. How many ferry terminals could there be? It turns out that there are more than I thought. He drove me down the road, onto the highway (who knew that the pleasant little country road turned into a major four lane divided highway?) And then six or seven minutes later, he turned off heading towards the other terminal. I got out, a bit confused, thanked him, and he took off. I was now standing at the worst imaginable spot to hitch. The traffic was zipping by at a 100+ kilometers an hour, there were merging lines of traffic and I knew that there was no hitchhiking allowed along this section. (actually hitchhiking is not illegal, stopping to pick up someone is) But I had no choice. So I stuck out my thumb.

Twenty or so minutes later I did get a ride. Just a short one but at least it was to a slightly safer spot. At some point during my wait, my cell phone rang. I never leave my cell phone on so I was more than bit surprised. It took me a few minutes to recognize what the noise was and then find it. It was my daughter-in-law wondering where I was. I had called from the ferry to tell her that I was going to be there soon. She assumed that I should have been in by now. She was right, I should have been. However I did not accept her offer to come and get me. Silly pride. It took two more short rides before I got to Duncan. It had taken me longer, in terms of standing on the road to get from Nanaimo to Duncan than it had to go from Winnipeg to Vancouver. So much for the theory that it is easier to get rides on the west coast than any where else in Canada.

But I was where I wanted to be - at home in Duncan. Two and half days to get from Winnipeg was still a good traveling time. It was almost exactly how long it had taken me last year going back to Winnipeg. Things were feeling pretty good.

On the Road 2011 #13

It was around 5:00 in the afternoon on Sunday. We were in Chilliwack. If we kept on driving through to Vancouver I could easily make the last ferry into Victoria. Now that would have been a record for speed! But Jessie seemed tired and wanted to stop. I also think that he was getting ahead of himself in his logs and had driven a few more hours than he should have. We had talked a fair bit about the best way to get into Vancouver. At one point he had even asked and accepted my advice as to the best way to get to Vancouver. We could have gone along the Fraser River but it would have taken longer. Or we could go along the Coquihalla highway, which goes through Merrit (which is part of the near desert,but had snow in the valley) which would be faster and I thought easier for a truck. The Fraser is beautiful but it is just two lanes and very twisty. I chose the Coquihalla for the speed.

It seems to me that one of the most common delights of the drivers that I have travelled with, is to cheat on their logs. I think they do it because the logs make their lives more complicated, reduce their capacity to make money and mainly because so many of them have both a sense of larceny and resistance to authority in them. They want to believe that they are the independents who are the last lone wolves of the open road, that nothing ties them down. But of course the reality is that with the regulations they are forced to follow, the speed limiters on their engines, the checking in with their dispatchers, the weigh scales and the logs they have to fill out, they are as restricted as any other occupation and perhaps a lot more than some. I of course, would never say this to them. We all need our fantasies to sustain us during the long dark night. And truckers, it seems to me, have as many if not more long dark nights (figuratively and literally) than the rest of us.

None-the- less, for what ever reason Jesse seemed determined to stop in Chilliwack. There were two practical reasons, one was that his delivery was not due until Monday morning and the only place to park his truck for the night within the city of Vancouver was a very small lot with no services: The second reason was that he wanted to eat at a specific restaurant that on Sundays had "all you can eat fish and chips". It seemed to me as if he had been talking it for most of the afternoon.

Once again things got a bit confused between us. At one point when I raised the issue of where I was going to sleep that night (in my usual subtle non-aggressive manner) he suggested that while we were waiting for a table, I could check out the Greyhound bus station next door to see if there was a bus to the ferries from Chilliwak. I did so and found out that there was one leaving at something like 3:00 in the morning and that it would cost approximately $50.00. I went back to the restaurant which still didn't have a table ready (it was Father's Day and there seemed to be lot of families there) and talked to Jesse. He thought that $50 was a lot. For me, I was bit frustrated. Here I was in Chilliwack, just a few hours outside of Vancouver, lining up to sit in a restaurant for a meal I could not eat, knowing that if I waited around, I would at least feel that I had wasted some time.....that I could travel further and faster if I left Jesse now and headed out on my own. This was not a new or unusual feeling. Quite frequently after a day or so travelling with someone, I get the urge to meet someone new, to see if I can get to somewhere faster using some other means. But it made no sense to switch horses so late in the race if I could get a ride to Vancouver with Jesse. It really didn't matter if I got to Vancouver Island Sunday night or Monday morning. Over my salad and side order of chips, and Jesse's numerous orders of "all you can eat fish and chips" we talked about what to do. Jesse said that if I wanted to go on the bus that was fine with him, but he was going to Vancouver and I was welcome to get a ride with him. So I did.

I think his feeling may have been slightly hurt when I accepted his suggestion to check out the bus, or perhaps he had picked up my anxiety and felt like he needed to make that suggestion. Regardless we finished up our meal, got back into the truck and withing a fairly short time made it into Vancouver. The traffic was a bit heavy but probably a lot lighter than it would have been on Monday morning. We took the last spot in a small truck stop, walked around for bit to stretch our legs and then went to bed. The next morning we drove about 15-20 minutes to the warehouse, and with me blocking traffic, he backed the truck into the terminal. I grabbed my pack, shook his hand, thanked him for a great ride and was on my way. I didn't know exactly where I was, but there were lots of people about so I was sure there was a bus stop somewhere. I was surprised to round a corner and see the entrance to a Skytrain station. I was on my way to the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay.

While I would seldom counsel anyone that no action is the best action, in terms of hitchhiking it seems that frequently might be the best thing to do. If I had left Chilliwack either on the bus or by hitchhiking, it would have at the very least cost me money to sleep somewhere and more importantly, for the latter choice, there would have been no guarantee that I would have got to Vancouver or the Island any faster. Doing nothing had worked out well. All in all it had been a good ride. Not perhaps the best I have ever had, but a damn good ride. Brandon to Vancouver in 36 hours...does not get much better than that! Even the train would have taken longer.

On the Road #12

Jesse was up early and I barely had time to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. There is reason that I don't eat a lot when I am travelling. I would have assumed that with the amount of fruit that Jesse ate that he would need to use the bathroom far more frequently than he did. Jesse was not a morning person and even after a huge cup of coffee he was not very communicative. But then even the day before he had not been overly talkative.

Some drivers like to talk and it only takes me a few questions about their truck or their load and they are good for 15 or 20 minutes. Others love to go on to great length about why they love driving a truck for a living. A few of my truck drivers have been interested in my life and have asked lots of questions. Sometimes the truck driver and I can go off on weird directions such as the time a driver and I spent a night planning a cross Europe car trip to the Pacific Ocean. There have been other drivers who have used me to talk about their failed relationships and why their fathers didn't love them. Jesse did none of those things. We did talk about his girlfriends and some of their problems. He talked a lot about his relationships with some of their kids. But it felt somewhat superficial. Not that he was intentionally superficial, just that our conversation never took off. Usually if I travel with someone for a day and a half I get to know them quite well. With Jesse this really never happened. It was until late on Sunday I even found out that he had kids of his own. But he had no contact with them. It was sort of sad and perhaps explained why he didn't seem interested in talking about my grand kids.

To make it even more difficult for us to have a conversation, Jesse mumbled and there were times that after asking him to repeat something twice and still not understanding him, I just agreed with him or stopped talking for a while. It wasn't until last evening together that he mentioned that he had a problem talking clearly or loudly. He said that he had never spoken very loudly. I wonder if his manner of speech, and perhaps his uncomfortableness with it led him into profession that did not require him to talk a lot.

The only topic that Jesse talked consistently about was this "self improvement club" he belonged to. Except it wasn't a club, it was a scam to take people's money. It appeared as is one went to a meeting, heard some sort of inspirational speaker, and were then convinced to buy a specific product. The hook was that if one could develop the skills to sell these products to other people - that is where the self improvement came in - then the products were free. Jesse was taking some sort of mood leveler vitamin and some sort of "fat reducer" pill. Jesse told me that if I had not been in the cab, he would have been listening to his tapes. Clearly not only were the pills useless, but to get people to believe that this would "improve them" seems to me to be fundamentally dishonest and perhaps even more importantly morally corrupt.

Jesse not only ate a lot of fruit he, also smoked a lot. In hindsight I wondered if that was why he liked driving in the States. Tobacco products are so much cheaper there. While he was polite the first time he lit one up, and quite often offered me one, the smoke did get to me. There were times when I thought about getting out at the next stop and trying for different ride, but the stops were few and far between and besides I had learned the hard way that the Hitchhiking Gods punished those who rejected rides.