On the Road Again 2011 #47

Of course my trip was not quite over. The train did not leave until after 11:00 pm and therefore I had ten or so hours to kill. So I bought my ticket, changed my shirt and shoes, gave my pack to the luggage folks at Via and went out to explore the city.

I don't know Winnipeg that well. I can get through it quickly and once spent a day or so there a few years ago but it has never felt as if I have found the centre of the city. In spite of walking around for four or five hours, I still don't feel as if I know it well. I found the downtown mall, which of course did not excite me that much; I walked around the university area a bit which was pleasant but not exciting; and I looked for places to eat. Winnipeg may be the most unfriendly city to vegetarians I have visited in my travels. There were lots of places to eat but I could not find a vegetarian restaurant or even a Chinese one. I am sure they are there. I just didn't walk down the right streets.

I did spend a lot of time down by the Forks. The Forks are where the Assiniboine and Red Rivers join. It is an impressive gathering area with lots of little shops and restaurants. On the other side of the street there is a nice little park by the river. I think the whole thing would have been more attractive if they were still not dealing with the damages caused by the spring floods. The water was still high and parts of the boardwalk were still closed. However nice Winnipeg may be, I was glad when it was time to get on the train.

While waiting for train to be loaded, it looked as if it was going to be really crowded and I had resigned myself to sharing the seat with someone else. But much to my surprise and pleasure I had both seats to myself. I was tired and so slept well the first night. I didn’t talk to very many people all of the next day. I even ate breakfast alone. I was still tired and feeling quite emotionally drained. It had been a long summer and I had done more than I thought I would be able to do. I had gotten to two Gatherings, a folk festival, seen my friends in Victoria and been to a wedding. A pretty good summer, but a tiring one. I was glad that I had decided not to take the extra days and hitch all the way to Sudbury. I clearly was running out of energy. I was also starting to focus on the fall and on teaching.

The one bit of excitement occurred in Hornepayne when I met one of my professors from Trent. Jim was travelling with his son from Jasper where they had been hiking in the mountains. It was the second time I had met someone at the stop at Hornepayne who was travelling on the train. One has to wonder what the odds are?
The train, of course, was late getting into Sudbury Junction. While I was prepared to call for a taxi, I was delighted to see my daughter waiting for me. The trip was truly over.

I have written about the drivers that so generously gave me rides across Canada. I am truly grateful to them all. But there are an equally number of drivers who gave me a ride and who I have not mentioned. I hitched to and from Victoria and a number of times from Sally’s on Salt Spring Island. While these rides were very short, the fact that I got them, generally quite quickly, made a huge difference in my life. I also saved a fair amount of money by not using Greyhound. But more importantly every drive, no matter how short, added to my sense of the region and of Canada. Every story gets added to that mental filing cabinet that I dip into on the cold and lonely days of winter.

In my travels I learned countless little bits of trivia (such as what the various combinations of “stoplights” mean on the train tracks), I heard jokes that were so funny I couldn’t stop chuckling, I heard personal tales and statements that made me want to weep, and I saw more majestic beauty than any one person could ever dream of.  I could not possible record it all. But the images and the people are filed away There was a time when I could list in sequence all of my drivers without hesitation. That is no longer true. They start to blend into each other and I find myself sometimes forgetting where I was when I met this person or that.  Maybe I am getting old.

Canada is an extraordinary county with cities and lakes and mountains and grasslands that defy description. In spite of the garbage and the pollution that is visible throughout much of Canada, in spite of the crowded cities full of honking cars and trucks and in spite of the masses of human that occasionally need to compete against each other for resources, there is still an aura of simplicity and pureness throughout much of this land. It is a wonderful and delightful place to call home.  I suppose there are other ways of seeing all of this. But I can’t imagine any other way for me.  

It is the beginning of December and already my whole being cries out to be on the road again. I wake up dreaming of rides, of familiar corners that I want to be standing on with my thumb out. Almost every time I see a transport truck I look to see if there is room for me. And I wonder if they would stop for me if they saw me on the side of the road.  I dream of travelling across the Prairies, or through the mountains, or of sitting in a Husky restaurant listening to the truckers chatter and watching them flirt with the tired waitress. I remember what it is like to lay down ten feet from the road and listen to the trucks rumble by and to see the stars overhead. And I want to be there – right now.

If I don’t count this month there are only five months left until I start getting ready go. I have lived in four provinces and slept in all of them, but I have never been north. Perhaps next season I will go north to the Yukon, just for a week or so, just because I can.

On the Road Again 2011 #45

I think one of the reasons that it has taken me so long to get to this part of my  trip is that I have been anxious (in the sense of having some anxiety) about writing the next installment. Not because I can’t remember it or because it was so terrible I don’t want to remember it, but because I am worried about not being good enough to describe my next driver. I don’t know how many drivers I have had in the past 12 or so years, but John may have been the most amazing one of them all.

I have noticed these past few years that there is a certain rhythm to my travels. There are a handful of spots that no matter how well the rides are coming or how far each ride takes me, I usually end up standing at each year. The last stoplight on the east end of Medicine Hat is one of those spots. It is a busy location with two streams of traffic. There are those cars who appear to be passing straight through town and those that are turning onto the highway, coming out of the shopping malls. I have noted in other years that while it looks as if there are lots of cars heading east, in fact most of them are only going a few miles to the suburbs and therefore are not going to stop. There is a lot of room to stand on the side of the road. If I get bored I can watch the hundreds of grasshoppers play in the grass verge that separates the highway from the Holiday Inn and one of the many malls. If it gets dark, there is lots of room to sleep. I like being there but this time I don’t think I waited very long.

 John’s car was a reasonably new car that was surprisingly clean inside considering how much time he spent in it. He was a good driver, not as fast as some I have travelled with, but consistent in his speed. I certainly felt safe with him. Ah but I am stalling  again because I don’t know where to begin.

Some of John’s story I didn’t quite get. His English was not always clear, but I think he was coming back from a few days working with heavy machinery somewhere west of Medicine Hat. He was going as far as Brandon and that was just fine to me. I am also not too sure how old John was. I would guess he was somewhere in his early 30s. He had been in Canada for just over five years (I think) having immigrated from Kenya. But John had been born in the Sudan.

When he was around nine, some soldiers had come into his village and taken away his father and killed him. John joined the opposing army to fight those who had done this terrible and un-understandable deed.  While he recognized that it had been terribly wrong to be have been recruited to kill others, I don’t think he felt bad or abused about having been a child solider. As he said, “what would you have done if someone had taken your father away and killed him?” John clearly didn’t want to talk about those experiences and I while I was desperately curious, I couldn’t ask him to relive those days. After spending what remained of his limited childhood in this army he moved to Kenya. I think it was some time later that his mother along with his two brothers and a sister followed him. I can’t imagine the courage it would take to start off life as a nine year old in some ragged guerilla  army and then as an adolescent to wander to the next country and start life all over again without family or friends. I can’t imagine the moral fiber it would take to not be angry all of the time. But John wasn’t angry, as he told his story he smiled and laughed and was excited about his new life.

While in Kenya he started a business selling mango juice. Somehow he got a small press and a few cups and started to sell fresh mango juice to the people on the streets. One of the people who bought his juice was a little white girl, who with her friends, passed his little stall to and from the embassy school. But she frequently did not have any money so he kept a running tab. And this, if there can every be just one defining characteristic, was John’s. He is trusting and giving. He believes that people are good. Eventually the young girl’s father came by to find out why his daughter said she owed this stranger so much money. I suspect he assumed there was some sort of scam going on. When he heard the story he paid the bill.

Sometime later the father who was a Canadian working at the embassy suggested that he might want to think about immigrating to Canada. With his help, John made the application and was accepted as a refugee. If John had done nothing else in his life that was remarkable it would have been enough, but there is more.

John was presently working for a company in Medicine Hat working on large machines. He was supporting his mother and his youngest brother who was still in school in Kenya. He was also sending money to two other siblings who had somehow managed to get to Australia. He was also going to school so that he could get his grade 12. He needed high school diploma so that he could become an apprentice mechanic. I don’t know where he found the time, the energy or the commitment to do all of it. On top of the responsibilities he had assumed for his family he also acted as some sort of informal community facilitator for recent immigrants from the Sudan.

When we were approaching Regina he asked if I minded if he stopped and saw a friend “just for a few minutes”. Of course I said no. I appreciated the courtesy but after all it was his car. We stopped at an apartment where his two friends were living. They were gracious gentlemen who offered me a seat and something to drink. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life to sit there for 20 minutes listening to John and his friends talk in a language completely foreign to my ears. I was clearly the outsider. I was uncomfortable but I don’t think they were. In fact they ignored me completely. John told me that he dropped in on them whenever he could to make sure that they were doing all right and that they had both enough money and access to the services that they needed.

As we got back into the car he told me that he also wanted to see his cousin while he was in town. When I tried to find out how they were related, I got the sense that his definition of a cousin was much broader than mine would be. His cousin and her five year old daughter were as charming as the first two guys; offering me a comfortable seat and something to drink and then ignoring me.  As they talked the little girl was getting her hair done in corn rows, ready for her first day at school. It was an interesting process to watch. I can’t imagine either of my kids or grandkids ever sitting down long enough for it to get done. I think the mother said that it would take four days to complete the whole process. Again virtually all of the conversation was in their native language and again I felt like the outsider.  We stayed for about 20 minutes. As we were leaving the little girl reached up to touch my beard. I don’t think she had ever seen one before.

It is not often that people of my age, my colour, my sex and my height feel like an outsider. I am a tall white educated male. I am part of the elite.  The people John visited that day did not intentionally isolate me or push me away. I certainly was not offended in any way. But it was a remarkable feeling to be in a room and know that not only did I not belong there, I was in almost every conceivable way superfluous to the situation.  

As we were walking back to the car, John said he was hungry. We talked about food and diet. I would have loved to try some of his ethnic food. There was a restaurant that had good food from the Sudan but it would take hours for them to prepare a meal. So we went to a Chinese buffet instead. I was happy mainly because it felt as if I had not eaten for days, but also because I wanted to buy John supper. It wasn’t a great restaurant but it did the trick. My belly was full again. But John would not let me pay for supper. He insisted that he do it. The man was just one of those folks who feel compulsed to give.

For the rest of the trip our conversation ranged over all of the standard things. School (how hard it was to juggle work life and school work), finding bosses (he had a good one who he liked), and relationships (he had wife who did not live with him but did call him on his cell phone as we were driving). But we also talked about the languages he spoke, his dreams for the future and the pressures of being responsible for all of these people. It was a lovely journey across the Prairies. As we got close to Brandon I was sad that it was going to end. He offered me a bed in his motel room where he stayed but it was a warm night and I wanted to sleep outside. There is a great spot to sleep at the edge of town, and I wanted to be outside one more night.  So we said good bye in the dark.

My life is enriched by all of my drivers. Almost without exception they share part of themselves with me through their stories and through their generosity. But John gave something else.  I don’t think I will ever be able to put into words how much I admire him, how much I respect his courage, his humanity, his sense of responsibility for others, his capacity to find joy and perhaps most of all his capacity to forgive and to move forward. He could teach us all a few lessons about how to live.

On the Road Again 2011 #44

I was not particularly hungry in spite of the fact that I last eaten a full meal on the ferry from Nanaimo to the mainland 48 hours ago, but I knew I should grab something as it could be a long day. So after getting off the bus at the east end of Calgary I dropped in at a McDonald’s and grabbed a mcmuffin. I ate it as I walked out to the highway. Not the best breakfast in the world but it would have to do.

They (the city of Calgary) have been doing road construction on the eastern outskirts of the city for at least the past four or five years. It is now finished and that has made my twenty or so minute walk to the edge of the city so much easier and safer. It is still tricky as there are lanes entering and exiting the highway that need to be crossed over. Many of the drivers appear to be confused when they see someone walking along the shoulder of the highway. I don’t think they see someone walking east out of town very often.  

I was feeling pretty good. I had had two good sleeps in a row, I had managed to navigate my way through Calgary without a hitch and so far my body had been holding up just fine. I had a smile on my face as I stuck out my thumb. 

Forty minutes later I got a ride all the way to other side of Medicine Hat. My driver was a worker in the oil fields and had come home for a few days to visit his family. He had just bought a nearly brand new, top of the line Honda. It was luxurious, really comfortable and my driver was excited about having such a nice car to show off. In hindsight I don’t know why we didn’t talk much about his work life. Almost always when I get a drive with an oil field guy, they are younger and still full of ( or at least they talk as if they are) the excitement of making big money. But my driver was older and I wish I had asked him what it was like after being in that life for 20 years. But we didn’t talk about that sort of thing. We talked about life and its complexities. He was divorced from his wife and therefore was an absentee dad. But I think he worked hard at being a good dad and made the trip down as often as he could to spend time with his son.  It was difficult for him to always keep connected to that part of his life and to live in the present day. We both agreed that it was, on occasion, difficult to be tied to the past and at the same time to move forward. We also talked about girlfriends and what school was like for kids these days and no matter how much we like our jobs, some days (or some weeks) work was just not any fun. Just guy stuff. A pleasant ride that met (I hope) both of our needs. He got some company over a stretch of highway that he had driven a hundred times. I got to ride in a nice car and to hear some more stories.

Can life be better than that?

On the Road Again 2011 #43

There are times when I am traveling that a scene or an image appears that is so compelling or extraordinary, that I think I will remember it forever. I can see, in my mind, as clearly now as I did then that first image of the Rockies; of the woman who, along with her daughter, picked me up in their little Chevette loaded with groceries somewhere outside of Yale; of the fireworks that exploded into the sky from small Prairie towns as we travelled across that wide expanse sometime after dark on a July 1^st or the Northern Lights that danced above my head as I tried to sleep near an underpass just outside of Regina. These images sneak up on me at the strangest times, unbidden, unexpected and usually without any obvious connection to what I am currently musing about. These images, these vibrant flashbacks are always a joy. They catch my breath just as they did the first time I saw them. I hope they never leave me or become so buried in the cluttered filing cabinet of my mind that I can’t find them. This year I have a new image to file away, hopefully to be retrieved whenever I need to be reminded of the joy that is my life.

I had gotten up reasonably early after a satisfactory sleep. I was somewhat proud of myself that I didn’t need directions to find the bus stop a few blocks over from the motel or in fact need any help navigating Calgary’s transit system. A kind young man saw me looking at the map at the C train station and confirmed what I thought I already knew. It was nice to be offered help without asking for it. It was of course a workday and virtually everyone getting on or off the bus looked as if they were off to work. People were quiet, most of them moving as if they were barely awake. During these kinds of public transit rides I sometimes feel like an alien from another planet, as if I don’t belong not only on the bus, but anywhere. The lives of the other riders seem so foreign to me. I catch them staring at me, our eyes never really making contact and I wonder what they think of me with my long braid, my nearly all grey beard, my large pack, and my travel worn clothes. I wonder if they are envious of me or if they feel sorry for me?

The bus driver was a friendly sort of guy. I have noticed in the past few years that the drivers in Calgary generally seem to be nicer.  At some point along the road, much to my surprise, the bus stopped at one of the bus shelters. The driver turned off the bus off and got out. I initially assumed that either he was running early and had to kill a few minutes, that he was off duty and waiting for his replacement to take over or that he had to wait for a connector bus to arrive. But no – he had stopped to talk to an older black woman who was sitting in the shelter. She had a pen knife and was whittling on a long stick. The shelter floor was littered with shavings. I don’t think the woman was what some would call a “bag lady” but she certainly appeared as if she was living rather rough. She stood up; they talked for a few minutes in what appeared to be friendly and charming tones. He clearly was not lecturing her or complaining about anything, he touched her on the shoulder in an affectionate way, said good bye and got back on the bus. He gave a wave, she waved back and off we went. Why this less than middle aged white bus driver would stop and talk to this older black women is beyond me. I would have loved to have been closer so that I could hear what they talked about. But the image of these two people who on the surface appeared to come from such disparate lives holds me. They were friends. At least in my mind she and he were part of each other’s daily routine. When he saw her, he stopped what he was doing and took a few minutes to say hello. She was delighted to see him.

It is a small image amongst the thousands and thousands pictures my mind collected this trip, And yet somehow it is the defining one. I don’t know why. I only know that whenever it pops unbidden to the surface, I smile. That is a good enough reason for me.

On the Road Again 2011 #42

The bright purple cab was pulling matching tanker-like cars, only he was not hauling a liquid, my friendly truck driver was hauling sand! Rather fine sand I suspect as it was being delivered to a factory in the states that made roofing shingles. His load weighed 65,000 pounds. That is a lot of sand!

My driver was 72 years old but looked much younger. Truck driving was all that he had ever done and he was a wealth of information about his craft. He had covered the route to Calgary a thousand times and there was not a turn or a hill that did not have a story attached to it. He had carried explosives when they were blasting out parts of the mountain to improve the road and he showed me spots where he had dropped his load. He explained how the road was built and where the changes had been made. I had forgotten what the old route had looked like and it was fascinating to reminded. It was good that he had so many stories to tell. It was a very long ride. His truck engine was powerful but those long slow uphill climbs from Revelstock to the Roger's Pass tested his engines. On the downhill stretches he had to be equally as careful as he could not afford to have the train he towed behind him get out of control. He was a great driver, careful, aware and almost gentle with his truck. He was delight to watch. He was polite, kind hearted, a man who appeared to be comfortable with who and what he was. I don’t have to like all of my drivers but it sure makes it nice when I get to enjoy them.

Because of his age and his experience he made his own rules. He drove when he wanted to and got to his location when he got there. He only carried sand and I suppose it didn’t matter if he was an hour or so late. He, unlike so many of the truck drivers who pick me up and who think they are their own bosses, actual was his own boss. That is why he picked me up. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but he also knew that the company that he drove for would never say anything. He had job security for as long as he wanted. 

I could never quite figure out where he lived or with whom he lived with. He lived, I think, in some sort of retirement community where he did some sort of maintenance when he was home. He had a bag of rabbit feed in the front seat that he had bought along the way so that he could feed the rabbits that were chewing up the lawns. He figured it was better to feed them food away from the houses than to have them ruin the grass. I was never sure if he did this work to make extra money or if he just did it to keep busy. I think he had a partner, I think he had only one but sometimes he referred to her as his wife and other times he used other labels. But I am almost positive it was always about the same person but as I think back I am no always sure. I know he didn’t have any kids.

In spite of the fact that it was a slow trip, the time did not drag. He had picked me up because he wanted company and conversation and that is what he got. We didn’t talk non-stop but there was an easy flow to the conversation. I know enough about trucks and the drivers that I can ask the kinds of questions that allow the trucker to feel as if they have something worthwhile to say or to teach. There are times when I am travelling where it feels as if the conversation is forced, that I am acting out a part because it is my job to keep the trucker awake. But not this ride. It was a pleasure all of the way through.

It was relaxing in part because I knew I would be in Calgary that night and so any pressure was off. As we neared Calgary he asked me where I wanted to get out. I suppose I could have gone a bit further the other side Calgary before he turned south, but I did not want to be stuck at midnight in the middle of nowhere. Other than that bowl of noodle soup in the motel room I had not eaten since breakfast on the ferry. I felt as if I was ready for a decent meal. It would have been nice to get a drive right through Calgary but all of the cheap motels appear to be on the west side of the city so I asked to be let out somewhere just after we entered the city. Many truck drivers are not particularly flexible (and understandably so) about where they stop. They are driving large vehicles and maneuvering in the city can be tricky. But this driver had no problems at all stopping right in front to the motel where I had stayed a year or so before. When I mentioned that it was unusual, his comment was “I am so big I can stop wherever I want to!”

I thanked him, got out, walked fifteen feet to the motel entrance and got a room. Unfortunately by this time it was after 11:00 and all the restaurants including a sub shop were closed. So I bought a packet of nuts at a gas station and went to bed.

Another successful day.