Ben: It all begins on the drive from Vancouver to Langley, crawling through rush hour traffic, happy to be on the road. We argue about which is more likely: being mauled by a bear or murdered by an evil insane person. Sylvia has dog spray in her purse in case either situation presents itself. We drop the car in Langley and hit the highway, clad in rain gear as the sky looks mean. We pass two other hitchhikers in prime spots; one sits on the shoulder, long stringy hair falling over his beer can.Me: You hitchhiking bud?
Him: Tryin' to.
Sylvia: Good luck!
Him: [unintelligible]
Down the road, we find a little pullout and Sylvia sticks out her thumb. She's tentative, as though she fears the angle of her thumb or the bend in her elbow might be all wrong. I stand behind her, working on a subtle male hitchhiker's expression: slight goofy smile says I'm friendly, huge bag with pots and sleeping bags says I'm a traveler, and a half-smile nod when eye contact is achieved says I am neither a murdered nor a car thief.
Finally, a pick-up pulls up and "Walking The Line Walter" picks us up. (Since returning from our odyssey, we've named each of our rides.) Walter's mouth becomes progressively dirty as the ride wears, culminating in an explanation of how Walter's ex-girlfriend, God bless her, was a nymphomaniac who could put her feet behind her head. We are glad to be dropped off half way to Chilliwack. After hustling past a stretch of road with no shoulder, we are picked up by "Flight Controller Hal" who takes us to a truckstop.
There we eat our last hot dinner for a while (me a burger, Sylvia a salad) and then I hit the lots in search of the seemingly impossible: a trucker who wants company more than he's afraid of being stabbed. Truckers of all shapes and sizes, both genders, hirsuit and clean-cut, smoking and non-smoking...say 'no'. Most say their insurance won't allow riders without waivers being signed. A female trucker with two tiny yappy guard dogs says she's staying in Vancouver for the night. A rail-thin trucker in a cowboy scowls at me and rolls up his window. Welcome to the life of a hitchhiker.
Sylvia: After half an hour of begging, we found a trucker ready to break the rules. His name was Ray and he was an angled man with creative facial hear, and an easy humour that made him instantly likeable. His truck was a godsend as the night descended on Hope, an aptly named place near Chilliwack. Up we hopped, one step and into the cab, this strange new territory—part office, part vehicle, part home. For us, it was a pivotal point: the point of no return. He'd be driving us for a few hours, all the way to unfamiliar Sycamous, where we could not rely on local buses to take us back to Vancouver with our tails between our legs.
That ride through the night was our first glimpse of a trucker's existence. Ray's life: a road stretching forever, taking him like the tide, towards and away from his three thousand acre property, a place of scattered children and sad memories and a newly bought herd of buffalo. Ray told us that his wife had died of cancer a while back, leaving him the reluctant owner of much useless time. That's when he took to the road, after many years of working as a truck mechanic.
Sylvia: After half an hour of begging, we found a trucker ready to break the rules. His name was Ray and he was an angled man with creative facial hear, and an easy humour that made him instantly likeable. His truck was a godsend as the night descended on Hope, an aptly named place near Chilliwack. Up we hopped, one step and into the cab, this strange new territory—part office, part vehicle, part home. For us, it was a pivotal point: the point of no return. He'd be driving us for a few hours, all the way to unfamiliar Sycamous, where we could not rely on local buses to take us back to Vancouver with our tails between our legs.
That ride through the night was our first glimpse of a trucker's existence. Ray's life: a road stretching forever, taking him like the tide, towards and away from his three thousand acre property, a place of scattered children and sad memories and a newly bought herd of buffalo. Ray told us that his wife had died of cancer a while back, leaving him the reluctant owner of much useless time. That's when he took to the road, after many years of working as a truck mechanic.
The ride was patchy as he drove slowly through the night. I lay back on the bed at the back of the truck cabin and let sleep overcome me as Ray told Ben stories of animal breeding, road accidents, and a short stint in prison. So the highway went on, maximum speed one hundred kilometres an hour (a restriction imposed by the company and hardwired into the motor of the truck) until three in the morning, when it was time for Ray to sleep and for us to move on. This time is was tougher. The weather was much colder, and the little nap had made me dozy rather than more alert. I tried to stay in good spirits as Ben roamed around and around the truck stop, accosting drivers, asking (begging?) for rides.
The morning after: like anthropologists examining evidence of a glorious bygone era, we go through half-unpacked bags and leftover camping food while we listen to hours upon hours of tape, laughing along with our past selves from the safety of my Vancouver apartment. To summarise seems almost sacrilegious, but writing up the dreamlike story we've lived this weekend will take time. We were away for three and a half days and in that time we hitchhiked on random windy highways in Alberta and rode through the night with truckers who told us of their lives as the miles rolled beneath Peterbilts, Freightlinters, and Kenworths. We camped at Writing on Stone Provincial Park, saw a grizzly bear plodding along prairie railway tracks, endured two tense hours with a psychopath, spent a sleepless night at a truckstop diner, and awoke to the hum of our homebound truck and the walls of the still snowy Rocky Mountains, each one like a jagged young planet passing beside us. These experiences defy words and sentences and paragraphs, but we're going to try. Hitch a ride if you want, but we may have to make a few detours.