RoadRunner - A Day in the Life
The day began on a dirt road outside of some little Canadian town, just across the border. The light of a cloudy sunrise woke me, as did the tinkle of a rain on the roof of my van. I sat up, climbed into the driver seat and headed west – it was 630am.
I drove a few hours until I came to Grand Forks, another small Canadian town nestled in mountains. As I walked around looking for a coffee shop, I saw a baker getting his store ready and asked if he had any baked goods from yesterday on sale. He quickly ducked inside and came back with a muffin and a huge smile! The day was off to a great start!!
I continued wandering the small town and soon found a bunch of young hoodlums (probably 12, but acting as 13 or 14) popping wheelies on bikes and talking about girls infront of a coffee shop. I sat for an hour in the cafe, charging various devices, and communicating with family and friends. Editing pictures and video from the last few days helped me relive and solidify the whirlwind of activity that was the last few days. As I sat there - wondering how I had covered almost 2500 miles in 5 days and yet still hiked, climbed, cooked, and met a variety of people - some young (20ish) construction workers came in for coffee and one sat down at the piano and treated us all to an impromptu concert, still dressed in the orange reflective garb of his work.
As the morning got on, the coffee shop filled with the chatter of its customers, the rowdy bunch of hooligans out front, and the music of the piano. Meanwhile, my earbuds played my own voice back at me as I watched footage of me sweating my way up Static Peak in the Grand Tetons, only two days before.
With my devices charged, I headed for my car, determined to make it to Vancouver by afternoon. On the way out of town I drove by a small soup kitchen/thrift shop, where I stopped to pick up some cassette tapes to keep me company on the long drives ahead: I was getting a little tired of the few local Canadian stations I had been picking up driving through rural Alberta.
On the road again, and armed with these tapes, the hours flew by and it was soon lunch time in some resort town in BC. As I was heading onwards to Vancouver, I saw a hitchhiker and quickly swerved over. A short, tan, 21 year old with a Quebec accent hopped in my van and said she was headed to Vancouver. Great – now I had company, which beats almost any cassette.
As I drove, both of us sweating without AC, Ana told me her story. Born and raised in Quebec, she was on a break from the conservatory where she played violin. She was burnt out after having been playing since she was 3 and had decided it was time to see some of her own country. She had hitchhiked here a few months before with a friend, where they had worked on a variety of farms, orchards, and vineyards with a ton of other backpackers for the summer months. Recently, she and her friend had split ways after deciding that they weren’t a good fit anymore. Apparently Ana's childhood friend had been living in Australia for 2 years and had come back a different girl than Ana had remembered. She told me that while in Australia her friend had met a millionaire who became her sugar daddy. Now she was doing a similar thing with a Canadian and my hitchhiker, Ana, wasn’t of the same mind; she preferred to be poor but free to choose her own sexual partners.
As the miles and the afternoon flew by, Ana continued to share stories of brushes with Cougars at music festivals, bad hitchhiking experiences, overbearing music teachers and guardians, and even how her uncle had had a heart attack and died while climbing Mt. Washington with her. By the time we reached Vancouver, I felt like I knew a lot about the girl. When we got to town, we went to a laundromat where she could charge her phone. Meanwhile, I sat with a street performer in front of a liquor store and talked some street philosophy while we people-watched and he played music. When Ana finally got through to her friend, she had bad news, they weren’t down to host Ana’s +1, me. I told her that was fine and I would still drive her. She told me that her friends she would pay me as her cab driver – that worked for me.
Its always interesting having these single serving friends (a phrase from Fight Club). I could easily never see Ana again, yet we had spent hours in a car together, sharing much of our selves with one another even across a language barrier. After I dropped her off, we exchanged contact info, promised to keep in touch, and bid each other goodbye.
So now what? Having no plan for what to do once I was in Vancouver, I thought about returning to the street performer to see what we could get into, but instead decided to walk the area that Ana’s friend lived in, North Vancouver. I soon found myself in a much more family oriented part of town than the bustling, quirky and dirty downtown we had hung around in earlier. As the sun set, I decided I would eat some dinner since I had made $50 from my work as taxi driver. I asked around for a good Indian recommendation and found the place just before closing. They seated me graciously and I was waited on by a very nice gal, who painted in her free time and had no idea where Virginia was. It was nice to have someone to talk to over my solo dinner, so she spent a fair amount of time sitting and chatting with me. After dinner, I asked her what she was up to for the night, and she seemed slightly bashful that I had offered to take our single serving friendship to another level. I quickly diverted the conversation, but handed her my contact card and told her to check out my photos since she liked the ones I had shown her on the camera.
Then, I wandered off into the dark streets with a full belly to find a place to park Bessy for the night, an early start looming in the morning, and many miles ahead.
