DIRTY AND GREY
Winnipeg, Manitoba. 1686 km.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
—J.R.R.
Tolkien
We were
on the road first thing in the morning and I was happy to be in the backseat. I
shut my eyes the moment we drove off and awoke to the view of beautiful rolling
hills lined with evergreen trees. The road hugged the coast of the great Lake
Superior.
I had been so worried about all the bad things
that I thought might happen on the trip that I forgot that I might actually have
a good time. Yet there I was enjoying spectacular views of places I had never
seen before. The company was entertaining and venturing into the unknown was
exciting.
Pierre was on a mission to get to Alberta as
quickly as possible, so the only stops we made were to fill up the gas tank.
After ten hours on the road we crossed the border into Manitoba and shortly
after we started to see signs for Winnipeg. Our destination was the ocean in British
Columbia and the thought of getting to Alberta as quickly as we were was a
dream come true. At the rate we were going, we could make it to the ocean in less
than a week. But Ryan had other plans.
“Hey man,” Ryan said while looking back at me, “one
of my friends lives in Winnipeg. Do you want to stop there for a few days?” He
caught me off guard. I was so focussed on our destination that I hadn’t
considered taking an excursion. But I was open to anything.
“Sure man,” I replied.
“Sweet,” Ryan said.
I was a bit disappointed that we were going to
give up a ride that could take us so far. When I saw the grey smog hovering
over the city of Winnipeg, I was sure that I didn’t want to get out of the car.
But I kept my thoughts to myself. As we approached the city, we saw two guys that
looked like seasoned hitchhikers walking along the sidewalk carrying big
backpacks.
“Pierre, can you drop us off here please?”
“Oui, oui,” he said with a smile before pulling
up to the curb.
We thanked him and jumped out. Then we briskly
crossed the street and trotted until we caught up with the other backpackers.
They looked dirty, but with nothing to lose we approached them and introduced ourselves.
“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked from behind to
grab their attention.
“Good, you?” They both replied at the same time
with a smile. They were both filthy, stank, and looked like they hadn’t washed
in a while.
“Are you guys hitchhiking?” I asked, getting
straight to the point.
“Yeah man, are you?”
“Yup, it’s our first time. We just hitchhiked
from Sudbury.”
“Oh man! Did you guys get stuck in Wawa?”
“No, we had a ride stay the night with us at his
girlfriend’s parents house,” I replied.
“Oh man, you guys are lucky! We always get
stuck in Wawa, sometimes for days. It’s impossible to get a ride out of that
place.”
“I guess we got lucky to get one all the way
through then, eh?” Ryan replied.
“What are your plans for the night?” I asked,
aware that the sun was already setting and anxious to find a spot to sleep
before it got dark. “We know of a good place to camp a few blocks from here. We
were just going to grab some food and then go set up. You guys want to join us?”
We gladly agreed, happy to have a safe spot to sleep
in the city. We walked with them to a store to get some food.
Along the way we found out that their names
were Sam and Mike and that they were both from Calgary. But they had been
hitchhiking back and forth across Canada for years. Their filth was not a good
representation of their character as they both seemed like good people.
Mike ran into the shop and left his bag with
Sam.
“Hey Sam, can you watch my bag too?” I asked
He scolded me instead.
“Hey man, you don’t know me so don’t trust me
with all your belongings. I did the same thing when I first started hitchhiking,
except the dude said he would watch my stuff and when I got out of the store it
was all gone. I was left with nothing. It sucked. Just keep your stuff in sight
if you don’t want to lose it. Some people are desperate on the streets, man.”
“Thanks for the advice, makes sense.”
It was a good lesson to learn. It also
re-assured me that Sam and Mike were honest people, even though it looked like
they didn’t have a dollar to their names.
When we finished shopping, we followed Sam and
Mike along a busy road towards a large bridge that appeared to go into the
city. The last rays of the sun left the sky just as we arrived at the bridge. Instead
of crossing it, we turned right down a little dirt track and headed straight
into Winnipeg’s Central Park. A place that is notorious for being extremely dangerous
at night. I wondered what we had got ourselves into. Sam said, “I wouldn’t
wander around the park at night, it’s not safe. But we know of a secret spot
where we’ve never had any trouble.”
We walked through the darkness and I seriously
questioned if what we were doing was a good idea, but I didn’t say a word. I
was exhausted from sitting in the car all day and just wanted to sit down,
relax, and then go to bed.
We arrived at a clearing that was surrounded by
piles of yard waste and grass clippings on one side and a chain-link fence on
the other. I could see the buildings of the city all lit up in the distance.
The streets were full of cars racing out of town, surely all going to have
dinner in their comfortable homes. Just like I would have only a few days
before. Instead of a nice comfy bed and dinner at a table, my life choices had sent
me to a dangerous park to sleep for the night. I remembered the twelve-inch
machete I had brought in my bag for protection from bears. I wondered if
perhaps it wasn’t a wild animal that I would need it for.
“Well, this is home for the night,” Sam said.
We dropped our bags on the ground. I took a quick walk to survey our
surroundings. I wanted to know exactly what was around us. I stood in the
shadows and I could see a path that led deeper into the park. There were
figures on benches and on the grass, but they didn’t notice me in the shadows.
Satisfied, I crept back to our campsite. Ryan and I set up our tent while Sam
and Mike built a fire. I hadn’t imagined having a fire in Winnipeg Central Park.
In fact, I had been hoping to draw as little attention as possible to our
location. But the night had become a bit chilly and the warmth of the fire was
nice.
“Aren’t you guys going to put up tents?” I
asked Sam and Mike.
“Nah, we just sleep in our sleeping bags under
the stars,” they replied.
Mike pulled out a tiny speaker and put on some
music while our cans of chilli heated up in the campfire. Everything was shaping
up nicely – we had made friends and we had music, accommodation, warmth, beers,
and the Winnipeg skyline in the distance. Besides being in the most dangerous
park in Canada, things weren’t too bad.
“So where have you guys hitchhiked? I asked.
“Just across Canada, but from coast to coast
three times already.”
“That’s a lot of hitching” I replied while
swatting at a swarm of mosquitos. I wondered how the guys could possibly sleep
comfortably with all the bugs.
“Yeah, we’ve been on the road for years. We kind
of just left and never looked back. Some days are hard, but it beats working for
the Man.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“There is a lot you learn on the road when you
don’t have money. How to survive with nothing. Dumpster diving for food, going
to shelters. Man, grocery stores dumpsters are full of good food to eat. They
fill them up every night with old food.”
I had never heard of dumpster diving before,
but I guess when you’re hungry and have no money you have to find food
somewhere.
“So how was your trip here?” Sam asked,
changing the subject.
“Well, we struggled to get a ride all day yesterday,
we must have walked ten kilometres,” Ryan said.
“Walked?” Sam replied with a look of confusion
on his face. “Don’t walk, that’s a rookie mistake. When you walk everybody
thinks you’re going to get there eventually and nobody stops. If you just sit and
wait on the side of the road people know the only way you are going to get
anywhere is with a ride.”
It made sense, I thought. We didn’t get any rides
when we were walking. We chatted until we finished our beers. Then, tired of
fending off the mosquitos, we all went to bed.
I didn’t bring a tent on the trip because Ryan
had told me that I could share his two-man. I just hadn’t realized that a
two-man tent literally only fits two people with no extra space for our stuff.
Worried about our bags getting stolen while we slept, we tied them to our feet
and put them just outside the tent door. We put my guitar in between us in the
tent and I put my machete close by my side. Nobody could run off with our bags
without waking us up, and surely I had a bigger knife than any thief would
have.
I faced many of my fears that night. I was
further from my comfort zone than I had ever been before. I had abandoned my cosy
bed back at home for a dangerous park with no glamour. What had I been
thinking? Halfway through the night trains started passing by on the tracks some
twenty feet from our tent. The ground rumbled while the trains clanged away.
I felt more alone than I had ever felt before.
I wondered what I was really expecting out of our adventure. How could I have
possibly thought that hitchhiking was a good idea? But the realization was arriving
a few days too late.
When the trains finally stopped in the early
morning, I was finally able to fall asleep for a short period of time before
the sun’s heat made the tent unbearable to be inside. When I finally looked
out, our friends were already gone. Again, we were alone so we packed up the
campsite and made our way into the city.
We spent the day exploring the sights while
trying to get a hold of Ryan’s friend on a pay phone. Late in the afternoon we
started looking for hostels to stay in to avoid another night in the park, but
they were all too expensive.
Just as the evening was approaching, Ryan tried
one last time to get a hold of his friend Pat, and at last was successful. Pat drove
into the city and picked us up. Then he thankfully took us out of the city to
his house in the suburbs. When I walked through the door, I realised from the
decorating that Pat still lived with his parents, but it was way better than
being in the park downtown.
We had dinner with Pat’s family. The ornaments
and trinkets that decorated the living room reminded me of all that I had left
behind. At dinner, Pat said, “So I’m going to a three-day music festival called
the Winnipeg Folk Fest this weekend. Do you guys want to come too?” With very
little money, buying tickets was not an option. But by the time we went to bed,
we had devised a plan to sneak into the festival.
The next day we gathered all the necessary
supplies for three days of partying. Then we looked over maps of the festival grounds,
examined the fence lines and tried to predict where the security guards would
be. By the time we went to bed, the van was packed and we had hatched a plan to
sneak in. It was starting to feel like nothing was going to be easy on our
trip.
Thanks for reading Chapter 6 from my book The Hitchhiker Man I hope your enjoyed it. Chapter 7 will be posted on the blog next week.
Top Photo By: Ben O'Bro
