The sun greeted us warmly after that surreal experience in Banff as we walked our way out of town to the highway. The intensity of the mountains had not withered and I found myself tripping up on my own feet with my head in the clouds, excited to get the hell outta there. We were in such good spirits by the time we got to the highway that hitching became more of a game than ever before. I was dancing around smiling, waving my arms every which way, Ivan buzzing on the same level. We had a few beer left over from the night before and shared a toke to celebrate life again. Our next ride came pretty easy because of this, his name

Shannon.

Shannon was a professional musician, fairly bald with a business-like face. He would take any gig that would come his way and play in over 10 bands at any given time with probably hundreds and hundreds of songs memorized. He seemed on the later side of his 40’s and pretty happy about how his life turned out but he really stressed us about how hard he had to work to make it all happen. He brought us a short distance to Canmore, AB and dropped us off with a nod and great vibes.

The mountains around Canmore differed only slightly from the Banff area, there were more shear rock cliffs and colors and their height seemed to be sustained for much longer than the eye catching peaks of Banff. We didn’t get much time to take them in however before our next ride pulled on over. His name was Corey and he was a professional poker player heading to Calgary for a tournament. He seriously looked the part too, sunglasses, polo… even his face structure screamed poker star on TSN. It made me wonder if he has ever been on those shows. The conversation was typical, we were a little more interested in him than he was of us, we couldn’t believe his tournament, if he was to win (or come close) would be about 12 hours long. He told us even if he loses early and loses a buy in or two he could make his coin back easy with some other game he was good at and call it a night. The way he spoke of it you could tell it was his primary source of income, probably a wizard at online poker too. He smoked a joint with us while we scrambled to figure out where in Calgary Ivan’s friend was and with no response we were getting really worried about where we would end up, Mr. Poker Star was in a rush big time. As the anxiety rose Ivan noticed a sign “Signal Hill Center” and he remembered from the last time he was in Cow-Town that his good friend Robbie worked at an Irish pub somewhere in this area. There was hope!

We got dropped off in this huge strip mall area, normally a death sentence for us hitchers. Ivan asked a woman about an Irish pub in the area. She confirmed there was one up along the way and pointed us in the direction and we exercised the “hike” portion of hitchhiking to try and find it. These sections of city’s are damn right concrete mazes and although we found the sign for the place, we couldn’t find the location yet, asked a few fellas outside a food joint and eventually a few minutes later, found it. Cheers all around.

This place was pretty amazing, great layout, stage for live music and as old and wooden looking as you could ever ask for. Ivan spotted Robbie working behind the bar right away but before we could approach him another one of his friends from Ontario, Nick and his lovely lady Roxanne approached us and had a little moment of “whatttt the fuckkk”. What were the chances we would roll through in the same place at the same time unknowingly! Only the universe understands. We got introduced and shot the shit for a while, drinking beers and eating their leftovers, hearing stories from the older days back in Ontario. Robbie got off the bar at 4pm and joined us at a table to keep the good times rollin’. The conversation flowed effortlessly and the beers and food kept coming, most of it not on our bill out of the kindness of Nick and Robbie. We hung ot at our table for ages and a live band started playing at 9pm, rocking all the most popular rock-ish tunes from the past 30+ years. They were good but generic and it wasn’t long before the beers and food caught up with our spirits and we wanted to book’er on home, plus we had spent over 6 hours in the same bar… It was time.

We piled into Nicks rental Jeep and he drove us back to Robbies place where we had a couple more brews and met his roommate, Carl. We settled in and watched countless episodes of the new Trailer Park Boys on Netflix and I passed out on the couch. Couldn’t ask for better, not much more to be said.

We woke up in Calgary to yet again another beautiful day, I was convinced the sun was hitchin’ along with us the whole time, enjoying the entertainment we were providing. We enjoyed a nice walk downtown to the buses and caught one out to the easternmost part of the city to the highway to hitch on out. As per any god damn city it was brutal trying to get a ride. The kinda people who stare straight ahead no matter what and refuse to smile or blink in fear we might jump in front of their Escalade and murder them. We spent two hours trying to hitch outta there and moral was running low until a sweet ol’ man by the name of Dean picked us up in his work van. We piled in our shit and Ivan sat in the front, me on a toolbox and made small talk with him as he was only going 30k or so up the road. The funny thing is when we got out he saw his buddy in another work truck turn out and start going our way. He jetting into the road yelling and waving his arms to try to get him to stop and pick us up but to no avail. We assured him it was all good, “someone will pick us up, they always do”. He drove off and we were back to trying to convince Albertans that we weren’t serial killers.

I can’t recall how long we waited for our next ride but it wasn’t too bad, me and Ivan have a thing where we alternate who sits in the front and whose in the back to keep us sane. The guy in the front pretty much has the responsibility to keep the driver awake and slightly entertained with conversation while also making sure they didn’t take off of our path. The guy in the back mostly gets some much needed sleep. Ivan was the lucky one in this case while he was in the back cause this guy who picked us up was a little scummy. I actually didn’t even get his name cause he just turned me the wrong way entirely. He worked up north doing something or other but what made him scummy was how he treated and felt about women. He explained to me about this book he read that changed his live called “The Tao Of Badass” and despite the Taoist reference had fucking nothing to do with Taoism, in fact was the total opposite. It “taught” him that getting women to be attracted or have sex with him was actually just a series of manipulation tactics you could apply no matter how ugly, poor or worthless you might be… Don’t matter, you could have sex with thousands of women.

He would say things like “when a woman asks you to do her a favor, the wrong answer is ‘yeah no problem!’ and instead you should either tell her to fuck off or give her an ultimatum like ‘well if I do this, do I get a little kiss?” He explained how there was degrees of “Badass” and with each degree you become more irresistible and could land any woman you want, period. Anyway, you can’t exactly argue with your ride when your hitching so I kept my strong opinions of mine to myself and just nodded and “uhh huh’d” whatever he came up with. Towards the end of the ride he had me texting this lady friend of his so he didn’t crash. She was asking him for contact info to get some crack cause he hooked it up before. He would tell me what to write and I would write it. I had to tell her the only way she was getting that info was if she sent over some photos, you know, the compromising kind. It killed me to be the one typing that out but as it turns out, no photos were sent, at least not while I was in the car. We finally got to Medicine Hat just after dark, our stomachs were growling so we stopped by this Ma ‘N Pa grease joint and I got some chilli fries and Ivan a burger platter if I remember correctly. We talked to some cute girls who worked at the hospital there and then walked to the graveyard to find a good place to set up tent.

We found a great hobo spot behind some trees just off to the side of the graveyard, pallets and old stools arranged in a little camp area. We quickly set up our tent, stashed our packs inside and because it was only early, we went for a walk to find a bar or something to get into. We ended up finding our bar attached to a car garage. Everything was styled that way too, inside there were tools and other mechanic type shit hung on the walls, it was actually pretty cool. It happened to be Trivia Night that night; there were a bunch of teams all split up into their own tables yelling out answers to the dude running it at the back of the bar. We had a good laugh at some of the answers and tried to guess some between us just to keep our minds going. It was a locals place for sure and it was interesting bearing witness to it on an off night. We finished up our beers and walked back to camp, got a little stoned and went to bed feeling confident about the morning hitch.

Once again the sun found us as we woke. We had previously scouted out our hitch spot the night before and headed straight there with our thumbs out. We were there maybe 20 mins whole a cop pulls over with his lights on… This again. We give up our I.D’s again and chat with him, he was alright and told us we weren’t as far down the highway as we should be trying to hitch out and asked us if we wanted a ride further up the road. He seemed sincere so we hopped in and sat on the hard plastic seat that felt like it was taken from a bumper car from the 40’s. This being my first time ever in the back seat of a cop car, it felt more than a little uncomfortable. As soon as we closed the door I could smell the weed in Ivans pocket…Right off the bat he asked us if we had any weed, such a stupid question for a cop but we said “hell no officer” and he said “okay well don’t leave it in the car when you get out”…. Okayyyyy… Whatever. He drove us up to a better spot and we thanked him. Right before he left he said “coming all the way from Kelowna and you don’t have any weed? You guys are blowing it”. We laughed nervously and he drove off. Police have a fucked up sense of humor.

Our next ride was a lovely woman around our age named Haley. She had short hair dyed blonde with a “Tinker Bell” tattoo on the inside of her forearm. She explained it had something to do with a time in her life where she was hard into drugs and trouble but I was sitting in the back at this point and only half paying attention, trying to charge up my phone. Those stories are all too common, not to downplay it but I couldn’t keep track of all the people who overcame a life of using stupid drugs and getting lost in it. She was a really sweet girl and shared a few joints with us on our way to Swift Current, SK where she split off to go to Saskatoon… That was a little too far north for the route we were thinking of so we said our good byes. This was the first strech of the prairies that I have ever seen and it was a sight to behold. I wrote in my notebook that “the prairies had the Buddha nature, boundless and infinite” and I couldn’t believe how far you could see in every direction… There was no hiding out here.

Ivan had been talking to a friend of ours, a fellow vagrant, “Doh” from Quebec who was driving his Volvo filled with shit back to Montreal and he so happened to be in Swift Current at the moment and he came through and picked us up and brought us to the walmart he was posted up at with his friend Antoine. He explained how he was pan handling for gas money the whole way at gas stations. He told us “when you pan handle for gas nobody is gonna give you little change. Like what the fuck you gonna do with $3 gas, right? So within an hour or two we can get like $60-$80, ya know? One guy $20, the next $10 the next $30… It adds up!” I thought it was brilliant.

We sat in the grass and they cooked up some potatoes on his camp stove and we ate salmon that our mutual friend Kelly caught back in BC, had a grand ol laugh and filled up before hitching out again. He said I would have a place to stay in Montreal if I passed through but I knew it would be over my dead body I would end up there. If we thought Calgary was hard to get out of, I can’t imagine Montreal!

Our ride out of Swift Current was a gem, his name was Mason. He was in the business of water treatment and was a super dad family man driving a beautiful SUV that was beyond comfortable. Unbelievably friendly and interested in what we had been doing, said he was off to Regina for some kinda conference or something. We had great chats and time kinda slipped away and before we knew it we were dropped off downtown Regina searching for a bus to the eastern point of the highway. That turned out to be more of a mess than we would have thought, the bus driver must has misunderstood us and told us to get off at the West exit which was quite a ways away from the East one, we had to wait a little while for the next bus to bring us out there and by the time we were ready to hitch, it was already getting too dark. The sunsets here in the flatlands filled the sky 360 degrees and had slow gradients of red, yellow and purple, it was unlike any sunset I’ve ever seen before. Across the highway there was some barren land and a field of wheat behind an RV dealer and an old, run down motel which we thought would make a great place to camp. Rather than setting up the tent and making ourselves known off the bat, we stashed our packs and went to Quiznos for a well deserved sub and hit Bulk Barn for some more trail mix before heading back to sleep.

The old motel had one building in the back surrounded by cars and had lights on which bugged me out a little. All I could think of was some biker gang using that as HQ or some shit so we tried to be as quiet as possible and go un noticed. We quickly set up the tent in the soft wheat and fell asleep. Maybe 2 or 3 hours later I was awoken by the bark of a huge dog who had obviously found us and was losing his shit. My heart raced as I had images of dudes with shotguns at our tent ready to kick our asses but he kept barking and barking. I woke up Ivan and he sat straight up, full attention knowing full well what this means. As it turns out, the dog was in the RV dealership and was stuck behind that fence, nobody must have cared that he was barking because after 20 mins or so nobody come and the dog must have gotten bored. We drifted back to sleep until Ivan woke me up, “what now” I wondered and thought we had finally been discovered. “fuckin’ coyotes” he said “I just heard them yippin and running around”. Greattttt just want we needed, another canine intervention but after a little while we couldn’t hear them, figuring they had better things to do we drifted back to sleep. The guard dog only woke us up once more toward the early hours of the morning and that was the last we heard of them. What a edgy night we had in that field, I wouldn’t be that nervous in my tent again until Mattawa, ON… but that’s a story for another time.

Winnipeg was our next goal.