After a surprisingly good sleep in my luxury top-of-the-range ditch, I hit the road again at 6:30am, because my accommodation still did not lend itself to sleep ins. I did not anticipate having too much trouble escaping from Medicine Hat, and after an hour I was in a car with an old engineer named Vic on his way to Redcliff.
After a short time on the road, we reached Redcliff and I hopped out, realising it was the same destination that a gorgeous tattooed blonde had offered me the night before. I had declined her offer, so as to stay in an already-scouted-out area, but I regretted it deeply.
A quick look around confirmed that it would have made a fine place to stay the night, and I continued inwardly cursing myself for letting the opportunity pass by. She would have taken an immediately liking to me, and I to her, then she would have offered me a place to sleep, and then we would have lived happily ever after roaming the world on a romantic whim. Of this, I was certain, and I had only myself to blame.
It took another hour and a half of signholding and smiling to get me another lift, but the lift I got was one of the most memorable I had. A lady truck driver waved me in while she was stopped at the lights, and I wrestled myself and my pack in through the cab door just as the light turned green, taking a seat next to one of the most colourful characters I met on the road.
Chain smoking, cheerful, foul-mouthed and loud, Diane’s manner made it clear that she had maintained a work hard/play hard lifestyle all the way through to the age when most people start their retirement. She was going all the way to Calgary, so I had nearly three hours full of crazy stories, crass jokes, and raucous laughter as we traded tales from the road. She even bought me breakfast at a truckstop, in the form of a pile of pancakes, when she realised I was fairly well impoverished.
Many of the stories she told were on the topic of drugs. As the daughter of a truckstop owner, she had spent her high school years counting out pills to sell to the truckers, who would then drive for days on end kept awake by these illicit chemical packages. Diane herself had relied on the same pills to get her through exams. Continuing this lifestyle of questionable legality, she later found herself working as a drug mule for the Hell’s Angels, running drugs from British Columbia through to Alberta and doing illegal street racing in between times.
These may sound like tall stories, but after hearing them in person, I honestly think they were true. I asked her what the Hell’s Angels were like to deal with, and she replied ‘Well, I wasn’t one of them, but I fit in and they were really good to me. If I ever needed help with anything, they were always happy to send a couple of guys around to lend a hand’. Not for the first time, my normally decent stories paled in comparison. One time I got drunk with a homeless man on a week night, another time I vomited on a first date, but in the presence of gang stories, these stories sounded terribly weak to my own ears. This feeling was reinforced when the told me about getting mugged in California while waiting to pick up a load, then being abandoned by her employers when she drove home empty.
Thankfully, these stories never felt like one-upmanship the way they could have been, and Diane was some of the best company I ever had on the road. She eventually gave up the drug-running street racing days when the other and she turned to the more legitimate career of truck driving. I asked her what she was hauling that day. ‘Air conditioners’, she replied. I could not help but think that air conditioners probably have plenty of spaces to hide secret stashes.
On the road with an ex-drug mule (Calgary)
After a couple of hours of these spectacular stories, Diane reached her truck depot, and my dear friend Kira drove me back to her family’s place, bringing a close to my hitch hiking marathon. Kira and I had many more adventures in the following weeks, and she really was the purpose of my trek out to Calgary, but those are stories for another time.
I spent almost a year in Canada on a 360 Abroad exchange, and without any exaggeration, I call it the best time of my life. Hitch hiking from Montreal to Calgary was the best possible way to conclude such a significant chapter of my life.
It took me 8 days to cover the 4000km between Montreal and Calgary, and those days were jam packed with laughs, sighs, excitement and frustration. Through substantial periods of dehydration and hunger, I covered the entire way with little more than hand-drawn signs and a smile, and picked up stories every step of the way. I spent 62 hours on the road, 19 of those spent at the roadside, the other 43 split between 12 cars, travelling through 5 provinces and 3 time zones. I met fantastic and bizarre people, cemented friendships, and truthfully had some of the best times I have ever had. The life of a wayfaring wanderer is a good one.
You’re right, Canada, I think have. (Toronto)
Further adventures await! (Jasper National Park)
hitchhikediaries 