Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
traversing british columbia
VANCOUVER TO NELSON
met up with ian powell a little after 9 am in a café on commercial and fifth. 9 was the proposed meeting time but ian wanted to finish installing the stereo in the car before leaving. he ordered coffee and two muffins and a cup vegetarian chili, to go. he explained that he worked three 7 pm to 7 am shifts welding broken equipment in a factory the week before and as a result made a lot of money but also fucked up his thumb so wouldn’t be able to work until the thumb healed. he figured that his thumb would heal just as well in kaslo as it would in Vancouver so decided to spend a week in kaslo. he used to live in somewhere near kaslo. he used to practice Chinese medicine but lost all of his money doing it. he was once married to a Japanese woman and had a daughter with her, but they divorced and now his ex-wife and daughter live in japan. I’m not sure if there was overlap between his marriage and his Chinese medicine practice. he told me he was 32 after I told him I was 19; he asked first. he grew up in Vancouver somewhere. didn’t go to university, after high school his parents moved to England so he moved to Australia, then returned a year later and worked as a bike courier. to be a bike courier and to party all the time is fun but a construction job is more fulfilling. he explained some cloud formations to me and attributed his knowledge of cloud formations and his inclination to notice weather/cloud formations to his construction job. not something you can pick up as a courier, he said. he talked a ton of shit about the construction industry in Vancouver. particularly resented college types who know nothing about construction make bad decisions and inadequate qualifying exams for construction jobs. after driving for an hour or two we were ascending a big hill and steam started hissing out of the engine so we pulled over and poured water on the radiator and waited for it to cool off. we had to stop every 30 minutes to an hour and pour more water in the radiator. ian would periodically smoke a very small amount of pot out of a very small pipe. after doing so he became slightly funnier and his theories and stories made less sense but he was more pleasant to be around. he would get slowly more and more crabby as he got less high until he smoked another bowl. he was very critical of my driving when I drove into nelson, as he hadn’t smoked a bowl in over two hours. he wished me well and said he would call me to tell me if he could give me a ride back to vancouver.
and then the focus on my camera stopped working.
NELSON TO VANCOUVER
ian never called back and a bus ride from nelson to Vancouver takes twelve hours and 120 dollars and alice’s roommates described how easy hitchhiking is in nelson so I was convinced that hitchhiking to Vancouver from nelson was a legit plan. I was dropped off 10 minutes outside of nelson with a cardboard VANCOUVER sign and my luggage (a backpack and a plastic bag w/ hiking shoes it in). the first person to pick me up picked me up in an old large beige pick up truck and was a 50-60 year old small fit man named vern. he grew up in a small town somewhere in canada, I don’t remember if it was in british columbia or not but things that stood out in the conversation was his praise of American soldiers who left the military force in the Vietnam war or the iraq war and moved to the kootenays and his passionate belief that not only was 9/11 an inside job but so was pearl harbor. he didn’t drive me very far. the next man was pretty boring, he compared the weather in small town british columbia to the weather in Saskatchewan and told of how his son lived in montreal for a while because his erstwhile girlfriend live there. he dropped me off in castlegar. the third man picked me up in a new hybrid ford focus with the satellite radio station set to CHILL ELECTRONIC/DANCE. he had slightly longer than shoulder length hair and a light beard. his name was Adrianne. he lives in british Columbia with his partner but was initially from Toronto. he dropped out of school in 11th grade and currently works as a beekeeper. he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. he talked about magical children and energies and harmonizers and imploded water and stones and cosmic unconsciousness and the intentionally disruptive nature of smoke trails coming off of jets that fly in checkered patterns in the british Columbian sky all while he rolled and smoked a cigarette with organic American spirit tobacco. his car was broken and being fixed in osoyoos and until then he had a ford focus rented and he figured that while he had such low cost of driving he would drive to nelson to buy lots of sugar in bulk at the food co-op which he plans on using to make his own kombucha and picked me up on his way home. he dropped me off right outside the road to his house but twenty minutes later he pulls up next to me and says “c’mon man get in the car!” he had cut up a delicious organic pineapple and put it into a bowl to share with me. after we talked and drove for a while he placed a piece of the pineapple on my VANCOUVER sign and a harmonizer on top of it and told me to wait a little while so that the harmonizer would harmonize the water in the pineapple. after it had harmonized for a bit he had me eat the harmonized pineapple slice and then eat a non-harmonized pineapple and compare them. both slices were very delicious and I told him that the pineapple was so good in the first place it would be hard to really tell a difference. he agreed and theorized that the harmonizers hanging off of the rear view mirror and his neck may have already harmonized both slices of pineapple. he dropped me off in osoyoos where I bought a small basket of cherries that I ate while walking to a better hitchhiking location on the highway. the next person to pick me up was a woman who looked to be in her early fiftes in a boxy Japanese imported van w/ the steering wheel on wrong side of the car. she offered me carrots out of a Tupperware container. her car had an altimeter on the dashboard and a bed in the back. she told me of a road trip that she went on with her partner and her partner’s dog. after she asked me about my studies I asked if she had gone to university to which she responded with “I had kids instead.” she talked shit about the world bank and drove me a long distance and eventually dropped me off in Hope, where she was going to visit her mother. although I had to walk for about two miles to get to a place that people could reasonably pick me up at in hope once I stopped I was picked up immediately by a man named Don in a medium sized sedan. on his dashboard was a sign that read Thank you for not smoking. he worked as a doctor in Hope but lived in coquitlam. shortly after I got in the car he asked me what kept me going in life. I said that I had not seen enough to not keep going, that there have always been new things to see and new ways to change so I haven’t felt trapped long enough to not keep going. he then asked how many drugs I was on, to which I responded zero. after he questioned me more I told him that I had drank coffee that morning, but he still didn’t believe that I otherwise sober; his guesses were that I was that I either smoked crack or pot saying that “no second year university student talks like that.” he spent the rest of the drive explaining to me how everyone in the world is depressed, there aren’t really any poor people in Canada, homeless drug addicts lives aren’t really bad they’re just short, and that there are only four belief systems in the world and the best one is Christianity. I didn’t read the exit of the highway that he dropped me off at but it was very easy to get a ride by a 35 year old man in a shitty sedan who builds boats in Vancouver and was listening to metal and was planning a camping trip. planning a camping trip entailed arguing with his brother about what sort of meat to bring camping. he dropped me off in the absolute worst town to hitchhike in called abbotsford. abbotsford is about 50 kilometers outside of Vancouver and had no reliable public transportation or friendly people who pick up hitchhikers. after attempting to hitchhike by an onramp for an hour and a half I discovered that my cell phone had been turned off and then walked to a gas station to call nick, my primary Vancouver connection. as I was talking on the pay phone to nick a drunken 17 year old girl with a sideways pink NY hat who was waiting to use the pay phone overheard my conversation and became concerned with my situation so she first offered me a shot of vanilla flavored vodka out of a tim horton’s cup and then started asking every person who was filling up gas at the gas station if he or she could give me a ride to Vancouver. before I could stop her a man offered to drive me to Vancouver on the condition that I wait for him to stop by his girlfriends house in langley because he was babysitting her dog. this man had grown up in various middle eastern countries with his Christian missionary parents. he told me of an occasion in 9th grade when “terrorists” came into his school and shot and killed some bus drivers and custodians and injured a teacher. he dropped me off in east Vancouver and I took the hastings bus to the west end and walked to the Sylvia hotel, where my mother was staying.
met up with ian powell a little after 9 am in a café on commercial and fifth. 9 was the proposed meeting time but ian wanted to finish installing the stereo in the car before leaving. he ordered coffee and two muffins and a cup vegetarian chili, to go. he explained that he worked three 7 pm to 7 am shifts welding broken equipment in a factory the week before and as a result made a lot of money but also fucked up his thumb so wouldn’t be able to work until the thumb healed. he figured that his thumb would heal just as well in kaslo as it would in Vancouver so decided to spend a week in kaslo. he used to live in somewhere near kaslo. he used to practice Chinese medicine but lost all of his money doing it. he was once married to a Japanese woman and had a daughter with her, but they divorced and now his ex-wife and daughter live in japan. I’m not sure if there was overlap between his marriage and his Chinese medicine practice. he told me he was 32 after I told him I was 19; he asked first. he grew up in Vancouver somewhere. didn’t go to university, after high school his parents moved to England so he moved to Australia, then returned a year later and worked as a bike courier. to be a bike courier and to party all the time is fun but a construction job is more fulfilling. he explained some cloud formations to me and attributed his knowledge of cloud formations and his inclination to notice weather/cloud formations to his construction job. not something you can pick up as a courier, he said. he talked a ton of shit about the construction industry in Vancouver. particularly resented college types who know nothing about construction make bad decisions and inadequate qualifying exams for construction jobs. after driving for an hour or two we were ascending a big hill and steam started hissing out of the engine so we pulled over and poured water on the radiator and waited for it to cool off. we had to stop every 30 minutes to an hour and pour more water in the radiator. ian would periodically smoke a very small amount of pot out of a very small pipe. after doing so he became slightly funnier and his theories and stories made less sense but he was more pleasant to be around. he would get slowly more and more crabby as he got less high until he smoked another bowl. he was very critical of my driving when I drove into nelson, as he hadn’t smoked a bowl in over two hours. he wished me well and said he would call me to tell me if he could give me a ride back to vancouver.
and then the focus on my camera stopped working.
NELSON TO VANCOUVER
ian never called back and a bus ride from nelson to Vancouver takes twelve hours and 120 dollars and alice’s roommates described how easy hitchhiking is in nelson so I was convinced that hitchhiking to Vancouver from nelson was a legit plan. I was dropped off 10 minutes outside of nelson with a cardboard VANCOUVER sign and my luggage (a backpack and a plastic bag w/ hiking shoes it in). the first person to pick me up picked me up in an old large beige pick up truck and was a 50-60 year old small fit man named vern. he grew up in a small town somewhere in canada, I don’t remember if it was in british columbia or not but things that stood out in the conversation was his praise of American soldiers who left the military force in the Vietnam war or the iraq war and moved to the kootenays and his passionate belief that not only was 9/11 an inside job but so was pearl harbor. he didn’t drive me very far. the next man was pretty boring, he compared the weather in small town british columbia to the weather in Saskatchewan and told of how his son lived in montreal for a while because his erstwhile girlfriend live there. he dropped me off in castlegar. the third man picked me up in a new hybrid ford focus with the satellite radio station set to CHILL ELECTRONIC/DANCE. he had slightly longer than shoulder length hair and a light beard. his name was Adrianne. he lives in british Columbia with his partner but was initially from Toronto. he dropped out of school in 11th grade and currently works as a beekeeper. he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. he talked about magical children and energies and harmonizers and imploded water and stones and cosmic unconsciousness and the intentionally disruptive nature of smoke trails coming off of jets that fly in checkered patterns in the british Columbian sky all while he rolled and smoked a cigarette with organic American spirit tobacco. his car was broken and being fixed in osoyoos and until then he had a ford focus rented and he figured that while he had such low cost of driving he would drive to nelson to buy lots of sugar in bulk at the food co-op which he plans on using to make his own kombucha and picked me up on his way home. he dropped me off right outside the road to his house but twenty minutes later he pulls up next to me and says “c’mon man get in the car!” he had cut up a delicious organic pineapple and put it into a bowl to share with me. after we talked and drove for a while he placed a piece of the pineapple on my VANCOUVER sign and a harmonizer on top of it and told me to wait a little while so that the harmonizer would harmonize the water in the pineapple. after it had harmonized for a bit he had me eat the harmonized pineapple slice and then eat a non-harmonized pineapple and compare them. both slices were very delicious and I told him that the pineapple was so good in the first place it would be hard to really tell a difference. he agreed and theorized that the harmonizers hanging off of the rear view mirror and his neck may have already harmonized both slices of pineapple. he dropped me off in osoyoos where I bought a small basket of cherries that I ate while walking to a better hitchhiking location on the highway. the next person to pick me up was a woman who looked to be in her early fiftes in a boxy Japanese imported van w/ the steering wheel on wrong side of the car. she offered me carrots out of a Tupperware container. her car had an altimeter on the dashboard and a bed in the back. she told me of a road trip that she went on with her partner and her partner’s dog. after she asked me about my studies I asked if she had gone to university to which she responded with “I had kids instead.” she talked shit about the world bank and drove me a long distance and eventually dropped me off in Hope, where she was going to visit her mother. although I had to walk for about two miles to get to a place that people could reasonably pick me up at in hope once I stopped I was picked up immediately by a man named Don in a medium sized sedan. on his dashboard was a sign that read Thank you for not smoking. he worked as a doctor in Hope but lived in coquitlam. shortly after I got in the car he asked me what kept me going in life. I said that I had not seen enough to not keep going, that there have always been new things to see and new ways to change so I haven’t felt trapped long enough to not keep going. he then asked how many drugs I was on, to which I responded zero. after he questioned me more I told him that I had drank coffee that morning, but he still didn’t believe that I otherwise sober; his guesses were that I was that I either smoked crack or pot saying that “no second year university student talks like that.” he spent the rest of the drive explaining to me how everyone in the world is depressed, there aren’t really any poor people in Canada, homeless drug addicts lives aren’t really bad they’re just short, and that there are only four belief systems in the world and the best one is Christianity. I didn’t read the exit of the highway that he dropped me off at but it was very easy to get a ride by a 35 year old man in a shitty sedan who builds boats in Vancouver and was listening to metal and was planning a camping trip. planning a camping trip entailed arguing with his brother about what sort of meat to bring camping. he dropped me off in the absolute worst town to hitchhike in called abbotsford. abbotsford is about 50 kilometers outside of Vancouver and had no reliable public transportation or friendly people who pick up hitchhikers. after attempting to hitchhike by an onramp for an hour and a half I discovered that my cell phone had been turned off and then walked to a gas station to call nick, my primary Vancouver connection. as I was talking on the pay phone to nick a drunken 17 year old girl with a sideways pink NY hat who was waiting to use the pay phone overheard my conversation and became concerned with my situation so she first offered me a shot of vanilla flavored vodka out of a tim horton’s cup and then started asking every person who was filling up gas at the gas station if he or she could give me a ride to Vancouver. before I could stop her a man offered to drive me to Vancouver on the condition that I wait for him to stop by his girlfriends house in langley because he was babysitting her dog. this man had grown up in various middle eastern countries with his Christian missionary parents. he told me of an occasion in 9th grade when “terrorists” came into his school and shot and killed some bus drivers and custodians and injured a teacher. he dropped me off in east Vancouver and I took the hastings bus to the west end and walked to the Sylvia hotel, where my mother was staying.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)