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Rules of Thumb: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Sea to Sky

Coming Up Short Cam Roskell, the Swearing Tree, can't quite reach Mars with his lanky limbs. Signage can sometimes matter when you're hitchhiking, but, as with the rest of life, nobody has time to read
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Separating Man From Beast

Ah yes, the thumb. Let us drop all doings and kneel in praise of it: attorney general of the appendage, paterfamilias of the palm. Rising from the upper ridge of our hands in brazen, three-jointed singularity, the thumb is one of mankind’s defining attributes. It is the flagpole from which our powerful brains flutter and snap above all other animals.

Oh sure, koala bears have thumbs. And, back when lizards were holding down the top of the food chain, there was the odd squawking freak also gifted with the Glory of Thumb. But that was then, and, kinda like ours, their clocks were ticking. Meanwhile, a koala bear with a Skill saw would create too sad and bloody a display for even Mike Holmes to refurbish.

Myself, I’m pretty stoked on my thumbs. They’re probably a bit different than yours, on account of my double metacarpophalangeal joints, which make me the crusher-destroyer of all thumb war throw-downs. But that’s not why I’m so stoked on them.

As is the case with most thumbs, each of mine comes with three bones commanded by eight muscles: four in my forearm and four in my hand. Taken together, this system gives me an opposable digit, which is just wicked when it comes to holding beer bottles, operating Skill saws to the embarrassment of Australian marsupials, and carrying my skateboard out of the park after my ankles, which I’m not so stoked on, twig out on me.

Another thing I often use my thumb for is hitchhiking. When’s the last time you saw a lesser animal doing that? Unless, of course, you’re thinking of that hippy you picked up outside Horseshoe Bay, the dude with the cute, little puppy all romping clumsy on the roadside next to his rucksack. Was it the puppy you wanted to get close to? Or the maddening reek of patchouli oil and the unswerving allegiance to stereotype?

Yes — I like puppies, too. But it’s a trick, and you should know that.

Nevermind Jack Kerouac, Here’s Ford Prefect

One of the worst things about hitchhiking is the association it carries with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road . I hate that book because it’s so boring, although it’s entirely possible that I’m too shallow to understand it. More possible still is that I just think William Burroughs was cooler.

Besides, far better literary associations can be found with Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut. The latter had his alter ego, Kilgour Trout, hitching all over the place in Breakfast of Champions , while the former, in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues , creates a saucy protagonist with a thumb so huge it brings her fame. Those books were just too weird to be boring.

More recently, people who liked Into the Wild , either on film or in pulp, were privy to another thumb-themed journey: a desperate and ultimately suicidal exodus from society. You figure there’d be a lineup, and there is, but it’s at Starbucks and not the Alaskan boarder — at least not until they open a Starbucks there, an eventuality for which a clock also ticks.

Finally, who can forget Ford Prefect in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ? Remember how he has to chug three pints before catching a ride on a space ship? How awesome is that? I’ve tried it, and, sadly, it doesn’t work. I’m terrestrial, even when bagged.

But the point is, hitching is as much a part of our culture as thumbs are a part of our evolutionary identity.

A Boy and His Road

I was around 17 the first time I stuck my hand into traffic. I used some or all of those eight muscles to hoist my thumb and affirm bipedal dominance over time’s trajectory thus far. It was about four in the morning, and I was making my way home from a grad party. I don’t really remember who picked me up, probably because I was wasted. It didn’t dawn on me until much later that the guy dropped me off exactly where I asked: just inside Deep River, Ontario, about 10 minutes walk from my house.

Maybe I was having a lot of fun. Maybe I was confused. Maybe I’m stupid. Whatever the case, I just kept going.

For almost two hours.

The next driver was weird. He kept rambling about chainsaws and how he liked to wield them. Feeling a little uncomfortable, I took to staring hard at the passing signage, eventually noticing one for North Bay.

“Oh, um, I should just get out here,” I said.

“Where you going?”

“Deep River.”

“That’s where I picked you up,” buddy scoffed.

“Yeah,” I said. “I forgot something.”

He pulled over without taking a chainsaw to my face, shook his head, and merged back onto the highway.

I was thirsty and, as luck would have it, there was a pond. It’s taken me most of my life to realize that, while I’m lucky in the haven’t-fought-in-a-civil-war-sense, I’m not so lucky in the sweet-there’s-a-lovely-pond-sense.

The water was surrounded by mud and marsh, and I fell in it, got stuck in it, wriggled in it, got filthy by it, and finally, miraculously, got out of it. And then I fell over the guardrail, tearing my jeans from cuff to knee.

So it was that I stood there, clad more in mud than clothes, sweating profusely in the climbing heat, pants ripped and thumb cocked as no border collie has ever done. In a twist of cosmic irony, I wound up getting home in the back of a pick-up truck, much like, well, a dirty border collie.

Sometimes dogs get the last laugh — like when you use your thumb to scoop their shit. Trust me, they get it.

The Swearing Tree

Cam Roskell is one of the first people I met when I moved to Squamish. He’s about 300 feet tall and looks like a swearing tree dressed in a gold chain and a wifebeater, shaggy blond hair for leaves. Just the same, Cam’s thumbs have flagged down more rides than Colin Powell’s pores have oozed sweat at the United Nations. Here’s a quick vignette of Cam’s life on the shoulder of Highway 99. This sordid tale has him bringing a lady friend of his across the strait and onto the mainland.

“After a weekend of drinking on the Island, I talked her into coming over to Squamish for a couple days,” he says. “And I assured her the whole time we’d have a ride on the other side, and so she packed three suitcases full of shit to stay for four days. Sure as shit, on the other side, there was no ride. I tried calling my brother, but nothing. (Our buddy) Drew (Mckim) was with us. We’re hungover as hell, and we’re lugging up three suitcases, my backpack, and his backpack all the way up the Horseshoe Bay hill. We get to the road, and this is the first time she’s ever hitched, and she’s never even picked up a hitchhiker before, either. So she’s worried. We cut in front of a guy who’s already waiting there, and someone picked us up right away. Buddy got ripped off a ride, and he was pissed.”

And the lady? What did she think?

“She didn’t mind too much, but I didn’t get laid.”

So there it is: A small sample of Cam’s credentials, admittedly soiled because he cut in line. No doubt, in the absence of the girl — many of which are even cuter than puppies — roadside karma would’ve had him standing there for a long time.

I’ve forgiven Cam his transgressions, and so, together, the two of us offer the far-from-definitive Hitchhikers Guide to the Sea to Sky Highway.

That last paragraph is what we journalists (or hacks, whatever) call a nut graph. It summarizes the whole point of what you’re reading. If you think my journey to the nut graph was long and convoluted, well, guess what? I did that on purpose. It’s called metaphorical structuring. Just because I don’t like Jack Kerouac doesn’t mean I don’t understand metaphors, and I thought I’d work this one in to show you how bloody long it can take to get anywhere if you rely on a thumb to get started. Hopefully you appreciate my efforts.

The Guide: Chapter 1

Our journey began with the appropriate signage. Actually, that’s a lie. It began with inappropriate signage, mainly because another friend has such an unusual sense of humour. We had one sign that said “To Mars” because, hey, why wait until 2030? We had another sign that said “Your house” mainly because my kitchen is so dirty. Then there was the “Valhalla” sign, drawn up because the Vikings make such fine violence in their limbo and the theatre is so expensive these days. Finally, there was “Your Frontal Lobe” because – let’s face it – I’m just not that bright.

We started in Creekside, at the London Lane intersection. Swaying in the fashion of Ford Prefect, we stood on the north side. That way, we’d catch both traffic already on the highway and those vehicles about to merge. Plus, there was plenty of room to pull over.

Positioning is key, young thumbs. In order to satisfy that wanderlust, you must be savvy to these things.

Thanks to our ken, we saw break lights in seconds, and a northbound Honda became our first point of contact. This is where the social phenomenon kicks in, giddy rush and all. A complete stranger opened his door and invited us into a personal space that, for all intents and purposes, might as well have been his living room. Why? Because we asked. With our thumbs. Ponder that. For those of you with past lives in hostile metro hellholes — and I do mean Toronto — the thought of even acknowledging a stranger is anathema to life itself. Just contemplate that contrast for a second. Now, and because we are instinctually social animals, contemplate the potential for human interaction awaiting the hitchhiker. Isn’t your mind just panting?

So there we were, in Rick’s mobile living room. Rick was a chatty guy, super nice and on his way to Pemberton. His window was open as he smoked a cigarette, and the wind battered the longish hair dangling from under his blue ball hat.

“I first went hitchhiking when I was six years old,” he said. “My dad took me. We used to go from Washington to the Okanagan, and it was easier with a kid. He taught me lots of tricks.”

Ah, tricks. They’re the lifeblood of any aficionado. Here’s a couple of Rick’s: If there happens to be a tire on the side of the road, put your foot up on it, because interfacing with your surroundings makes you look more trustworthy. And, to that end, why not bring a jerry can? Sure, it represents a bit of a lie, but odds are you’ve got some problems in your life, and maybe the gas can is more of a metaphoric prop than an actual tool of necessity. Taken that way, you’re not lying; you’re just being artsy.

Fact is, sometimes you’ve got to be creative. Rick once thumbed an absurd stretch with 20 pounds of beef bacon. Had to be done, had to be creative. He wound up scoring a ride, an accommodation, and a freezer to put his bacon in. He’s been picked up by dump trucks, limos and everything in between — just never a Ministry of Transportation vehicle. Like many smart and traveled people, Rick appreciates irony.

But he’s on the driving end of things now. And so, these days, he’s giving back to the road. He picks up almost every hitchhiker he sees. Sometimes, he picks up people who aren’t even thumbing it. His job has him driving some 14 hours a day, and he figures he gives about 200 rides a week. Odds are, if you thumb it in or out of Whistler, Rick will pick you up.

Knowing what it’s like on both sides, he can offer you young thumbs a few tips.

“There are certain spots that are just good for hitchhiking,” he said. “I see people in the weirdest of places. Don’t stick your thumb out at the bottom of a hill. And if you’re hitchhiking at night, stand under a light and keep your head up. Otherwise, you look like a horror movie.”

Tick, Tock – It’s a Busy Clock

As with most human connections, there’s an ethereal moment between two parties that determines the birth of their relationship. That moment between hiker and driver is something Stephen Vogler, a Whistler writer and veteran hitcher, is very familiar with, both from behind the wheel and on the side of the road.

“From both sides of the coin,” he says, “there’s sort of an instant of communication and recognition. You go, ‘I can understand that person. I can pick them up and give them a ride.’ There’s a split second of eye contact.”

Remember what I said about clocks? They’re steady ticking, and seconds count.

The Guide: Chapter 2

We didn’t make it to Mars or Valhalla, and Rick invited us neither to his house nor his frontal lobe. But Pemberton was good enough. Mount Currie looms large over the highway, and, unlike the 99’s southern reaches, the road isn’t littered with Kiewit pylons, flaggers and machinery. Hitchhike in that morass and you might as well be waving at camels in the Sahara. You’re screwed, and you don’t have enough water.

But in Pemberton, a car can pull over just about anywhere, and it only took about 10 minutes of singing along to Tub Ring, Ween and Mindless Self Indulgence, all of which were blasting out of Cam’s stereo, before someone picked us up.

All I can say is this guy declined an interview, then told us about his life as a Soviet soldier before letting us off outside Whistler’s Upper Village, an all together horrible spot to cock a thumb.

Back in Vogler’s day, the Whistler community was smaller, and he remembers the thumb scene as pretty intimate, basically a collection of drivers and hitchhiking ski bums, all of them already acquainted. Rides came easy in those days.

But, as far as Cam and I were concerned, those days might as well be a part of the Cretaceous period. We weren’t getting anywhere. And Rick was nowhere to be seen.

It was our positioning, of course. Staggered towns are a hitchhiker’s nightmare. If you’re leaving Whistler for Squamish, then you want to be leaving from Creekside. There are just too many turn-offs between the Upper Village and Creekside. Same goes if you’re leaving Squamish for Vancouver: You sure as hell don’t want to be starting out in Brackendale because most people are just headed to the grocery store. It doesn’t always work that way, especially at the beginning and end of the work day in a commuter corridor. But it does happen, so try not to flip off all the people who smile their way right past you.

Finally, a public bus picked us up, the driver apparently amused by our Valhalla sign. The ride was appreciated, even though it totally vanquished the ironic set-up Rick had left us with.

We had an easier time from Whistler Village. With big, sloppy smiles and protruding thumbs, we quickly flagged a ride from a character wishing to remain anonymous. To protect his identity, we’ll call him Volkswagon — as in, The People’s Car.

Volks had theories on what’s happened to thumb culture since Volger’s carefree days. He’s lived here since 1981, and done quite a bit of hitching himself.

“I assume people are freaked out,” he said, “or just too busy. When people are deep in their own heads, that means they’re busy. And it’s harder for them to reach out to the rest of the world, or to someone on the side of the road. They go hand-in-hand. The hitchhiker is a metaphor for the rest of the world.”

Waving at Metaphors

Like many hikers on the Sea to Sky Highway, Cam and I were headed to Vancouver Island, where we met up with Drew and some other friends. Once there, we wanted to compare road friendliness. How would the TransCanada stack up against the Sea to Sky?

We spent the night at friend’s house off some rural road outside Parksville. In the morning, a father with three kids in the back of his truck saw fit to pick up three disheveled young men, each with a backpack and skateboard, and take us to the highway. But then the road turned cold.

If you’re a driver, you know what you should never do? You should never wave at hitchhikers as you pass them. It’s rude, elitist and infuriating. Frankly, a wave is not the type of social scenario being proposed. However, pointing to your left or right in explanation of the short trip your on — that’s totally cool. That means something cordial, kind and democratic still passed between us, even if a pane of glass and high velocity dulled the intimacy of the exchange.

Karma is crucial on the side of the road. And, as we waited over an hour outside Parksville, I figured Cam’s line-cut in Horseshoe Bay had sunk our prospects — that, and the fact that instead of a pretty blonde in a dress, we had Drew, a shaggy redhead who flails a lot.

As with many things in life — like, for example, sex — the longer it’s been since you’ve had it, the longer it’ll be until you get it again. The same thing goes for thumbing. After an hour on the road, we were screwed, and we had to call a friend from Nanaimo to drive down and get us.

When the Means is the End

Hitchhiking is an amazing way to travel. While many travellers focus on destinations, the hitchhiker usually focuses on the journey. The destination is often incidental.

It’s also one of the few corners of human activity that technology can’t digitize. How many people do you know who thumb rides over Facebook or MSN Messenger? It just doesn’t work that way. And, while there’s always the possibility that you will get raped, murdered, beaten or robbed (another set of experiences not easily offered by Facebook or MSN), the more likely scenario is that you will meet someone new, spend time with him or her in a confined space, and, ultimately, learn something about someone other than yourself.

The world could do with more of that.



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