Wild wild west

After one week in Vancouver, spending time on the long walks, mainly on the Simpsons Street and few more surrounded Downtown and Gastown, getting discovered me in the way I wouldn’t have expected, I came back on the road. While Lissia was taking off to Montreal I was still standing with my thumb up almost begging for a lift. After two short drives I got to the truck stop with all these beautiful, marvelous, shiny American trucks. Huge, powerful machines that make you desire them from the very first look. I grabbed a piece of pizza in the petrol store and began to walk from one driver to another asking for a lift. Behind my back the sun was reaching the horizon and I started to think where I should sleep if nobody would pick me up. After a couple of tries I got my driver. Black boxer from Nova Scotia, who in his free time fights on the ring in the heavy weight, really well muscled guy with the childish eyes and honest face, taking life easy but responsible. When I first heard he could drive me to Calgary, which was about 1000km from the place where we were actually standing I was pretty much suspicious but at the same time I felt like catching my luck just below the knees. He looked somnolent, so when I sat down waiting for him and his buddy I looked to the sky and realized that must have been joke and he will never drive me a single mile from there. But why I shouldn’t believe him. Just because I’ve entered the most distrustful country on my trip since last three months. The minutes I have waited for his voice were merely divided into thoughts of naïve, faith, trust and God Speed. Finally he asked me to enter his huge Volvo cabin and we left Vancouver far behind us, heading east with the mountains all around. Five hours passed since I’ve began my project of crossing North America in autumn by hitchhiking; I was sitting in comfortable chair, listening to techno summer collection 2008 and was simply blissful that ‘it’ had set in motion. I remember only first hour of drive, next few of them I spent on sleeping and maybe one hour when I was awaken on praying. Driver was extremely exhausted, sleepy and fast. When you connect these three attributes you got your adrenaline bumping in your veins to the rhythm of your horrified heart and for sure you prefer just to close your eyes, thank gods for life and in dream wait for your death. It was more dangerous than KKH and hardly any other road in northwest Pakistan. Always when I opened my eyes I could see the trees passing us furiously fast, almost asleep Sally the driver and 120 kilometers/h on his speed meter. When he woke me up and said we were almost in Calgary, for me all this night was a kind of miracle that we hadn’t died in British Columbia.
Maybe too much miracles in my stories, maybe I should take my ass and put it in rational world and forget about this magic and my sensitivity. I’m sorry I can’t.
And I have already forgotten about an angel from Vancouver. Monday morning we squandered drinking coffee outside the Sturbucks. Lissia and I, we were sitting in the rays of the Vancouver Sun and it was ordinary, lazy, chilled out morning like all the others when you are on the step doors to follow your path and the woman who you think you love would disappear in less than an hour and you know the chapter is close to the last sentence and then it happens. The last sentence spoken by an aged, friendly woman who is looking for some address on the street where you sit and of course her question is pointed directly into your ears. You are no more than tourist without any idea where can be situated the house she is mentioning. And then it comes, the last sentence of the chapter.
- You are young, you should know. She repeats it few more times.
Her words are still vibrating in the air when she is walking down the street, carrying her body on the wooden walking-stick and that’s it.
- You are young, you should know. I’m young and I still don’t know. But I hope one day I will.
State of Alberta is covered largely by prairie. And I entered this amazing landscape just after I got the lift from some old hippie and we smoked a joint of weed together. I forgot for that slight moment about the rule I have learned in Nepal that never smoke with strangers. And definitely don’t smoke with an old stranger who probably spent half of his life on getting high. Certainly you can expect really strong staff that the stranger offers you. So I took only three smokes and got little stoned. Air and light of prairie were awesome that morning. On the west there was a ridge of clouds which coming from Pacific are blocked on the Rocky Mountains and perform smooth line of dark blue of Paris that is spread from South to North on distance of few hundreds of kilometers. Blue sky and sandy yellow prairie composed incredible images of my road.
I reached Edmonton one hour before the sunshine but pushing by the luck of my road I tried once more to stand on the side of the highway with my sign shouting to passing me cars, direction towards Slave Lake. However it was over 200km to drive I had feeling it would work out. Indeed it did. I was picked up by a woman from Slave Lake, then I phoned Peters father that I was coming and after 30 hours on the road at 9.30 p.m. I was in Faust in Roberts Nygaard house.