Today is starting off to be a good day. I had a good long sleep in an excellent stealthy spot off the highway and woke up as chipper as a chipmunk. I had given the finger to a driver yesterday and resolved never to do it again.
So this morning when a driver of a transport came toward me, initially swinging wide to give me space, and then swerving back toward me in a way to suggest that he was avoiding oncoming traffic, but me realizing this wasn’t the case after a turn of my head revealed an empty highway, and then watching him edge across the white line even closer to me, causing me to abandon the stroller and jump off the road into the ditch, and then my realizing that this was happening because the driver had fallen asleep, I did NOT give him the finger, despite that a speeding 25,000-kilo piece of machinery smashing into a frail human body made of flesh and bone could have ended my life in an instant.
After the truck passed me, I looked back to see the truck hit the rumble strips, which must have woken up the driver, who then swerved back into his lane. He wouldn’t even have known how close he was to killing someone this morning.
A police officer stopped by today to wish me well and to see if I needed water. And later on, another stopped to see if I was ok. Neither of them seemed to have any suspicions about me and only wanted to help.
The funny thing about having a good day is that everything just seems to go your way. For instance, today I went looking for something in my daypack, and I came across a full bag of forgotten jelly beans. Whoa! It was the mother lode! I hadn’t even opened it yet.
While I was eating some jelly beans at a snow plow turnaround point, a transport truck pulled in. I chatted up the two drivers, who were switching for the next 12-hour shift. Shifts are 4:00 to 4:00, eleven days on and two days off, for about $60,000-70,000 per year.
I asked them if they like their jobs and both said ‘no’. It’s a tough gig. One guy is married, has children, and an east-European accent. “It’s hard. When I get home after eleven days, my kids want to play, but I’m exhausted. But what can I do? I don’t have a university degree or special skills, and I have to support my family.”
The two guys have been working together for eleven years.
“Do you two get along?” I asked.
“Oh sure. When someone says something the other doesn’t like, we’ve learned to keep our mouths shut.”
We talked about highway 17. “It’s the worst highway in Canada,” the one fellow said. “There’s no consideration for truckers or cyclists. The lanes are narrow and it’s not always easy to see the cyclists.”
I told him I had met at least a dozen cross-Canada cyclists already.
“It isn’t even the height of the season yet,” he said. “Soon this highway will be packed with cyclists and walkers. Aboriginal people walk along this highway all summer long. People cross this country on all types of contraptions. Last year, we saw two guys near Wawa who were skateboarding across Canada. Every year, a few people are killed on this highway. But nothing is done about it.”
Indeed. I saw a roadside memorial for four people who have died on this highway. Today, I passed two aboriginal teenagers. Neither was walking against the traffic and neither was wearing any sort of safety jacket. I can see how it’s possible that bad things happen.
A police officer just stopped while I was writing this. One of the teenagers I passed seems to be missing, or late arriving somewhere. When I had passed the teen, he had asked me what time it was, so he must have known he was running late. Hopefully it turns out well.