I met Shawn just east of Regina. I saw him standing on the side of the road as I came over a bridge at a construction zone. He had been smoking his last joint, he told me, when he first saw me. He’s riding from Victoria to Sault Ste Marie to see his sister. He doesn’t have a proper bike; it’s one of those small bikes teenagers ride around town and do tricks on. The back tire was flat, so he was pushing it. He didn’t have any rain gear, so he just suffered through the storm that just hit us. He lost his tent and tent fly in Swift Current, so he only had an air mattress and sleeping bag left. I told him where he could sleep under a bridge just up the road.
Shawn is addicted to drugs. He was pretty high when I met him, but he also seems to be high on life. “It’s Canada Day tomorrow, man. And what are we doing? Traveling across Canada. It’s fucking poetic, man!”
When I shook Shawn’s hand, his fingers were all curled inward. He said he partially severed his arm when he was a teenager when he ran into a glass wall while trying to evade some mall cops. “I wasn’t even doing anything,” he said. “They just didn’t like that I looked like a hobo and had my hair in a Mohawk.”
We talked about a lot of things. Travel, family, even religion. “I didn’t believe in God until I met him three times,” he told me.
He even brought up the subject of internal monologue while walking. “You think of some weird shit when you’re walking, man. Like I was thinking that there is no messiah. And then I thought, ‘What if I’m the Messiah?!’ Hell, I wouldn’t even believe in myself. Wouldn’t that be a laugh? Me, the Messiah, not believing in myself?” And then we laughed together.
Shawn is riding his brother’s bike and carrying his brother’s ashes in a container on the handlebar. His brother died of a drug overdose four years ago and Shawn’s mother blames Shawn because he gave his brother some hash when he was 15. Shawn is in his mid-forties. It’s obvious he wouldn’t be able to hold a job, so he’s on some kind of welfare. He only had $16, so I gave him a twenty. I wouldn’t spend a damn cent to stay in a dry hotel with a hot shower for the night, but I’ll give a traveler enough to get him another 100 kms. Shawn isn’t really part of my tribe, but he’s part of the fellowship. He’s a traveler after all, a good soul with an unfortunate disease. I wish him well.