Seeking An Extraordinary Life - A Travel Journal

Feeling a good bit fresher and more alert than I have been, I get into town relatively early and explore Bourbon Street for much of the middle of the day. By daylight it's a completely different environment, the beautiful old houses with their wrought-iron balconies and peeling bricks have a quiet dignity which is the complete opposite of the street's night-time frenzy.

For lunch I stop into the Cajun Grill on Decatur for an alligator kabob, which to my surprise turns out to be exactly what it says. The alligator is in the form of highly seasoned sausage, and it's kind of hard to make out the flavour (particularly since, to my enormous aggravation, I have another cold coming on) but it's savoury and has a nice extra level of chewiness. It comes with beautiful crispy sweet potato fries.

Arriving back I finally get the next leg of my journey planned - going over the map I find that once again I'm out of hitch-hiking range, so I spend almost an hour trying different routes on Amtrak's infuriating website before finding that I can make it to San Diego for quite a reasonable price by the third of October, and then hitch up the coast to San Francisco with time to spare. It'll be a long journey, mind - two full days on board train. But with a good supply of reading material I reckon I can make it through, and anything's luxury after long-distance Greyhound.

In the evening we gather for the hostel's weekly barbecue by the pool, munch great steaks (eaten with our fingers as the hostel doesn't have steak knives) and chat. It's a really nice crowd right now, and a very mixed one - several other Englanders, Australians, French, and folks from all across the States. After dinner pretty much everybody seems to want to see Liquidrone, who are playing across town at Le Bon Temps, so we muster taxis and form a sizeable party.

The band are pretty good but I don't really appreciate them fully because I have yet another money panic - the ATM in the bar rejects my card about half an hour after I arrive. I have $15.00 to my name and I haven't yet paid for my hostel room for the last two nights before my train leaves. Tired, a bit drunk and panicking over how I could have miscalculated so badly again I end up ducking out of the bar and walking home, a journey of over two hours.

Labels: alligator, amtrak, barbecue, Beer, cajun grill, New Orleans, United States

Sorry folks, bit of a serious lapse in the reposts. We'll be back to every two days from here on in.

I'm up and about at around ten o'clock, a little after Tonya and Janet for whom this is a pretty late start. Tonya and I go for coffee at Starbucks (I deviate at the last minute and get a soy chai which, I must admit, is almost as good as Dreamers) while Janet - who isn't a coffee drinker - makes a substantial pile of wonderful golden pancakes which go down well with fresh strawberries and maple syrup. I run out to get a phone card so I can finally sort out the bank situation at some point, and then we jump on the bus which goes from right outside Janet's complex to near Zilker Park.

At the other end we walk a couple of blocks and turn onto the main road up to the park, where an extensive temporary retail industry is in place selling water, snacks, folding chairs, bongs, shirts, pipes, jewellery and other necessities of the festival. I pick up a free Tito's Vodka shirt to augment my current supply of one (1) not very clean shirt. Also present are a large number of people with pitiful signs saying "Need tickets" or trying to sell broken wristbands in order to fund their own access.

Tonya and Janet have a cunning plan to set up a base camp halfway between the AT&T and Dell stages, where the most interesting acts of the day are playing, from which we can hear both stages and see the action on the jumbo screens above each one. We lounge in the scorching sun, dripping sweat, trying to move as little as possible and drinking copious amounts of water while we listen to the end of Raul Malo's set. I make a brief expedition to AT&T's "Digital Oasis", an air-conditioned tent with Wifi, to get us free (branded) battery fans, and spend the next half hour industriously scraping off the logo with a coin.

Steve Earle is next on stage, an appearance I've been waiting for, and I grudgingly leave base camp to work my way up the lefthand side of the crowd and get close enough to the huge stage to see him directly. He performs on his own for most of the set, with just a guitar for accompaniment. His music is great as ever, his songs heartfelt, although he seems a little tired and off his game.

I return to base camp to meet Bronwen, a good friend of Tonya's. She's African-American, bubbly and outspoken with a hysterically funny turn of phrase - she's a writer by trade and her skill with phrasing and tone is immediately evident. She tells us about a complete stranger who came up to her on day one of the festival, and said he was surprised to see someone like her alone at ACL as he didn't think this would be her kind of music. There's no bitterness or anger in her telling at what is really a fairly ignorant racist comment, just good humour and amusement at the absurdity.

Bronwen, Tonya and I go to fetch snowcones and we slurp delicious (all-natural flavoured) crushed ice while Stephen Marley plays on the AT&T stage. I don't know much about his work, but he has some good music of his own as well as several covers of his father's hits. We're all quite amused by a vast crowd of (almost exclusively) white people singing along with enthusiasm to "Buffalo Soldier".

Next Zap Mama play on the Dell stage - they're a little quiet and hard to make out from where we are, but it's still blazingly hot and none of us are particularly inclined to move closer. No-one has them as one of their "must sees" anyway. Finally Arctic Monkeys are coming up on the other side of the park as the early evening cool begins (relatively speaking - the humid air keeps an insulating blanket over everything and the air cools very slowly, but at least the sun is less fierce) and we all make a concerted effort to get moving and get over there.

Bronwen and Janet decide to stay seated in an outer ring of the vast crowd which is quickly closing around the stage, while Tonya and I push forward into the no-chair zone nearer the front to catch the full impact. I've had mixed opinions about Arctic Monkeys in the past - a few of their tracks have really got me and back home at Esquires they've always got me up on the dancefloor, but most of their other work leaves me cold. Live, however, they are brilliant, raucous and energetic with rough-and-ready chops and clearly enjoying rocking out and playing with the crowd - someone asks me if they're having technical problems, as they seem to regularly break off in the middle of a song, freeze, mumble something into the microphone (most people here have trouble understanding their strong northern accents) then carry on.

Finally the Monkeys wrap up and I wander back to the other side to see Cross Canadian Ragweed close the evening, the others having gone on ahead. This all-but-local band (from Oklahoma but frequently playing in Texas) are stunningly good and good fun, with a blend of blues, metal, country and bluegrass, high-energy stage performance (the frontman is clearly a student of the Edward Van Halen school of rock, he has most of Eddie's mannerisms in the way he spins and hops at the microphone and sticks his cigarette in the head of his guitar for solos) and a range of great and original music with some very funny lyrics.

I meet up again with Tonya and Janet at the Beach, and we walk out of the festival grounds and on through the still-frenzied commercial stretch to Chuy's tex-mex restaurant. We sit outside on a wall drinking frozen margaritas while we wait for a table to be clear, and get talking to a girl sitting next to us who has been handing out promotional items all day. She admires my t-shirt (black with dancing skeletons, from a Reno thrift store for $2.50) and regrets that she's got nothing to trade for it, so I give it to her and switch to my free Tito's shirt.

When we get inside, Chuy's is flamboyantly decorated with neon signs, old posters, ornaments and tons of Elvis memorabilia. One dining area is entirely tiled with polished hubcaps. Our server gets us seated and brings our drinks and a basket of tortilla chips and (damn good, coriander-filled) salsa to which we add two tubs of Chuy's legendary Creamy Jalapeno dip. The "Creamy J" is as good as it's reputation, smooth and a little tangy with a warm edge from the jalapenos, more flavour than heat.

Janet has a tortilla platter and Tonya and I order to swap halves - she has Panchos, basically superior nachos made with big thick tortilla chips, chicken, jalapenos, real cheese sauce and vegetables. I have the 9-1-1 Hotplate, the house speciality, a platter of refried beans, peppers and big enchiladas smothered in green chile sauce. It's hot enough to bring on a serious sweat but not quite painful, perfectly judged.

It's all great and BIG, and none of us are able to finish the whole of our serving. We return to the bus stop moving slowly, passing a little bluegrass band which has formed on the side of the pavement and is providing free music to the many passing revellers.

Labels: Austin City Limits, austin tx, Rock music, Steve Earle, United States

I wake at just before five after a pretty troubled night - (despite my anchoring heels I kept sliding down off my headrest coat bundle and the ground was cold without my sleeping mat) and decide to get moving right away. Rounding the corner onto 24th to go back downhill, the whole of Tacoma is spread out in the darkness below me - the city a great puddle of orange light, the scattered lamps of the harbour, the thin lines of the highway then the thick vertical brush-strokes that are the runways at Tacoma Airport.

The roads are almost silent as I walk down to Pacific, where there is a Jack in the Box restaurant. I stopped in there last night for a Sprite during my insane bookshop quest and sat next to a young man who could only have been a pimp, in a perfect tailored suit of black material and gold thread with a full-length topcoat, immaculate cornrows and a hugely ostentatious gold-trimmed black beeper in his belt. Now it's ten minutes to six and I sit outside against the wall until the manager opens up.

I order a Meaty Breakfast Burrito and a coffee and sink into a vinyl-seated booth with enormous pleasure. The burrito is pretty much as expected - utterly artificial but full of eggs, bacon and beef and very satisfying. I go back to the notebook in which Mehal was drawing me maps, way back on the ferry from Victoria. He has marked in Mount Rainier, south of Seattle, and that image sprang to my mind during one of my reluctant waking moments last night.

I'm not really sure where Mount Rainier is from Tacoma, but I know it's pretty close by, and I've already decided to fit in a couple of days camping before Reno - this way I'll feel like I've made the most of my time in Washington State too (as well as Mehal's kindness). And with luck such a popular campsite will have good facilities - like showers. Mmmm...showers. Breakfast scoffed and an extra coffee fillup later, I start making enquiries. Five completely conflicting suggestions later I conclude two things with certainty - I can't reach Mount Rainier by bus, and no-one from Tacoma ever leaves the damn city, at least by public transport.

It's going to have to be hitchhiking, and frankly my confidence and hope are shot. The outskirts of Seattle and Tacoma are plastered with No Hitching signs, and even the freeway onramps (supposed to be the last frontier where one can hitchhike legally or at least without police attention) are barred to pedestrians. What's more, practically everyone I've spoken to from Port Angeles through Seattle down to Tacoma, including experienced hitchers, has said "Oh, you won't be able to do that in the Northwest".

Nonetheless, I decide to give it a try, still reasoning that even if I waste days I can still get to Reno fast by coach. I take a long bus ride out to the Walmart on the very edge of town, and stop in for a few provisions (tortillas, sausage, magic markers to make signs with, the pair of waterproof sandals I've been needing since Niagara Falls and - joy! - Twinkies, my first ever encounter with same.

The only thing I can't get is fuel alcohol for my exhausted Trangia, there's no such thing as meths in this country and no-one seems to know an alternative. Then I get back out on the highway yet again, squashed into the last few yards of road before the No Pedestrians signs begin. Already expecting defeat and feeling very low I stick my thumb out.

Just under ten minutes later I get a lift.

Note to practically everyone I've spoken to from Port Angeles through Seattle down to Tacoma: As will become increasingly clear throughout this day's entry, you are all wrong and you suck. Just thought I'd get that out of the way.

David is a former test engineer for Intel, has worked from some of the big boys throughout the industry and is now engaged in a startup social networking project, Webfives, with a bunch of other high-tech players, mostly breakaways from Microsoft and other big names (and some serious people are on the roster). He's a big guy with a careful gait and a kind of leaden deadpan air that makes him a bit forbidding at first, until he smiles or laughs, when he suddenly fills up with light and energy.

We talk tech and open source on a comfortable level and he tells me he can drop me in the best place to get a ride on to Mount Rainier, as soon as we've stopped in at a local church jumble sale so he can pick up some chairs for his poker games. He drops me at a rest stop from which the road goes straight out to Mount Rainier, and advises me that in Washington State, where the roads can split in many directions, it's a good idea to have a sign for hitching. He suggests "From the UK to Mount Rainier" which I like - it should engage people's interest without making me feel too much like a novelty act, and it's got a pleasantly expeditionary quality.

I say goodbye and take his advice, retrieving a piece of card from the rest stop's bin. Seven minutes later I am riding with Gerry. He has red hair and a beard, a wide and friendly grin and works as a Country Engineer in a supervisory position. His son is in college right now and mostly we talk education, particularly the exorbitant cost of a degree in the States right now. He drops me in the town of Ashford just outside the park, with enthusiastic good wishes, a can of (proper, caffeinated) Mountain Dew and maps of the park itself and the state of Washington.

This time I wait a whole half hour before I get a lift. In the meantime I get a visit from the man in the giftshop near to where I stand, who has just come back from picking up supplies. He says he'd love to give me a lift - he once hitched across the States with a rucksack and kit just like mine - but he can't close the store at this time of day. However, he goes back in and brings me out a good luck gift - a beautiful Mount Rainier patch to sew onto my rucksack. They're handmade by friends of his from Tibet. I'm still reeling slightly when Howard pulls up.

Howard is 62 but apart from the white spangles in his beard he looks barely 40 ("That's good livin'" he says with satisfaction, sucking on his unlit cigar stub with luxurious smacking noises), and used to be on the US national track team. Since then he's obtained a PhD in Sports Psychology and worked mainly helping players get back on top after serious injuries. He not only drives me to the park entrance, but gets me in for free as a guest on his pass and drives me all the way to the top of the road-accessible portion, the better part of an hour's drive, rather than leaving me to wait for the free shuttle bus.

He loves the park and the mountains and comes up here all the time, and he gives me enthusiastic commentary on all the sights as we wind our way up, and stops at the visitor's centre so he can show me the giant slice of redwood trunk they have there in a frame, with major dates from history marked on the rings formed at that time. When he drops me at the top of the road I'm at a height of 5,400 feet and the air is thin enough to make me a little breathless. I sit down on a wall with my bags next to me and look down at the valley spread out below me, dotted with trees. There's only one thing to do facing the sweeping majesty of Mount Rainier's slopes - I have my first Twinkie.



It's pretty much what I expected - the "dough" is soft, incredibly sweet, with an eerie rubberiness to it, and the "creamy filling" tastes like someone found a way to turn pure cane sugar into a paste without any other ingredients. Finished with my artificial repaste I get up, rearrange my kit and I'm immediately offered a lift back down to the camping area by two ladies who've just come back from the Paradise trail. They're going to a wedding later down in the town, and the organisers have purposely allowed time for guests to get up and explore the mountain between events.

They drop me at Cougar Rock, the main campsite, and I register for two nights and choose my space. The camping spaces are really nice, each one thick with trees and tucked back from the road a little. I find one with two trees perfect for my tenting needs, locate the toilet block (immaculate but without showers, sadly...I'll have to last another couple of days. It's not like I'm going to be socialising much) and drinking water. In fairly short order I have the Tarp Tent v.3 erected and I'm very pleased with it, although I definitely need a bigger tarp as soon as I can find one, as this one can either provide reasonable headroom or allow me to stretch out full length, but not both.



I stow my gear as a few small drops of rain fall, with that satisfying feeling of being ready just in time, then sit out under the trees to sew up a small rip in my rucksack pocket and update my journal notes as well as plan the following day - I will go down to Longmire at the foot on the first shuttle bus, see if I can pick up a few bits and pieces at the supply store down there (a bigger tarp among them), explore the visitor's centre, do one or possibly both of the trails from that point and return to the camp for lunch. Then it's up to Paradise and cover the trails there, returning before dark.

I snuggle into my tarp cocoon with a sausage burrito, a Dead Guy Ale and my copy of Steven King's "Danse Macabre", with a few spots of rain pattering on the tarp and off the rocks outside. I actually wish we'd have a bit of proper rain during the night, to really test out the tarp. My sleeping bag is warm, my mat feels like a feather bed and I'm asleep almost as soon as I lay down.

Labels: camping, hitchhiking, Mount Rainier, United States, Washington

No photos for today. Well, I have three but they're of walls and things. Not sure what happened there.

Feeling a little fragile I nab a slightly burnt chunk of brownie from the breakfast table and pack up gear. There's time for a quick coffee with Corey before checking out, although we're slightly distracted from our coversation by a homeless man with the best sign ever "Father killed by ninjas, need money for karate lessons" and the flamboyant and heavily tattooed cafe owner who wants to tell us about his collection of 47 wigs.

It's the hardest departure so far - as always there are new friends to leave behind after too short a time, but for the first time leaving the place is a real wrench. There are places I'd really like to revisit (Canmore, Toquart and Victoria particularly) but for the first time I'm somewhere I'd really like to make a home. I had been planning to do the Underground tour before leaving, but I spend too much of the morning finding a new t-shirt to replace the green shirt which is falling apart at the seams already (I end up with a distinctly small white t-shirt promoting a charity I've never heard of, but hey, it cost $2.50 and I was short of time), and decide just to get moving.

Still hungover and fuzzy, with no real idea of where I'm going, I just hop (or rather stagger) onto the first southbound bus on 1st and ask for advice. I'm directed to the airport bus, which will take me way out to the Transit Centre where I can get the bus to Tacoma. Once again hitchhiking is rendered fairly pointless - the first bus is $1.50 and the free transfer (a system I still don't fully understand) gets me on the bus to Tacoma for free.

The first bus takes over an hour and a half winding its way out of the outskirts of Seattle, and I finally get an idea of the total size of the city as we pass through suburbs, goods yards the size of a small village and a retail ghetto the size of some towns. The ride to Tacoma is another hour, and it's after two when we pull into Tacoma Dome station.

Beginning to feel a little awake at last, I take stock of my options from here. The Greyhound station gives me some good news - if I need to I can go straight to Reno for $88.00. I've still been thinking in terms of Canadian distances and assumed that it would be a multiple-day, multiple-hundred-dollar journey. That gives me a great safety net to work with, and I decide to try and get a couple of days camping, for economy and winding down from the city and hostel life, since I shouldn't need more than four days to hitch to Reno (and the Greyhound will be an easy fallback if I run out of time).

I leave my rucksack at the Greyhound office (God bless Greyhound luggage storage for the times they've saved my spine already) and go to wander the streets of Tacoma, which turns out to be a beautiful city, built on a long hill sloping down to the Puget Sound, with some stunning buildings including the Washington State Museum. The gas station has no US maps (or indeed anything outside Tacoma) so I start looking for a bookshop, which (either due to my hungover state or a lack of desire to get back to hitching) turns into a kind of religious quest in which I work my way all the way up the hill going up and down the length of town on each pass, to no result.

Halfway up I conclude that it's getting too late for hitching and I might as well stay here tonight, and near the top of the hill I spy a nice grassy area with protective bushes - a bit steep, but I note the location for a return after dark. When I finally give up the search I am exhausted, sore and have no map, but I feel like I've exorcised something (and exercised everything) - I'm enjoying being free on the road again. At that point, of course, I remember that every payphone has a phonebook under it, with a Yellow Pages. Years of readily-available internet can leave you with some holes in your world-interaction skills.

I crank up the MP3 player and with Paul Simon ringing in my ears I go back down 24th to retrieve my rucksack and rest my throbbing heels on a bench for a couple of hours while it gets dark enough to cover my urban camping. The walk up the hill is educational. About a third of the way up a blue pickup truck pulls over, the driver pointing at me through the open window, and I am rather sweetly propositioned by a large african-american gentleman "just looking for someone to have fun with, maybe spend a little money?" I explain the problems with that scenario, wish him luck and he goes on his way. I'm actually quite flattered, but make a mental note to replace the skintight white t-shirt as soon as I can - I may be sending out the wrong signals.

A couple more streets up I meet Arelene, who is trying to push a shopping cart filled with all her possessions up the fairly steep slope to Tacoma Avenue, two lights on. I take a side and we make slow but steady progress. Arlene is in her late twenties, has been on the streets for some years and is a crack cocaine user. She is quite overweight (unusual for a cocaine user) but doesn't look notably unhealthy. She tells me about a friend of her dad's asking his permission to sell her crack when she was a teenager. "He said 'As long as she don't go near heroin I don't give a damn what you sell her'".

Arlene's been clean of heroin for 11 years, she says - she made a promise to her dad and she's sticking to it. We part at the corner of Tacoma (I'm going a junction higher up to Yakima where my bit of grassland lies), wishing each other luck in finding a good place to sleep, and she sits down in the bus shelter on the corner. I pause halfway up the next stretch to sit on a wall and ease my shoulders, and on the still night air I hear the snap of a lighter and a couple of long inhalations. After a minute Arlene calls up the hill, "Say Mark, you know you're a gorgeous man?" I seem to be popular in Tacoma tonight.

I find my bit of grass again, hide my bags under the cover of a tree and slide down to a relatively shallow spot shielded from the road. I'm getting good at sleeping on the ground, which I find mainly requires learning a series of near-unconscious adjustments which match my body to the bumps, hollows and roots under me. The hill is definitely a little steep and I settle on my back with my heels slightly dug in to stop me sliding - I can't possibly get into my sleeping bag or I'd go shooting down the hill as on a toboggan, so I drape it over me as a blanket and I'm pretty snug.

Overhead, the drifting clouds reflect light from the great slope of the city below me, glowing pale grey against the dark blue sky. I look up past the sillhouettes of the branches over me and miss everyone back home. But I feel at peace too.

Labels: crack, male prostitution, Puget Sound, seattle, United States, Washington

A quiet morning in, and I spend most of it catching up on odd jobs - waxing my boots (well overdue), sewing up a split seam in the lid of my rucksack, rearranging and cleaning out my kit. I've managed to compact things a little more (always a cause for celebration) by losing an excess shirt (I replace two black t-shirts with the awesome green shirt I picked up yesterday), one of my filofaxes and some paperwork I don't need, which means I can immediately fill the new space with my excess food stores which I've been carrying around in yet another bag.

After lunch I walk out with Nicki and Dan to see the inkjet kiosk and hang out with Robin for a while. He's there with his workmate Chris, a thoroughly hyperactive but very sweet girl who talks most of the time and has a huge collection of reptiles. She tells me about her snakes as she shows Dan how to inject cartridges with ink and reset chips.

The job is actually very interesting to follow - they can refill any inkjet cartridge on the premises in about half an hour, which requires an arcane selection of techniques and tricks all discovered within the company - one cartridge must be drilled in a certain spot, another clamped or squeezed, bits prised off and re-sealed with hot glue, some have to be pressure-filled using a vacuum pump (and occasionally explode). When a new printer is released, someone in the company has to effectively reverse-engineer it to find out how best to fill it.
Shown opposite: My only photo of Robin. This is why I'm a writer not a photoblogger.

They are tested using an amazing collection of printers arrayed under the desk, all with names bestowed by staff members - there's Lou Diamond Philips, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and one particularly unreliable model is known as Jam Master Jay.

With everybody home in the evening I say goodbye and good luck to Dan and Nicki, and Robin drives me to the ferry. It's a sad moment saying goodbye to yet another new friend so fast (and yet again I forget to get a proper photograph), and I'm further brought down by mounting nerves about the border crossing. This is the one everyone has been warning me about everywhere I've been - U.S. Customs and Immigration are purported to be cold, vicious, procedural and inclined to make things as hard as possible for incoming travellers.

In fact it's not too bad - there's a quick form to fill in and the guy I deal with is pretty brusque and obviously enjoying his position of power, but I'm through in five minutes without incident and met on the ship's gangplank by the purser, with a broad smile and a welcoming "Hi, how are you doing?" "Better now that's over" "Yeah, everybody comes out of that room like..." he puts on an expression of fixed horror for a moment and stands with legs shaking "...that's why I like to meet 'em with a friendly face. You have a great trip now."

I feel better, but once I've settled on a bench with my bags and we begin to pull out, my mood drops again. I begin to wonder if all the things that have made this trip great so far - successful hitching, making friends along the way, the generosity and hospitality of so many people - were just products of Canadian goodwill and will disappear in the States. Is my journey about to take a downturn? Will I meet coldness or even hostility from here on in?

As these gloomy thoughts develop the young man standing at the rail notices my baggage "Hey, where are you headed?". Inside of two minutes Mehal Shah is sitting with me, excitedly listing places I just have to see and drawing maps in my notebook. Mehal's parents are from India, he's living in Seattle and actually works for Microsoft as a software engineer (which sparks some lively debate). My concerns about America are washed away as we talk.

The views from the boat are spectacular - the sun touches the horizon as we are crossing, sending half the sky orange and everything else into deep blue shadow by contrast. The landmasses behind us are sillhouetted against the incredible sky, and halfway across the water a whale (possibly a humpback) surfaces three times a little way out on our port side, blowing spray and flipping its tail. It looks small at a distance but the slowness of its movement gives away its huge size.



Customs at the other side are even more relaxed - a few questions (mostly relating to how I'm going to support myself), not even a search, and I walk out onto American soil for the first time, my second border crossing complete.

I'm fairly tired and emotionally drained from all the up-and-downs of the afternoon when I walk up into Port Angeles, Washington State. The harbour has a rather rank, rotting-seaweed smell to it and the town is mostly deserted. I don't know where I'm sleeping or where I'm going next and I'm starving hungry. Comfort food seems to be in order, followed by an attempt to find the local youth hostel based on the very sketchy advice of the immigration officer.

I walk around town for some time, finding only pricey seaside-town restaurants, but finally set eyes on a 24-hour supermarket where I wander around happily acquiring Pringles, Reeses peanut butter cups, and a big box of (shame) non-free-range fried chicken. Then it's off to find the hostel and the directions prove as unhelpful as they initially seemed. I walk for almost an hour into the town's eastbound retail ghetto before concluding that I'm not going to find the place before checkin ends, so I find a grassy hill next to the baseball stadium and munch chicken and chocolate while I ponder what to do for the night.

There's a National Park area further up the road, which usually seem to have camping, but after walking that way for some time my foot is flaring up and I spy a patch of wasteground where I will be partially concealed by bushes, at least while it's dark. It's another boundary-pushing moment for me - I'm inevitably going to be seen by a few people and I have a real stigma about being thought of as "sleeping rough". But tiredness overcomes my misgivings and there's a satisfying feeling of power at shedding another inhibition, being able to put practicality over social programming and self-consciousness. I lay down my mat, slide into my sleeping bag and sleep well.

Labels: borders, British Columbia, Canada, port angeles, United States, Vancouver Island, victoria

A good night's sleep, and first thing I packed up my gear and went looking for net access before my Servas visit tonight. I decided to walk up from Maryland to the public library, which turned out to be a long hot stroll of over an hour. Halfway there I stopped to sit on a shady wall and enjoy one of the best burgers of my life from the stall of the friendly and quirky Mr Mike, who, when he found out I was from England, insisted on giving me a free Dr Pepper and that I try the Canadian delicacy Squeeze Cheese; "The England-Man must try the Squeeze Cheese!"

Fortified, I carried on to the library where I found internet access but no facility to upload my photos. Before leaving again to find a net cafe (I wasn't sure how much time I had or I would have updated the blog at least, a choice I later regretted), I ran into a fellow hitcher from the US, Frank, who was on a limited visa (due to lack of funds) and visiting Canada in his school holidays. A veteran hitch-hiker, Frank had a wealth of great and fairly disturbing hitching stories, including being stabbed in a bar in Mexico after trying out a Spanish "pickup line" his friend had told him - the girl's boyfriend had been violently unamused, and Frank never found out what he'd said to her.

After a fruitless search of the area for an internet cafe I was sweltering, and I collapsed in a Second Cup cafe for a strawberry lemonade smoothie (the best possible thing on a hot day) and to wait for time to get a bus to my hosts. When I arrived in their house on a beautiful TV-perfect leafy suburban street the Kirby family made me enormously welcome, treated me to a delicious meal of bison burgers and fresh salad (mostly from their own vegetable garden), a long evening of great conversation (and vicarious Nintendo with their two sons), and a comfortable bed in their cool basement.

Labels: bison, burgers, canada, hitchiking, hot dog, Mexico, servas, United States, Winnipeg