please, people. don't honk at hitchhikers unless you plan to actually stop. it's heartbreaking. especially on the fucking 401 in toronto.

the fucking 401 in toronto.

i had a plan to avoid the fucking 401 in toronto. it involved hitching to oshawa early, hopping two different legs of the go train and eventually ending up in kitchener, where hitching is less strenuous. see, the side of the 401 in toronto is a scary place. of course, i slept in and it all fell apart and i ended up doing what i tried to plan around.

yes, a long day, but an interesting one. currently in a mcdonalds in mississaugua for the night. will get a few hours of sleep on the grass outside and keep going when the sun comes up. select stories follow...

so, i meant to be up and out by 7:00 but wasn't out of the house until a little after 10:00. despite other slight problems, this is the singular problem that fucked everything up.

the plan was to hop the back of the 96 at tunney's and get off in stittsville, but i got confused about the route. i thought the bus was going to circle back to hazeldean in the end. yet, it did no such thing. i should have known better than to try and hitch up fernbank; i think i did, really, i was more thinking i could walk up to highway 7. yet, a few minutes down the road it became clear that i was walking into an area that has more coyotes than people. so, around i turned and up carp road i went back to hazeldean...

i stopped in a coffee shop with wifi to touch in with some people only to find out that my laptop isn't recognizing my hard drive. great. see, it does that sometimes; it just needs a few tries. i need to get the data off this thing and switch laptops. but it didn't want to work quite right then.

whatever, keep going.

some ski bum dude that looked like he was on his way to go stalk jack white gave me a lift up to the highway 7 turnpike, which was a creepy walk down. again: i wanted to be off that road quickly due to coyote issues. luckily, it was only a few minutes before somebody gave me a lift out to carleton place....

it seems like a life time ago now, but some time in the distance past i dated a nice young lady from carleton place for a few years. she warned me time and time again: "never try and hitch out of carleton place!".

well, it took three hours, but it turned out ok in the end. i got a lift from a trucker up highway 7 right into toronto. transporting milk, he was. an older dude - mid 60s. slight lisp, probably from a stroke or two. seemed to sort of dad me. won't get into that right now.

he had a friend a few trucks up; i got to listen to a very long radio conversation between the two of them.

"what other industry has held the same wages since 1986?"

i didn't pull out my wage/inflation chart.

"we should shut them down for a few days. that'd get them to fucking listen."
"naw. the young drivers would never go for it. they're talk, but no action."
"fuck, i remember back when we had the teamsters. when we voted, we acted. and the people that didn't act ended up at the bottom of the river."
"yeah, and what are we now? we're just a fucking piece of shit is what we are."

they went on about this for a while. i said nothing. just listened.

"i've been doing this for 45 years and people ask me when i'm going to retire. i ask them when they're planning the box."
"but, i've had enough of driving trucks. i used to haul gravel. i don't want to do that anymore either. maybe i'll just get a job at home depot or something."
"yeah, maybe i'll apply for something at walmart."

ack.

he let me off at a split from the express into the collector going off to highway 400. it only took a few minutes before i realized that hitching from there was as unlikely as it was unsafe. so, i hopped across the feeder lane with the intent of going into toronto and seeing what might happen...

the hop across the lanes wasn't too bad; there was even a path along the far side of the highway on the other side of a concrete barrier. so, i hopped that. i wasn't sure if i was at ground level or elevated and wanted to get to ground level. after a short walk i came across a road that ran underneath the expressway; unmarked, no exit. yet, that was ground level...

i found out later it was jane street. for those unfamiliar with toronto, that's the street you don't want to be on.

i didn't know that at the time, though. getting down to the road seemed like a challenge, but not an impossible one: a small hill, a mild jump from a concrete slab overlooking the road. yet, on closer inspection, the jump seemed a bit too much. ok, i'll go around. problem: a barbed wire fence.

i took a walk up to the end. surely, they didn't actually fence in a grassed area on the side of the road? yes, they actually did. trapped! found a tree stump, took a pair of extra socks out and put them over my hands to deal with the wire, but i wasn't tall enough to get over the fence with it. kept looking; there must be a hole or a weakness. indeed, there was a space that had been uprooted to crawl under. my bag got trapped momentarily, i felt like i was stuck, but i was able to squirm out and sneak under. freedom...

a mall is ahead of me. ok. where am i? first sign says "beverly hills". thank you universe for your sense of humour. hilarious, really.

kept walking up what i later learned was jane street, in the general direction of finch. found a subway.

"where's the closest go train station"

no answer. try the beer store. didn't know. fuck. hey, there's some punk kids over there...

"do you know where the closest go station is?"
"there isn't a close one."
"is there a university campus somewhere near here i could sleep at?"
"no."
"how long do the connector lanes in the 401 go on for?"
"not sure."
"ok. then, what's the best way to keep going parallel to the 401?"
"i don't know, but if you follow this road here it should get you in the right direction."

ok, then. down wilson with my thumb out...

so, here's my creepy pick up story for this trip. every hitching trip has one.

older dude picks me up.

"where you going?"
"windsor."
"why windsor?"
"i'm meeting some friends there."
"is one of them your boyfriend?"

*pause*

"no, but one of them is my girlfriend."

(apologies to erin, that's not true and wasn't stated with intent, i was just trying to throw him off)

"i think you should be my girlfriend."
"nnnnnno. i don't think so."
"what? don't you like to hear about how sexy your body is?"
“i want you to let me out right now."
"i want to drive you home"
"NO. NOW."

he slowed down a little, tried to turn into a parking lot. i opened the door as he was turning, which made him stop immediately.

"creep."

there's a bus stopped down the street. great. escape. run...

"how far can you get me in the direction of kitchener?"
"i'm with the toronto bus, and i only go down the street, then the brampton bus takes over."

i've heard of this before, this bus service in toronto that isn't remotely connected and requires absurd transfers in weird places. i explained there was a creep weirding me out, so he just let me on for free down the street.

when i got off i was at the intersection of weston and albion. the on ramp there was closed; bad to hitch at. so, i took a look at some maps and realized the best thing to do was walk down weston to dixon, then up dixon to the dixon-401 ramp.

turns out the map's scale was a little smaller than expected. that was an hour walk. it was a nice walk, though, over the humber and through some bourgy neighbourhoods. by the time i got there it was definitely dark...

i decided to wait until 11:00 and if nobody picked me up i'd walk to the airport and crash there. somebody did pick me up, though, a nice south asian dude with a minivan full of carseats. unfortunately, he dropped me off in pretty much the same sort of on-the-401 situation i had tried to escape from previously.

this was a slightly better place to hitch, though. there was an extended median in the road, and the traffic was a little lighter. i was getting impatient, though. hitching on the 401 is a bad idea to begin with. hitching on the 401 in the dark with dark clothes on is just flat out stupid. i was literally turning around to try and get into brampton when i took one last glance and saw somebody was waiting...

older hippie dude this time.

"you need to get off the highway immediately before the cops come pick you up."
"honestly, they may get me close to where i'm..."
"just get in."

he proceeded to completely berate me for hitching in the dark. what the fuck was wrong with me?

"i know, i've done this before and..."
"well, then you should know better."
"i do know better."
"then what the fuck are you doing?"
"well, it's circumstance."
"i'll drop you at mavis, and hitch from the fucking on ramp."

i decided to go get something to eat and found this mcdonalds that i'm at. he's right. i do know better. i'll start again when the sun comes up.