Steiner to T-Bay

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Our first ride from Blumenort to Steinbach was given by an 80-year old man in a mini-van. Not sure exactly what motivated him to pick us up, but he was en route to his sons' farm, where he was still working. He told us about how much of a pleasure it was for him to keep working on the farm at his age.

We walked about an hour from the Blumenort corner past Friesen Drillers and quite a distance further, and eventually got picked up by a guy in a truck, who was headed towards Anola to take a look at some horses. I found it humorous that he asked us before we got in "are you guys safe?" Like we would have said "no" and left if we weren't and wanted to score his cash. He asked us if we were looking to sell some dope before Toronto, and was disappointed that we weren't. He seemed equally flustered to hear that we didn't even smoke pot. Oh well, at least he was friendly enough to give us the ride to the #1, where we began to walk East.

From the #1 we got a ride to Hadashville with a service man from Steinbach-based tire company (shouldn't be hard to guess), in his work truck. From the drop-off, we walked another hour or so before getting picked up by a couple from Winnipeg going to Kenora. The woman, who was at the wheel, asked us "aren't you guys afraid to hitch-hike?" I suggested that life itself put us into contact with all sorts of strangers, who might just as well be a threat. She had a point when she said "Yeah, but you're not in their car." She, like most of the general public, have not considered how many hitches go off just fine, and instead are limited to the stories heard in the newspapers. Of course, the newspapers promote the isolation of people, the fear of each other, the illusion of true safety. Either way, they were a nice couple. The man told us that he had somehow heard that a lot of kids from Steinbach smoke marijuana. Probably, but probably no less than any other city, per capita. I'm hard-pressed to think it's worse than Winnipeg.

We got dropped off on the highway passing by Kenora, instead of through. This was probably the reason for our two-or-three hour walk without any rides. Eventually, while we were sitting down on the road, a woman turned around to pick us up. She was pretty cool, and going into her 3rd year of midwifery at college. We had good conversations on many things, and she took us further than originally expected, to the turnoff for Thunder Bay.

We were right beside a self-serve truckstop, the kind run on swipe cards. It was a decent camp spot, and it was already getting dark outside. Yet, we decided we would push on, in hopes that someone would pick us up this late. After 45 minutes to and hour dancing and cardboard-signing to get attention, a teacher from a reserve one hour North of Kenora picked us up. He was great and dropped us off right in front of our accomodations, though it was bit out of his way.

We spotted our pal inside the youth drop-in, and he ran out in excitement! It was so great to be in Thunder Bay for the night, and see a friend at last. He set us up with his place just above the drop-in, and we pretty much kicked back for what was left of the evening. We stayed for the night and met his roomate, an accomplished beard grower well on his way to international stardom (seriously). The entire day was substantially exhausting, and although I had nodded off several times in "cool girl's" back seat, I was still very much in need of sleep.

On the following day, we helped our host by painting the doors to the drop-in and to the above apartments black. In the afternoon, we went for a bikeride around the city. We checked out the tracks, and were going to check out the waterfront, but the wind was working too hard against us. We opted to get lost instead. We peddled wherever, and eventually accepted the failure of getting lost, since we kept finding ourselves again. We split ways and I peddled towards what I thought would be the sketchy end of town. Instead, I found myself at Kam something-or-other park, more or less a pier/waterfront walk. I peddled through some more streets and then headed back to the drop-in. This is where we hung out for the evening.

After we closed, we dumpstered some donuts, a junkload of assorted organic nuts, banana muffin mix, and a facial "firming masque," which all three of us applied at the pad, at around 12:30 AM. I'm not sure what the point of it was, but it felt cool (until we washed it off).

The next morning, Sunday, we went to the roomate's church for free pancake breakfast, and then to our pal's church. It was an eclectic mix of Caucasian, First Nations and Swiss Mennonite people in attendance. That was great, to see an absence of racial divide within a church. This is what a hitchhiking First Nations couple we picked up a few weeks ago was telling us about Thunder Bay. We stopped at the city's viewing point for the Sleeping Giant, a mountain that looks like -- you guessed it -- a sleeping giant. We went on a search for some transient kids in the downtown streets and park, but found nobody of note around (except tree planters).

We had taken with us a bowl, knife and watermelon from the drop-in to crack open at the park, but were finding it excessively cold and windy outside. We went poking around at some shops for info on where to find transients, and got nothing. At one point, we thought some more tree planters were transients, but found out soon enough they were in town to do laundry. So we cracked open the watermelon for some tree planters sitting outside of the laundromat, who took us up on our offer instantaneously. We all got full, and some was left over.

We returned for a much needed afternoon nap. I have to confess I almost fell asleep in church, and that's not good news. We all slept an hour or two. For supper, we applied ourselves to construct a 'Elegant Wild Rice Soup' for the neighbor's birthday. We brought out soup over for supper and watched an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer as per birthday girl's insisting. After that, we watched a Mongolian film called Khadak, which was very entertaining, but incredibly confusion. I'm not even sure what the point was.

So we talked until far too late and at one point decided sleep was much needed. If we were to put in another full day of exodus, we would have to at least get a fewe moments of shut-eye.

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