Last we left him, our hero had accepted a ride in northern New Brunswick, with a 50-something truck driver named Ed , on his way north of Toronto.

Ed looked like your typical older truck driver. Three days worth of stubble, 50 pounds overweight, and a plaid shirt and trucker hat. Ed and I talked about all the usual topics for a few hours, and exchanged travel stories. I find that people usually like to reminisce about the old days when they used to hitchhike themselves. Ed told me about his first hitchhiking trip when he was seventeen in Newfoundland:

“My mom sent me down to the store to get some smokes, eh. An my buddy jus’ so happen to be standing ‘ere in front of the store with a big ol’ bottle o’ screech. An’ so we get to drinkin’ an’ — it seems like a good idea at the time, yaknow — and we decide to go for a hitchhikin’.”

“Well, I guess we got a little too into the booze, ’cause I can’t remember actually leavin’ the island, or even the people that woulda picked up a couple o’ drunk kids like us, but when I woke up… When I woke up it was a week and a half later and I was in Edmonton. I guess we had quite the bender! And the hotel room was all smashed up, and a girl was passed out on the floor with my buddy… And I tried, really tried to remember what had happened and how we had got to Edmonton, but I could only get bits and pieces, eh.”

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I remember being about eight or nine years old and there was a family party at our house. All the adults were upstairs in the kitchen and the living room, drinking, while the under 16`s were in the basement playroom. Hampy, my little sister’s pet hampster, was in one of those little clear plastic balls that let them roam around without worrying they’ll go too far.

Us kids were watching a movie when my dad’s uncle Rodney (the kids called him ‘uncle Rod’) came in. He was about 70 and more than a little senile. He looked at the little brown opaque plastic ball rolling towards him. He said “you kids and your soccer…” and kicked little Hampy’s ball clear across the room. There was a loud crack of plastic and gyprock as it hit the wall. “You kids stay out of trouble, now….” uncle Rod said as he left the room. All the kids were speechless. The ball was still except for a little rocking motion and Hampy layed motionless for a few seconds. Then he got up, looking dazed, and wobbled a couple of inches forward. My sister picked up the ball and took him out. “He’s okay!” She yelled, with a big smile on her face. Hampy, nervous, but looking in fine health, looked up at us while his body shook a little bit like he was cold.

One week later, Hampy mysteriously died. Now I’m no hampster doctor, but I have my suspicions the two incidents may have been related.

And that’s why I don’t play soccer anymore.

I remember being nervous walking past the high school principal on the way in to see our school hockey team play. I had replaced most of the Coke in my pop bottle with rum, and I had taken a few big swigs with some friends before coming in. I was 16 and it was my first time sneaking alcohol into a school event. I was something of a late bloomer. After the game, it was a small town tradition for everyone to go to the MacDonald’s on the other side of Beford for a bite. And because our team had won the game, there was an excitement in the air – anything could happen.

My friend Matt, being a natural small risk-taker, told me he was going to walk the shortcut down the train tracks which ran right behind MacDonald’s. “C’mon man. You’ve never taken the tracks? We’ll get there way before anyone else.”

We walked past the streetlights to were it was dark — to the tracks. I found it difficult to walk on the railway ties and talk at the same time because I was a bit tipsy. Every few steps I would loose rhythm and my foot would slide between the ties and trip me up.

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No money, no ATM card — definitely no credit card. That was what I had decided for the trip. I felt like I needed the challenge. Hitchhiking to Montreal every couple of weeks was starting to feel routine. The adventure was wearing off a little. I decided I would bring only my guitar and clothes. If I was going to eat, I had to play my guitar – busk – for it.

My destination was Montreal, but on the first day I left so late I only made it to Moncton, a two hour drive away.

It was about seven p.m. when I got dropped off in Moncton. I walked down Main Street to an underpass, where the down town seemed to fade into residential, then back to where I started — the restaurant with the big lobster in front. There wasn’t much going on in this town. It looked like it might be a difficult night to busk, and I thought about the possibility of a hungry night without dinner. Was it a bad idea not to bring money? I was starting to doubt my adventurous side.

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My friend Charles and I have Jack Kerouac Syndrome. JKS.

It’s okay, it’s rarely fatal. We can live like normal people for the most part.

Did you ever notice that in Kerouac’s novels, he’ll talk about a girl that he meets at a cafe or a party, and he’ll go on about how beautiful she is, how her personality is electric, and she brings him to life again? And then five pages later, the venue changes, he meets a different girl and falls for her all over again. Rinse and repeat every couple of pages. The poor girls.

This is Jack Kerouac Syndrome. The state of falling nearly in love with every beautiful, charismatic girl one meets, believing them to be your life force, your raison d’etre, and then forgetting about them the second the next beautiful flower comes along.

Yes, it makes relationships difficult. But in fact, Charles has had the courage to face the disease head-on and actually take steps to have a long-term girlfriend. We all wish the best for Charles, and hope that he can somehow overcome this sometimes debilitating illness.

I was 20, and had enrolled for my third year of university in Halifax. I didn’t want to go back to school. I felt I was spending a lot of money for an arbitrary piece of paper that I wasn’t sure I really needed. I also had a sneaking suspicion that after all the nights hanging out in bars with classmates, all the lounging around in study halls and great discussions of politics, world issues and women we thought were hot, that I was somehow insulated from “real learning,” although I had no idea what that meant at the time.

On the last day to withdraw from classes without financial penalty, I cracked. At 4:45, fifteen minutes before they closed, I ran to the financial office and “de-registered” for all my classes, and got a full refund.

Fuck it, I thought. I’m finished with classrooms. I want real, tangible experience. I’m going to hitchhike to Montreal (yes, there was a girl there…).

The next day I told my concerned parents I was a college dropout, and that I was getting a ride with a friend to Moncton (a two hour drive from Halifax) to clear my head and figure out what my long-term plans were. (My real destination, Montreal, was a 12-14 straight drive. At this point in my life, I didn’t feel like I could tell my parents about what I was really doing, as the whole “dropping out” thing seemed to affect them enough)

Although fate would have nothing of Montreal, while in northern New Brunswick, I got a ride from a truck driver who was heading all the way to just north of Toronto — an offer I couldn’t turn down (as an aside, I actually don’t believe in fate in day to day life — I feel that we are all 100% responsible for our own actions and circumstances, but the appeal of hitchhiking for me has always been that your trip is very dependent on the people that pick you up, hence I believe in a kind of hitchhiker “fate”).

(to be continued…)

For my friends who can read it, this is my speech from the Kumamoto Gakuen University speech contest I entered.   I somehow managed to walk away with the audience-voted Best Speech Award, the judge`s Best Grammar Award, and a few other trinkets…   (For the English translation, see the previous post)

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