Project Hitchhiker | travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design
welcome to my blog
Project Hitchhiker is the online creative outlet of Mike H.
Mike’s adventures have taken him across 3 continents, including driving a motorcycle for 6 months across Southeast Asia, hitchhiking across Canada and Japan, and walking 1000 miles along the coastline of Nova Scotia.
Mike’s passions are music, travel and motorcycles (in that order).
Mike’s dislikes include writing about himself in the third person.
This site is a collection of his travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design.
A few weeks ago I wrote about coming back to Halifax for a job interview. Not just any job interview, but the job interview. I won’t get into specifics, but it was a job that I had wanted for some years now, and had been working towards. The past few weeks, I struggled though the difficult selection process, including a full-day of interviews and tests and a separate two-hour interview the week after. And unfortunately, I didn’t make the final cut. I made the backup list.
“It’s like, if your life were a movie, this is the turning point, this is where you hop on a plane and say ‘Fuck yeah. I’m gonna do this shit’.” He pauses.
I’m at a Mexican restaurant having dinner with two famous pickup artists that I had interviewed recently for an article. They have since become good friends.
Allusion continues, “That, or you act like a scared pussy, ignore the opportunity, and pretend like nothing ever happened.”
It was true, but I didn’t need convincing. I knew what my choice was and I had already made it in my mind. One week notice at my job. Plane ticket reserved.
This was two days ago. Earlier in the day I had been contacted by a (here unnamed) Canadian/International Non-Profit Organization for a job interview that I had wanted since I realized I would actually have to work a “real job” after university.
The problem is I have a pretty sweet life going here in Osaka. Great friends, great lifestyle, decent (read: mindless) job… But even if I statistically have only a 40% chance of landing this job, I know that I have to do it. Not only do it, but give it 150%, which means cutting ties in Japan and planning as if I will be the next international field worker for X international organization. (You may say, what a cocky bastard, but in actual fact, I believe my chances to be closer to 90% based on my awesomeness and drive to achieve this goal).
So, back to Halifax it is.
I hate winter. I hate cold. And I really hate snow. But this is my movie moment, and I’m determined to direct my own film.
Hali: See yall soon. I’ll be intently focused and preparing until after the interview on the 11th of March. Then, the celebrations.
Below, a video of my roommate Erika, singing an improvised song about me leaving. (She doesn’t know it’s to the tune of Tenacious D’s F#$% Her Gently…)
I ducked down and walked slowly toward the freight train as it rolled to a stop. Concentrate, I thought, trying to mute the sound of the gravel under my feet. I stopped three feet in front of the railway car, and saw it was the one I wanted. It was basically half of a box platform for a bigger transport container (the same as transport trucks haul) and there was a five by six foot empty space behind the giant box. Perfect.
I took a quick look around and threw my guitar bag over the rim. I pushed myself up by my arms and toppled in head first, my shoe catching on a metal hinge that jutted out.
I loved the adrenaline rush that I always got when I climbed onto a train, and today was no different.
It was hour five and I hadn’t had much success. I had hopped on four trains in the hopes that they were going somewhere, but just as soon as we’d start moving, the string of cars would stop and roll backwards into a different waiting slot. Maybe I should have taken that as a bad omen.
To my surprise, the train I was on started moving, and picked up speed as it left the train yard, headed in the vague direction of Truro. Or Cape Breton. Quite possibly Montreal. I didn’t care — at least it was moving, and I was on it.
I was staying at a youth hostel in Regina, Saskatchewan when I met her for the first time. It was October and apparently the off-season for tourists in Saskatchewan as she and I were the only guests that day. She said her name was “Hanna” but it was spelled Chana.
She arrived late evening, as I was making my dinner in the basement kitchen. She was was dressed kind of ‘hippie’ and was pretty, which was accentuated by a positive energy about her. I guessed her age at about 28.
She also had a guitar with her. This fact might not seem like a big deal, but I’m always mysteriously more attracted to women who have some musical talent.
I was, at the time, trying to hitchhike my way back to Halifax after having my money stolen from me in Vancouver and working a week as a laborer in Calgary. I had experienced a lot in the month I was gone, but I was ready to head home.
I told her my story and without giving it a thought she offered me a ride to Toronto, a whole three days away. She had all of her things from her home in Boulder, Colorado in the back of her station wagon for her big move to Toronto. “Are you sure? I mean, that’s a long time to be in a car with someone you don’t know…” I said, being hesitant to put her in a situation where she felt obligated to drive me.
We eventually agreed that she would drive me to Winnipeg, drop me off somewhere for the night, and whether she wanted to pick me up again the next morning was up to her, no hard feelings.
That night we went out and explored the bustling city of Regina and found… nothing. No live music, no night life, just good conversation and a quiet beer together back in the kitchen at the hostel. Chana played a song she wrote on her guitar – the chords were simple, but the lyrics suggested she had experienced more than her youthful face showed.
(I should note about the photographs near the end of the video that look professional: it’s because they are. Josh took them, and he’s an amazing pro photographer. Check out his site: www.jwebb.ca)
Since I’m moving to Japan in precisely two weeks, I thought it would be appropriate to look at what I wrote about the wonderful and mysterious land of the rising prices, on my first trip way back in 2002 (reading my old writing, I get annoyed with my too-liberal use of brackets… aw crap.)
-To Japan-
Early morning on April 25th I drove to the airport with my Mom, Dad, and friend Skye, a student from China (originally on exchange to St. Mary’s) who would be participating in the same exchange program as me. After a bad taste of 80`s rock, typical of an unnamed Halifax radio station, the news came on: seems that scientists have discovered evidence to back up the phenomenon of “Spring Fever” — the theory that says males are more aggressive in pursuing females in the Spring season — typically thought of as an old wives tale. They said something to the effect that male hormones actually increase involuntarily in the spring season. “Good,” I thought to myself, as we pulled into the airport parking lot, “not even on the plane yet, and already I’ve got an excuse ready.”
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.”
I ducked down and walked slowly toward the freight train as it rolled to a stop. Concentrate, I thought, trying to mute the sound of the gravel under my feet. I stopped three feet in front of the railway car, and saw it was the one I wanted. It was basically half of a box platform for a bigger transport container (the same as transport trucks haul) and there was a five by six foot empty space behind the giant box. Perfect.
I was staying at a youth hostel in Regina, Saskatchewan when I met her for the first time. It was October and apparently the off-season for tourists in Saskatchewan as she and I were the only guests that day. She said her name was “Hanna” but it was spelled Chana.
