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.
In the Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris talks about his simple, yet unconventional strategies for winning the Chinese National Kickboxing championship with relatively little kickboxing experience. How knowing the finer points of the rules and focusing on their weaknesses led him to win first prize in the tournament, simultaneously pissing off the whole of China. My mom was doing this Four Hour Workweek stuff — using existing rules and structures to her advantage, outsourcing her workload — before Tim Ferris joined his Highschool wrestling team. Back when he was still wearing tighty whities and Spiderman pajamas.
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.
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.
