Stretching my hitching wings

I haven't hitched much in the last year or two. The summer of 2006 that I spent hitching around spain and surrounding countries seems a long time ago. And this North America jaunt has been all about vans and rideshares and buses instead. But a month or so back, after a couple of nights spent in a cabin in the Laurentian mountains near here, Telyn and I found that we had a choice of either getting a bus at crack of dawn (erk) or late in the evening, or of hitching the 10km or so to the next town for an afternoon bus. Which is what we did. It was a near thing, as we ended up arriving just 15 minutes before our bus, but it felt so good to be back on the side of the road with my thumb out, and I realised I had really missed this form of transport.

So, when we went to Quebec city last week, we caught the bus there, (a marching band gig prevented us from leaving until late afternoon, so the bus was expedient), but decided to hitchhike back. And it was brilliant.
By the time we got to the place we had chosen to start from, it was about 5pm, but we figured traffic might get us a lift all the way, but then accepted a short distance lift to start with. This was probably a mistake, as it left us in the middle of a maze of highways and on and off ramps that was certainly not a good place to be a pedestrian and where there was no chance of anyone being able to stop. It also probably ruined our chances of one ride all the way. But it meant we got to have adventures instead, which is the whole point of hitching!
We ended up climbing a fence and walking a couple of kilometres through Parc des Chutes-de-la-Chaudière - a lovely waterfall park with a great suspension bridge - until we got to the gas station we had seen in the distance an hour earlier.
20 minutes there, and we were picked up by someone who turned out to be Elvis Presley's wife's cousin. And Elvis Presley's wife's cousin's wife. He even showed us his drivers licence to confirm that his name was indeed Beaulieu (although a quick look on wikipedia tells me that was actually Priscilla's stepdad's name, but close enough!). and hour and a half of non stop Presley songs (but not the slow ones, or he'll fall asleep!) and brush-with-fame anecdotes later (delivered in quebecois thick enough to make me only get about half of it) they got us to sign their newest Elvis album cover and dropped us off in Drummondville.
We were still looking for a good place to stand when we got picked up again, dropped off 20 entertaining minutes later, by which time it was getting disturbingly dark for hitching on the side of the road, but we persevered anyway, standing under the highway lights and trying to be as visible as possible. The next ride was a sleek black vehicle with two guys who didn't say much, but drove ridiculously fast. A glance at the speedo reassured me, until I realised it was in miles, not kilometers! We were only in that car 10 mins or so, but we covered quite a lot of ground! Then finally, a nice man originally from Morocco, and with an easily comprehensible french-french accent (finally!) picked us up and took us all the way to a metro station in Montreal. The whole trip took under 5 hours, which isn't bad, considering the bus is at least 3!

The adventure didn't quite stop there though. Before getting on the metro we decided to get some food, and, despite being on a side of town to which I had never before ventured, ran into some acquaintances of Telyn's who spent the next hour telling us all about their roller derby league! Educational, it was!
I arrived home utterly exhausted, but very happy with our hitching adventures! My next chance will probably be in the UK next month, and I'm already looking forward to it!