By James Stevenson

“By God, when I get home… I’m gunna take that frozen fruit, put it in the bottom, cover it in cake mix, then pour on a can of soda, then bake it.” I was having an excellent introduction to Canada, eavesdropping on a table of old ladies in a restaurant. An old man hobbled over to their table for a quick flirt, opening with “How are you fine looking ladies enjoying your meal?” and telling them how good the food was there.

I was in Peggy’s Cove, a world famous town I’d never heard of, home to 38 people, a lighthouse, and a beautiful coastline of exposed rock. It looks like a moonscape, except for the sea and the groups of tourists that get bussed out from Halifax every day to say “how quaint” for an hour. A local complained to me that one hour is not really enough to see the town, and I quite agree. An hour and a half would be perfect.

I’d only been in Nova Scotia for a few days and I was ready to stay forever. I was staying in Halifax, and after London I felt like I’d finally ascended from Purgatory to Heaven. Gone were the gray streets and gray people, replaced by green trees and blue waters. People seemed happy and unhurried here. I remember staring out of a café window, half asleep at 8am. A pretty girl jogged up to the crosswalk next to the window and looked at me. Instead of glancing away, she held my gaze and smiled. I was amazed! What was this place? Why hadn’t I been here years ago?

Peggy’s Cove was just a day trip for the sake of checking out Nova Scotia. The people who drove me were really down to earth and easy-going. I got given all kinds of advice about wild animals, people would talk about moose and coyotes and bears. One guy’s parting words as he drove away were “Buy bear repellent!”

I got two consecutive lifts from a couple middle-aged hippies who were spacing out happily and driving around with some young kid in the back seat. They loved Peggy’s Cove and were really happy I was going there. When I left one of them said “Thank you for bringing the medicine to Nova Scotia,” and wished me a meaningful, loving trip.

After a week in Halifax the real trip begun. I was heading north to Quebec, six hundred miles away. I’d travel along Nova Scotia and into New Brunswick, and for a little while I’d be in civilisation. Once I reached the TransCanada Highway there would be a long stretch of wilderness before reaching Quebec, hundreds of miles of forest. Towns were rare; there was only the woods, the animals, and the creeps who go out there to disappear. Or at least, so I was told.

Right in the beginning I had really good lift. I’d been dropped off after a ten minute ride and I was walking along the shoulder when this car swerved over and screeched to a stop ahead of me. It was a little two-door thing, low to the ground and looking kinda beat up. I ran over.

“Oh man I love picking up hitchhikers!” my driver exclaimed. He was a skinny guy with a mad grin and tattoos down his arms. I jumped in and he floored it. “I got a bit of a wet foot! I hope that’s ok!” he said.

He slouched back and smiled slyly while he talked. He had this kind of confidence that the world was his oyster. What he did for a living escapes me, but I do remember him telling me what a profit you can make transporting Canadian weed into America. He said they don’t let him through the border any more.

“Why not?” I asked, wondering if he’d been caught.

“Because I got a criminal record as long as my arm!”

He told me about a Russian girl he met on chatroulette.com that he’s kept in touch with for years. He almost went to Russia to meet her, but something about it didn’t work out. Maybe it was his massive criminal record, or maybe it was her stern, Putin-loving, west-hating father (Now that I think about it, how old is she?). He was still hoping she’d come to Canada one day. “I don’t know how I’d make that work with a wife and kids, but I’ll find a way!”

“You’re really lucky I picked you up,” he said. “I’m gunna take you to a big truck stop, you’ll get a ride in no time.”
The place he took me was completely dead, and I waited for three hours, getting slowly colder and adding layers of clothing until I was wearing everything I had. There was hardly any traffic, though one guy pulled over and handed me a bag of chips and a can of soda. “I’m not going that way, but here, have some pop and chips!”

I got fed up and went to warm up in the Schnitzel Haus, a weird roadside German restaurant that smelled like eggs. It was like being in a chalet, with chequered table cloths and a waitress in a dirndl She had a lovely Nova Scotia accent that was really out of place.

After twenty minutes enjoying this bizarre atmosphere I hit the road again, and it wasn’t long before I started getting lifts. I remember having a lift with a guy in a pickup truck who cracked open a couple beers for us as we drove. I just went with it. There was also a retired school teacher who wanted to write a book about teaching. People these days don’t know how to get respect from their students, he said.

I ended up somewhere in the south of New Brunswick, still four hundred miles from Quebec. I was surrounded by open green fields and rolling hills, crisscrossed with lines of little trees that led to the edge of dark woodland. The sky was huge here. The clouds which had kept the earth so cold all day started to drift away to the west and the sun, dipping towards the horizon now, threw great beams of light over their edge. I sat on my duffel bag, finally warming up in the sunlight. Whenever a car appeared I’d stick out my thumb, but for the moment I was perfectly content where I was.

I got one more lift that day, a long lift with a trucker who was on his way home to Woodstock, New Brunswick. He was another skinny tattooed guy, with a bandana wrapped around his forehead. He laughed a lot as he talked, and he would bounce around nervously in his seat when he did. He was in his sixties, but he was lean and wiry. He trained in mixed martial arts and kept a chrome baseball bat next to his seat, just in case.

The light of his life was his daughter, who could do all kinds of neat things like fix cars and hunt and whatnot. He called her the son he never had.

He told me all kind of stories about the women in his life. He had a “lot lizard” (that’s a euphemism for truckstop hooker) in New Jersey who was quite fond of him and would drop whatever she was doing and see him if he was in town. He assured me she was clean several times, and in one story about a three-way he assured me the other girl was clean too. I don’t know why I’m mentioning this; he just said it a lot. He also had a girl in Texas, who’d hitched a lift with him once. She given him weed and slept with him during the trip and would also drop whatever she was doing to see him if he turned up in Texas. And then there was his wife, who knew all about these women and didn’t mind.

I asked if he knew other truckers, what he did in truck stops. “Oh you know, I’ll pull in and go see what’s going on. See who’s telling the tallest stories.”

When we finally got to Woodstock I was let out in a truck stop. It was dark, but trucks were still moving, so I stood by the exit and held out a thumb whenever anyone passed. I didn’t get anywhere that night, but one Nova Scotian trucker did pull over and hand me five dollars. I spent the night on the sofa in the truckers lounge. I was nervous I’d get kicked out and tried to look awake whenever anyone walked by.

I gave this up and went back outside around 7am, and this is the day that things got weird.

I went back to the spot I’d been standing at the night before, and a guy in a pickup truck pulled over. He was 78 years old, nuts, and he talked like he was missing all his teeth. He was out that day to pick up potatoes from the fields and sell them. As he explained, the harvesters miss potatoes and leave them behind, and he would drive onto the fields after the farmers had left and fill up a couple of boxes.

We were driving past endless potato fields and he would stare around wildly, looking for farmers. “You cocksuckers!” He’d shout. “Where are you cocksuckers? All them potadas are gunna burn!” He must have spent a solid half hour gumming about potatoes, he knew everything there was to know about them. When we did finally pass a field being harvested he shouted triumphantly “There you are you cocksuckers! I’ll be back!”

As I slowly learned, Potato Man had had a hard life. “You got a girlfriend?” He asked me. I said no. He showed me a picture of a woman. “This is the lady I was taking care of,” he said. She had died earlier that year, and his son some time before that.

“I used to pick up bottles along this road.” In Canada many homeless people collect bottles and collect the deposits on them. “I used to jerk people off for fifty bucks. I’ve slept in boxes, abandoned cars, you name it, I’ve slept in it.”
We were off the highway so that he could scope out potato fields, and anyway he had some burning hatred for the TransCanada Highway that I didn’t understand. We passed a cornfield and he pointed into some trees at the edge. “That’s where I used to pull up my truck. I’d pull in there, go take some corn, and go sell it.”

More and more he would talk about jerking people off, and slowly the stories started to be about hitchhikers. He’d picked up eleven hitchhikers that summer, he told me. He said he’d been telling another hitchhiker about his sexual encounters, and that hitchhiker had told him to stop and jumped right out. “But I ain’t never attacked anyone!” he told me.

He also warned me several times not to go to Kitchener, Ontario because it was “full of queers up there”.

The closer we got to the end of the ride the more desperate and up front he became about what he wanted from me, though he never came out and said it. “I ain’t never attacked anyone,” he said, As we were pulling to a stop, “but if someone gets it out I’ll play with it!”

Now I was spooked. Maybe I should have jumped out too, but I wasn’t scared, just disgusted. I bought a doughnut from Tim Horton’s to feel better, but that didn’t really help. It was Tim Horton’s so I don’t really know what I’d expected.
In the next car I was wary. “What does this guy want from me?” I wondered. But he was just another nice guy. Thank God.
I caught a third ride, slowly making my way north, slowly feeling better. My driver was a salesman from Maine. He would visit Canadian companies and sell advertising slots on American TV.

We were getting along fine, talking about whatever, and then he asked me if I had a girlfriend. I said no, and he said something I didn’t quite hear. And then, after a pause, “You wanna make a little money?”

I knew what was going on, but thinking there was a chance all he meant was “Do you want to get a job while you’re travelling”, I answered “Maybe.”

“I’ll pay you to let me jerk ya off while we drive.” His voice kind of oozed and purred, oily. Every time I think back he sounds more like Heath Ledger as The Joker.

This time I said no. He nodded.

“Thought I’d ask.”

More afraid of an awkward silence than of him, I picked up the conversation again. “So you’re married, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that like?”

“Marriage? It’s alright.” There was a pause. “But I’ve been bi my whole life.” He still sounded like The Joker.

After that ride I was feeling terrible. I’d hitchhiked thousands of miles in Europe and never had anything like this at all! I was starting to think back to all the rides I gotten in my life. What were they after?

The Joker had told me he’d pick me up again if I was still there after he was done in the town, so I was really hoping I’d get picked up before I saw him again. Thankfully a couple French speaking guys let me into the back of their minivan and completely ignored me. I leaned against the window, nervous and exhausted. My eyelids were starting to droop. “What the hell,” I thought, “these guys are probably fine,” and I fell asleep.

They woke me up when they were turning off and I hopped out. I started walking and started to feel good again. The sky was clear and the sun was warm. For the first time in 24 hours I took off a layer of clothing. I wearing a rainbow patchwork jumper and a swagged out Turkish sunhat, and I thought to myself I must look like some kind of weird ginger hippie chinaman. I giggled a little, and a great euphoria welled up in me. I laughed and grinned and breathed in the fresh air. This was real hitchhiking! Out here in the middle of absolute nowhere, surrounded by a sea of trees, walking on highways and being picked up by repressed homosexuals. I was miles from home, miles from anywhere and I felt so alive!

At the top of a hill I could see for miles. All around me was green forest, dotted with blue lakes. It was just me, the land, the sky, and wind at my back, blowing north. Ahead of me I could see a big sign prohibiting anyone from walking further. That meant civilisation! I was getting close!

I got one last ride that day, with some kind of cultural minister from Quebec City. As we drove he told me all kinds of interesting things about Canada and about Quebec, and around us towns and houses started to appear again. The mighty Saint Laurence River appeared ahead of us and led us to the city. We crossed over a great bridge to the island and took the scenic route into the old town, my driver pointing out different buildings and interesting things.

He drove me right to the steps of Hostelling International. I booked a room for the night, went in, collapsed on the bed, and slept.

That night I took a long walk in the rain. I had a lot to think about. The last two days had been more interesting than whole months of boredom at home. Not only that, but the next day I knew I would be heading for Montreal, and I was excited. Montreal was my goal. I know I haven’t yet told you why I was in Canada in the first place, but you’ll just have to hold on. Things were about to get completely absurd, and I won’t say anything at all until part 2. Stay tuned!

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By: James Stevenson

Back in March I was filling in my “Reason to go Switzerland” list, as one does, and it was looking pretty good:

1) I have dear friends there I haven’t seen in a while.

2) It’s not London.

3) It’s my birthday soon, and after I waste lots of money on birthday presents for myself it would be a good idea to miss some work and blow more money on a short trip.

4) I need to hitchhike so I can blog about it and my friends can tell me what a great writer I am.

These were all good reasons but the real reason was number 5:

5) My friend Andrew wants to give me his record collection and he lives there.

I collect records so that I can look cool. I’ve got a bookshelf filled up with records and second hand books so that when people come visit me they’re impressed with my intelligence and material wealth. “A man that devoted to archaic media must be a manly man indeed,” they think. I bought some expensive looking music equipment to complete the effect, and I even bought lights for the room to make it clear that I do actually read.

Sometimes, though, I notice people don’t even glance at my amazing possessions, and that really annoys me. The solution is obviously that I need more records, so when Andrew very generously offered me his collection I gleefully accepted.

My first thought was to hitchhike to England with them, after all, the cheapest way to move stuff between countries is definitely to get other people to pay for gas. I’d never hitchhiked with that much baggage before, though. Would anybody give me a lift? I wasn’t sure until I heard about this:

As the story goes, Tony Hawks, the author, accepted a drunken bet to hitchhike around Ireland with a refrigerator. He started in Dublin and made it all the way around the coast, up through Northern Ireland and back down anti-clockwise. If he could do that then I could do my trip with a couple bags of records. Easy.

So it was settled. I got up early and headed to the spot, an intersection in Sidcup. As far as I know, Sidcup is a pretty nowhere place in south London, but it’s quite dear to me.

I first discovered Sidcup back in 2012, when I was hitchhiking for the first time. It was after a long day of bad luck. I’d been stuck in a gas station in Belgium that morning, trying to get a lift for 5 hours and getting a horrendous sunburn instead. When I ended up on the ferry to England that night I was exhausted and red like a lobster. It was late and dark and I didn’t really have any idea what I was going to do when I got to Dover.

On the ship I met a group of English guys and they offered me a lift. They were five or six rough looking London guys, dressed in leather or whatnot, and they had names like Jacko, Panache, Rizzo and Moses. This one guy Joey was constantly joking around and laughing and the whole scene made me nervous. I honestly thought they were gunna rob me. “What the hell,” I thought, “at least it’ll make a good story”.

As it turned out, they were 1.5 bands (The Vex and The Supernovas) travelling back to England after playing some gigs together in Europe. We piled into their van, and the guys were all holding amps or guitars on their laps just to make room for me on the last seat. They were all super nice, but I was still scared. Once we got on our way they started blasting Chas & Dave, some ridiculous old English comedy music. They were all singing along at the top of their lungs and laughing as we sped down the motorway. I started to laugh too, long and loud and deep, and all my fear just went out of me completely. These were excellent people.

We ended up pulling into Sidcup some time after midnight to drop Jacko off. They asked me if I’d ever heard of Sidcup and laughed when I said I didn’t. I got the impression that nobody has ever heard of Sidcup. A couple days later I was on my way out of London again, and the spot for getting a ride to Dover turned out to be in Sidcup. I was overjoyed.

And so once again I found myself waiting there this March, holding my sign for Dover and watching cars blow past me in the morning air. I nibbled some stroopwafels and waited, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my back. A mass of cyclists drove past me and cheered. Later someone drove by and threw a rock at me. After a couple hours, around 11 o’clock, someone pulled over and offered to take me to train station and buy me a ticket to Dover. I turned him down, assuring him I’d get a lift.

By then the traffic was starting to thin a little and I really wasn’t sure I would get a lift, but just as he pulled away a lady pulled over and offered me a ride. She gave me a cup of tea and we sped happily away. My driver was in her early 60s, on her way to a new home outside the city. She’d lived in London her whole life, including a year or more homeless. She’d lived in a building full of squatters, whole families raising children and whatnot. It sounded very communal and friendly; she said the kids were all kind of raised together by the whole group.

She let me out at a service station very close to Dover, and I started asking everyone if they were driving to Dover. One man got out of his car and started walking towards the shop, moving in a bit of hurry. I figured I had nothing to lose and asked him if he was heading to Dover. He said he was.

“Any chance you could give me a lift?” I asked.

He laughed to himself, as if he’d wished he said something different but hadn’t thought fast enough.

“All right. Wait here and I’ll be out in a moment.” He hurried away into the shop, with a funny little smile on his face.

This turned out to be one of the most interesting rides I’ve had. My driver was a doctor on a way to a meeting in Dover. He was in charge of a region of hospitals in the south of England, and he struck me as a very smart man. He often had that little smile, as if the world amused him in many little ways.

We were somewhere in the meat of our conversation when we got to talking about suicide.

“You know, doctors have the highest suicide rate in the country,” he said.

“Oh really? I guess it’s pretty stressful, right?” I asked.

“Well it is, but it’s not really that. I think when a doctor decides to kill himself he knows how to do it. You almost never get a doctor that tried to kill themselves and failed.”

“Do you know what you would do?” I asked after a pause.

“I know exactly how I’d do it,” he replied. “I’d inject myself with morphine and insulin.”

“How does that work?” I asked.

“First morphine to take away all the pain,” he told me. “Then I’d inject myself with insulin and my blood sugar would start to drop. I would drift off and my heart would stop. It would be very peaceful and easy.”

We didn’t speak for a short minute.

I told him about how the Celts used to throw themselves off cliffs when they got old and decided they’d become burdens on their families. (Come to think of it, I have no idea if this is true.) They also used to go into battle almost completely naked, wearing nothing but a golden torc. I said I had this crazy idea to get up on a building, get naked, put on a torc, and jump off when I was old and thought it was time. He was afraid of heights and didn’t like the idea.

We agreed that there’s never really a point in your life when you think it’s time to die. The desire to live is buried so deep in us that it is very hard to reject. That said, there is a beautiful French phrase: “L’appel du vide”, or “the call of the void”. It’s the temptation some people feel in high places, on top of a building or a cliff, the temptation to just take that plunge. I’ve had that feeling before. It’s terrifying.

In Dover I made my way to the ferry terminal and tried to get a lift with someone. I never have much success here, as most people already have their tickets booked and just drive straight to the ship. I didn’t waste too much time and bought a ticket pretty quickly.

On the ship I asked every person I could find, and all but one kind man turned me down. He was driving south to Paris, and could take me about one hundred kilometres before we’d have to part ways.

We got on the road and settled in for a long ride. Brian, my driver, lived on a houseboat in Paris and was a pilot for EasyJet. He must have been sixty or more. Years ago, he’d studied aeronautical engineering, and he was telling me all kinds of things about the degree he did. He loved to tell me stories about the things he’d studied, since I knew a little about the mathematics he’d done. He told me about proving little mathematical things during his degree, and I got the feeling he rarely talked to anyone that he could tell these stories to. Now that I think about it, he strikes me as a little lonely.

He told me he was hitchhiking once and had been picked up by a one-eyed man in a Jaguar. One-Eye was on his way to a date, and he was pretty nervous, so he brought Brian along with him. They went to a pub and had a few drinks, and when the girl arrived she turned out to be stunningly beautiful. One-Eye was still a little nervous, and they invited Brian along with them. Brian could tell it was going to work out and left them to it.

He told me later that he wanted to get a motorbike when he retired, and ride around like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2.

“When I leave the plane after a flight I always say to the crew ‘I’ll be back!’, but they never get it.”

Brian ended up going out of his way and taking me another 80km to a gas station near St. Quentin. He let me out and we said a warm goodbye. After a good ride the goodbye is always a little strange. You’ve been friends for a few hours and now you both know you’ll never see each other again. You both feel like saying “Hey well I’ll see you again soon, right?” but you don’t, and there’s kind of a hole in your words where this sentence is supposed to go.

Brian drove away and I went into the shop. I idly watched the TV, where Daniel Radcliffe was doing a dubbed sex scene in French. It was pretty late; not many cars were coming through and the truckers were all bunking down for the night.

Eventually the place closed up and the staff kicked me out of the café. There was still one little hallway open in the back of the building, so I found a corner where I could hide and curled up to read a book and get some sleep. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to sleep there, so I didn’t get my sleeping bag out or anything. I lay down under my sweater and shivered nervously all night, wondering if the door next to me would open up and some janitor would step through, see me, and kick me out into the cold. It wasn’t until around 4am that I realised how dumb I was being. I got out my sleeping bag and got comfy, but before long a group of truckers started hanging around the coffee machines, chatting loudly. I couldn’t get any sleep, so as soon as the café opened I went back inside and got a cup of coffee.

The early morning traffic was coming in and I asking around for a lift. I wanted to head south to Reims, then cut east towards Alsace. Last summer I’d been on this route. I’d actually been picked up by the police because I was standing on the edge of the motorway trying to thumb a lift. They’d taken me to a big service station and there’d been loads of drivers heading to Switzerland, so I wanted to head that way again.

Around 7am I met a young Dutch couple on their way to Geneva. Their car was jammed full of baggage, and they told me they didn’t have any space. They were pretty friendly, though, so I was disappointed. I went back inside the café. Later I saw the man, Jeffrey, again and struck up a conversation. We were just chatting about travelling and whatnot when his wife, Rosmili, came by and joined us.

“We were talking before about maybe moving some of our stuff over and getting a seat for you,” Jeffrey told me.

“But we need to know that you’re not going to murder us,” Rosmili said.

I laughed and promised not to kill them. I guess they were satisfied, so we went to their car and looked at our maps. Geneva was not where I wanted to go at all, but I liked them so much I decided to go with them. They didn’t seem to mind. We piled in and sped away!

“I just want to apologise, in advance,” I said, “but I didn’t really get any sleep last night. If I fall asleep please don’t think I’m rude.”

In the end we rode together for five hours or more, and we talked the entire time. They were absolutely excellent people, interesting and friendly and smart. We bullshitted about all the things I love to bullshit about: films and books and music, travelling, people, and of course the standard intellectual conversation things like religion and death and happiness and whatnot. They’d been married twelve years, but they seemed to me still very much in love, and very happy. They told me they’d decided not to have kids. They were perfectly happy enjoying the world together as the two of them. They were very refreshing; I wish there were more people like them.

When we reached Geneva the goodbye felt very wrong. That hole where one of us should have said “Hey, we should keep in touch” was gaping and obvious, but we both resisted. We hugged and they pulled away. “Be safe!” Rosmili shouted.

I was finally in Switzerland, and I was starving. I bought a gigantic Easter bunny and a loaf of zopf, which is this amazing Swiss bread made with some inordinate amount of butter. I made my way lazily toward the train station, eating happily. My weariness started to set in, and I began to feel terrible. I kept eating.

I thought about hitchhiking to Zurich, but when I reached the train station I got jumped by a bunch of ticket machines. They beat me up and emptied my wallet. They threw a ticket to Zurich at me and said if they ever saw me around there again there’d be trouble. I got on a train, stuffed my mouth with butter bread and chocolate, wondered why I felt even worse than before, and fell asleep.

Four days later I was back on the road with fifteen kilos of vinyl that I could barely carry. I managed to get home to London in one day: 19 hours and five lifts door to door. Not much of this trip stands out in my memory, except this rich Swiss hippie telling me about his expensive music equipment and how he preferred LSD and DMT parties to cocaine parties. I remember one of my drivers telling me to go to Laos and rent a motorbike. I also remember taking the train home from Dover with this random dude I met on the ferry. We didn’t have much to talk about except this other little kid who walked passed and said “You’re a couple of cunts, aren’t ya,” then disappeared down the train.

Now it’s midnight two months later and I’m in a café watching old guys play chess. I’m trying to work out what my closing thoughts are. There’s something hypocritical about a guy with a top mathematics degree sticking his thumb out and asking for help, getting total strangers to carry his Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd albums six hundred miles across Europe. There’s also something strange about meeting amazing people and deciding never to see them again. There’s something wonderful about that funny little smile my second driver wore. I don’t know what it all means, I’m just going to keep hitchhiking until I work it out.

by: James Stevenson

After my trip to Bristol, I wanted to curl up in my bed and never leave it. I definitely didn’t want to get back on the road again. But nicolas cage damn it, I’d started some stupid “Notes from the Road” series thing, and there was no turning back. And anyway, I wasn’t fooling myself. I still had restless feet. Grabbing funemployment by the horns, I wanted to hitchhike again, but I didn’t know where. But lo, a wild invitation appeared!

Wow! This guy from the internet was going to let me come hang out with him, and even better, we were going to play cube!

Two weeks passed, my cat woke me up at 6:30 in the morning, then my alarm went off at 7 and I jumped out of bed. I was excited, it felt like Christmas! I rammed a cup of coffee down my throat, shoved some juggling balls and douchey sunglasses into my backpack and strode boldly out the door, forgetting to bring my trades, my towel or clothes to sleep in. No matter! I knew I had my passport and wallet, everything else was just luxury.

I headed out on the train, watching the Shard and the Cheese Grater shrink in the distance. I didn’t have to mention the Cheesegrater, but I wanted to show off:

I’d just like to point out the top of the Gherkin there on the left, and then I’ll say no more. These pictures are supposed to be under wraps.

I abandoned the train in Sidcup, a town on the outskirts of the city, and trudged over towards the motorway. There’s a good spot here to hitch to Dover.

Bristol had taught me an important lesson about being outside: it’s really cold. This time I was prepared, wearing a wife-beater, a tshirt, two jumpers, a hat, a scarf, knee socks, leather gloves, and the most dilapidated shoes I’ve ever owned. The holes in the heels are so big you could smuggle immigrants in across borders in them. So naturally I was nice and toasty except for my hands. What the hell.

I held up my sign and smiled at the drivers blowing by me. As usual I got a lot of funny looks, and at least one guy slowed down to take a picture of me with his iPhone. That’s a new one. It didn’t take too long before someone flashed their lights at me and picked me up. I jumped in his car and we sped away.

“I work in a bank,” he told me. “So I’m responsible for all the world’s problems.”

I laughed and agreed. He was a interest swap salesman for Societe General. I showed a lot of interest in his work and he seemed to be really surprised. I don’t think he saw anything interesting in it at all.

After driving for five minutes he let me out at a motorway intersection. I was probably better off waiting in Sidcup, but at least I could look at the gloom of the sky, feel the rain waft apathetically against my face, admire the gray death of the road, sigh and laugh and say “ah, England” affectionately.

It didn’t take long until I was picked up by a car mechanic. He’d grown up in Zimbabwe, in the typical walled white-people compound, away from the blacks. He did not like the blacks.

“When I was growing up,” he said, “you know, if I came home with a Black girl, I’d be disowned. That was how I was raised. I try to be a bit more lenient on my own kids, but you know, that’s still what I think. You know, when I was raised we had discipline. These days, you know, you get your belt out on your kid and social services are gunna take ‘em away.”

“Yeah it’s absurd,” I said, “I mean, as long as you’re not beating the shit out of yours kids, a little discipline is important.”

“There’s no hope for this country,” he lamented. “If they can’t fix the immigration nothing is going to improve. You know people just camp in Calais until they can get onto a ship. If they’re caught they just send them back, you know? And then they just do it again. If they make it to England they pay people off to get papers and get work.”

“And you know, the other thing is the social services. People are taking advantage of them. I saw something on TV about a woman living in a 7-bedroom house that she pays for with unemployment! She has six kids or something, and she won’t get a job! I tell ya, this country’s fucked.”

He let me out by a motorway entrance, where I held up my Dover sign once more.

About twenty minutes passed and he reappeared again, in another car.

“I’ll just take you a bit further, to the services. That’ll be better for ya!”

I thanked him heartily. What a dude!

It was a good sized service station, with lots of people going in and out. Of course, half the people were going the other way, back towards London. I even met several people that were coming from Belgium. I took up a spot outside the shop and started asking people if they could give me a lift.

Pretty soon an Irish man walked past me and said something completely unintelligible. Assuming he was turning me down, I replied “Ah, don’t worry, I’ll find someone.”

He turned around.

“Where you headed?”

“Dover.”

“I’ll give you a lift to Dover, just give me a minute.”

A minute later he returned.

“I just went inside and I thought how terribly rude of me, to be drinking a coffee in front of you and not offer you one. Can I get you anything?”

I gladly accepted, and a few minutes later I was in his car, warming my hands on a latte. We shook hands and exchanged names, then off we zoomed towards the sea! He was a lovely chap, on his way to referee a rugby match in Dover. We shot the bull for an hour and it was very pleasant. I can’t for the life of me remember what we talked about or what his name was.

“(Insert correct name here), right?” I asked as we parted, making sure to remember his name.

“Aye, that’s right,” he said, and off he drove.

I pointed my feet towards the ferry landing and smiled at the sound of seagulls. I love reaching the sea, I love the sea air, I love the horizon. But it’s always the sound of seagulls that makes me happy. I grew up on the coast of New Jersey, so it takes me back a little.

It should be easy to get a ride onto the ship here, since it doesn’t cost people any more money to have extra passengers. You need to hang around the ticket office and talk to people as they go in. There wasn’t much traffic at the office, but plenty of people were driving straight to the ship, having already reserved. I stood by that road and held up a thumb, walking to the ticket office now and then to ask people for rides.

Two Asian kids from the London School of Economics turned up wearing ridiculous onesies. They were holding one sign saying “PARIS” and another saying “4 CHARITY”. I put my douche glasses on and we stood smiling at drivers as they blew past us. I’m fairly certain nobody knew we would be free to take.

An hour or two passed before anyone pulled over. He was sending a text and ignored us completely. I don’t even think he noticed us. The Asian girl ran over to him and asked if he would take us. Completely apathetic either way, he sent the girl inside to confirm that it didn’t cost him any money. She ran back in a couple minutes and we all piled into the car.

My attention was immediately caught by some RnB music video playing on the navigation screen in the dashboard. Our driver must have done some crazy wizard hacker shit so he could play this stuff while he drove.

“Cool,” I said, pointing at the screen.

“Yeah.”

We rolled through three passport checks with R. Kelly preaching romance and champagne at us, and somehow managed to hear “Happy People” three times in a row. Our driver, Jan, was a good looking black dude heading home to Amsterdam. He wore a Gucci coat with the biggest fur hood I have ever seen, G-Star jeans and an assortment of fly looking accessories. On the ship he sat by himself, brooding over some game on his phone while I hung out with the Asians.

Their names were Danny and Ying, they’d never hitch hiked before, and they didn’t have much idea about what they were going to do that night. They were doing jailbreak, meaning they had 36 hours to get as far from their university as possible without spending any money, so they couldn’t even pay for a place to stay. We asked Jan if he would take us all to Antwerp, and he didn’t mind at all.

The bathrooms on the ship had some really good life advice:

We got back in the car with Jan and started into the music videos again. I had big questions on my mind. Where the hell is Sean Paul from? Is he white? Does that count as singing? How does the channel tunnel work? How DO magnets work? If a libertarian falls in a forest and nobody hears, does CML rant about it?

Jan took us all the way to Antwerp and went on his way, leaving an aura of romance and money is his wake. He’d hardly a word the entire time. I texted Jason where I was and the LSE kids went off to find a hostel. As it turned out they hid in the basement and made it to Brussels the next day.

I waited in the dark for my host. It was around 9pm now, the sun was long gone and a dreary mist was drifting from the sky. Here I was, about to meet this man from the internet, this gracious stranger who was not really a stranger at all. What would he be like? Which of us was the greater nerd? Would we just talk about magic for two days? Would he like me? Would he like the tokens I made him? Nicolas Cage I hope he likes the tokens I made him.

“James!” I heard from behind me. I turned, and there he stood in the gray, a majestic figure. His shining steed stood by, stayed under his touch. “You made it,” he said. “I’ve got you a city bike pass so we can rent bikes to get around.”

“Wow your voice is a lot deeper than I imagined,” I said.

“Ah, I guess you haven’t listened to the chatcast then.”

“Oh no, I haven’t!” I was genuinely shocked at myself. How could I not have listened to the chatcast? How rude of me!

“Let’s go to my house, we can talk more there. It’s best not to talk while cycling. Oh by the way, I, uh, don’t really obey the traffic laws. I hope that’s ok with you.”

“Awesome, me neither,” I grinned. I’m the one that ran a red light in front of a cop the other day. He had pulled me over and explained the function and usage of handlebars, while I pretended to be surprised and interested.

Jason and I zoomed off into the night towards two excellent days of fun. We played just the right amount of magic, ate lots of delicious food, met lots of cool people, and bullshitted about all kinds of stuff. We hit up lots of cool cafes in Antwerp, tried lots of beer and discussed the many women in Jason’s life. I even had the pleasure of seeing Jason’s wife as I emerged one morning, though she wouldn’t make eye contact with me and stormed out pretty quickly.

Jason has two amazing dogs, Brody and Lillaboo. On my last night we slept with them in the bed, and I had the most sublime moment. Lillaboo, a tiny, adorable puggle, was under the covers next to my feet, and I could feel her tongue lapping against my ankle for several minutes. I could just picture her stupid face staring intently into the dark as she licked my foot over and over. The moment was beautiful and absurd, and I had to strain not to burst out laughing and wake Jason.

Jason’s alarm woke us up the next morning with the loudest, most upbeat, most annoying alarm song I’ve ever heard. His reactions were lightning fast, and shut that thing off as quick as he could. We ate a sad final meal and walked out towards the motorway. When we reached the place where our paths diverged we stopped.

“James,” he said, “it’s been real.”

It had been real. It’s a shame you live so far away, Jason, we should hang.

We shook hands and tried to hold back our tears. As I boarded the ship, though, I couldn’t contain my sadness and the tears began to flow. As I stood drifting away on the deck I watched as Jason waved his handkerchief, glowing in the glory of the sunrise. I turned and buried my face in the shoulder of the towering black man next to me at the railing. Would I ever see this man again? This gracious stranger from the internet?

“Come back some time,” he said.

“I hope I do. You’ve got a place to stay in London too, if you ever want.”

I turned and walked away down the street. It was a straight road to the motorway entrance, so naturally I got lost for a whole hour before I found it. When I got there I held up a sign for the E17 and I kid you not, it took less than two minutes before I got picked up.

The road home was easy. My first lift was with an architect heading to Gent. We had a good chat. How I manage to talk to strangers at 8 in the morning always surprises me. In my home all I can say at 8am is “wuuuurg coffee.” My driver said he picks up hitchhikers all the time, since he drives around a lot for his job. He took me to a gas station and let me out. I went inside and had one of the worst cups of coffee I’ve ever had. In the bathroom someone had written “bufallo bufallo kwek kwek kwek”.

I got another quick lift towards Dunkirk. My driver didn’t speak much English so it was a pretty quiet ride. I managed to find out that he was a train driver, and I explained somewhat that I was a worthless middle class mathematics graduate with no job. He let me out in a small gas station near the French border.

There was one other person in the station, a business man with German plates. I approached him and asked, in my best German, if he could give me a lift towards Dunkirk or Calais. As it turned out, he was driving to Glasgow, and agreed to take me through the Eurotunnel and drop me somewhere near London.

We hit the road and started talking awkwardly in English. He seemed to be having trouble switching over to English mode, which I found odd for a guy headed to a meeting in Glasgow. Then again the poor man was heading to Glasgow, famous for having an impenetrable accent (amongst other things, I assume).

It didn’t take long before we switched to German, and once we did this we started getting along brilliantly. He was adamant that I should practise my German, and I wholeheartedly agreed. I remember sitting in the terminal for the Eurotunnel while he asked me questions about London, just to get me speaking. We talked about all kinds of things; art, business, travel, and my favourite topic: food. My driver turned out to be a modular architecture salesman heading to a meeting. He was a good guy and we had a really nice ride.

I really nerded out on the Eurotunnel. That thing is cool.

We reached the outskirts of London and found a train station. We shook hands warmly. “Maybe one day I’ll give you a lift in Belgium again,” he smiled.

I laughed and walked away, smiling to myself. It had been a really fun few days. As I sat on the train watching the buildings rise around me and the CCTV cameras emerge, I hoped I’d be able to write about it without sounding like a pretentious git. The Shard loomed out of the fog, then my beloved Cheese Grater too. I saw some woman fall over while holding a baby and some old guy stoop to help her up. I saw countless tourists looking at random shit, and people going every which way.

The train pulled in at some station from Monopoly and that’s the last remarkable thing from the trip. I didn’t really know what to do so I went home and went back on riptidelab. Sigh. Time to get a job.

By: James Stevenson

I’m hesitant to call this “Notes from the Road”, as the title implies that this is a regular column and there will more notes to come. More is my intention. I’m sure I’ll drag myself back to the road sometime soon, but this trip was so awful in the end that it’s put me off this hitchhiking bullshit a bit.

In fact, I think I was pretty hesitant to do this trip anyway. My alarm woke me up at 6:30 on Friday, and I immediately fell back asleep and dreamt that I had decided not to go to Bristol at all. It was so convincing that when I woke up again an hour later I really had no desire to drag myself out of bed and make a move. DJ Shadow was playing his All Basses Covered tour at Motion in Bristol that night, and I’d already shelled out £25 for a ticket. I’d decided to buy the ticket so that I would force myself to hitchhike there.

I got to the road at 9 AM. I was in West London where cars are joining the M4 motorway, a straight run to Bristol. I stood there for about an hour, holding my sign and sticking my thumb out. Nobody picked me up. Some honked or gave a thumbs up. One couple looked really confused and pointed off to the right, as if to say “Bristol’s that way, man.” I get a lot of random gestures when I hitchhike, and I would say 60% of them have been impossible for me to decipher. One time I did get flipped off in Switzerland. I mooned that guy.

I was hungry and tired, and around 10AM I started to feel like crap. I sniffed out a greasy spoon and paid next to nothing for some breakfast. The only other guy in the place was a hobo. It was an odd contrast. He with his amazing beard, a pram full of swag and loot, and a slow, purposeful way of moving that suggested his senses were completely dulled to the outside world. Me with my painted fingernails (silver), £70 headphones and Imperial College Mathematics Society jumper, eating my full English breakfast like “ah, the colloquial English fare. What a pleasure to be so down to earth.”

I nommed my breakfast and hit the road again, feeling better. At noon I finally got a lift from a Kenyan guy. He works in the embassy in London, in defense. He used to be in the military, and had seen some fighting at the Somalian border, suppressing something or other. For a military man, he was very peaceful. He told me he tries to do one good thing for someone every day.

On the radio some BBC presenter was talking about poverty in England. My driver said it was interesting to watch England as an outsider.

“If you look at the history,” he said. “It’s really going downhill. In 10, 20 years it’s going to be really bad.”

The radio backed him up, complaining about soup kitchens. According to the DJ, having soup kitchens encourages people to be poor, which calls for more money to soup kitchens. One feeds off the other. Well of course one feeds off the other, I thought that was the point.

“There are so many problems in the world. And all of them come from greed. If we took all the money in the world and redistributed it evenly, everyone would live happily.” I hear this sort of thing a lot from drivers, but I’ve never been convinced.

“And look, all these people in cars, and how long did you stand there?”

“Three hours,” I said. “It was so cold, man.”

“Three hours! And what does it cost me? I have someone in my car, I have conversation, it’s human contact!”

“Yeah man, exactly!”

I feel like such a hippy when we talk like this.

Eventually he started talking about Islam.

“I’m a Muslim,” he said. “But all these guys killing in the name of Islam are wrong. Islam is a peaceful religion. And suicide is wrong in our religion, too. You won’t go to heaven if you kill yourself. It’s like, if I told you that if you go to Bristol today you will become a billionaire, without having to do anything, but I’m still going to Swindon, then why am I not also a billionaire? You understand? If someone tells you that by blowing yourself up you’re going to go to heaven and have 70 virgins or whatever, then why has that guy not yet blown himself up? It doesn’t make any sense.”

I laughed and agreed.

“And jihad, people always talk about jihad. Jihad, it means ‘a struggle’. You can have a peaceful jihad too.”

He wasn’t driving all the way to Bristol, so he dropped me at a gas station with 40 miles left to go. I bought a cup of coffee and a pastry, doodled for a minute, and then started asking people if they were going to Bristol. It only took a few minutes before I got a yes.

“You know what? I will take you to Bristol,” the dude said. “But if we break down, we’re screwed mate. I’ve already broken down twice today.”

He was a young looking guy, I would guess in his 30s.

“You’re from Imperial College,” he said, pointing at my jumper. “You must be good at maths. Ok you’ve got 3 seconds, what’s 52 times .36?”

“Ummm,” I said.

“Ok, ten seconds,” he said after three seconds. After ten seconds I knew it was something to do with 156, 312 and some powers of ten, but no final answer had come out of my mouth and my forehead was still scrunched up in the thinking position. “Ok, I’m going to go inside and pay. When I come out you tell me.”

“Sure thing,” I said.

He went inside and I worked it out. Then my sister called.

“Hey bro! Where are ya?”

“At a gas station about to get a lift to Bristol. The guy asked me what 52 times .36 is.”

“Haha nice! Ok cool, have fun!”

“Will do, toodles!”

The guy came back out and said “You got it?”

“Ah yeah, I did, but my sister called and now I forgot it,” I said. “Something to do with 18.72 or something.”

“6,” he corrected me.

“Yeah 76, of course,” I agreed. I dunno if he knew he was wrong.

“You’re lucky my wife isn’t here,” he said as we started driving away. “She hates it when I pick up hitch hikers. We were in Morocco and I was picking them up.”

“Yeah man, but that’s ok. You know, when I first started hitch hiking I’d get really angry at all the people just blowing by me,” I started.

“Yeah, fucking cunts.”

“But you know, some people don’t want to pick people up, and that’s fine.”

“Yeah I guess. Hey what’s your name?”

“I’m James,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Good to meet you, I’m Steph.”

Everything in Steph’s life had gone wrong. He used to be a trader “in the city”, making big money in the pit.

“Some years you take in 500 thousand, some years you lose 200 thousand. That’s how it goes. I’m burnt out now, though, man. I’m 41, I lost my company, lost my money. I’m living on 20 grand a year, you know? That’s nothing! They had to cut out half my liver, my cars broken down twice. I think my car broke down so I could pick you up today and complain about it all. I’m just sitting here cursing life, and you gotta listen to me, sorry man.”

He’d also cracked a disc in his spine when he was a teenager.

“I had to stand erect all the time. I couldn’t sit down. I had to shit erect, you know, and couldn’t wipe.”

This guy had had a hell of a life.

“When I was in the city I always did my best and worked as hard as I could. It turns out everything is about who you know, though, and nobody ever told me that.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I was always told ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’“

“Yeah, you see? Nobody ever told me that. That’s why I hate these cunts in the city that get lucky or whatever. I worked fucking hard, and I was good, and look at me now.” He called everyone cunts.

“Oh, and another thing man, is the Jews,” he said. “Before I go on, you’re not Jewish, man, are you?”

“No dude, whatever, go on.”

“Yeah man, it’s the French Jews. They control everything, man. They got all the money, seriously. All the big banks are run by the French Jews. And you know what’s interesting? Before the Second World War, they were persecuting Germans out in Austria. No First World… was it First? Nah, Second World War. They were killing Germans, and the Germans were asking them to stop. That’s why they started the war, it was self defense. They were attacked first. But you know the propaganda and news and whatever, you never hear this, right?”

“Yeah dude that’s crazy. Interesting.”

Around then we started coming into Bristol. He went through the town center and let me out. We said our goodbyes and I parted. The stuff about the Jews was pretty strange, but I like the guy. I like everyone.

It was something like 2 or 3PM and the gig wasn’t until 11. I had a date with a pizza, got lost, took a piss by a river, found my way again, and walked into the venue like 7 hours early.

“Hey can I help set up or something?” I asked.

“Uh yeah sure, you work here?”

“No no, I’m just here for the gig, I’ve just got a ticket. I’m like 7 hours early, though.”

“Hah! No, man, sorry. You know if you get hurt or something it’s a problem, right.”

“Yeah, I figured, but I thought I’d ask.”

“Where you from, kid?” said the guy as he went up some stairs and out of sight.

“Uh, well I grew up in New Jersey and..” I started to say

“Well, don’t worry about it man, it’s not your fault!”

I let out a laugh and walked back to town.

I spent 5 hours in a swaggin cafe. The coffee was good, the lady working there was very pretty (though at least twice my age), there was a barber shop in the back, and the cafe was full of cool stuff. I stayed there for hours and not single other customer came in.

On the shelf next to me was “Our Island Story”, by H. E. Marshall. It was a narrative history of England for kids, written in 1905. I learned that a very long time ago, Neptune was looking for an island to give to his favorite son, Albion. Many people came from different islands to ask that Albion come to theirs, but none of the islands were good enough for him. But then a little mermaid come before Neptune and spoke:

“O Father Neptune,” she said, “let Albion come to my island. It is a beautiful little island. It lies like a gem in the bluest of waters. There the trees and the grass are green, the cliffs are white and the sands are golden. There the sun shines and the birds sing. It is a land of beauty. Mountains and valleys, broad lakes and swift-flowing rivers, all are there. Let Albion come to my island.”

It turned out she was talking about England. Man, salespeople.

I read on: “Now the people of the little island possess lands all over the world. These lands form the empire of Greater Britain.” I chuckled to myself.

In the same sitting I read Terry Pratchett’s idea: “I think we got our Empire because of the weather. Anything was better than staying home in the rain. I’m pretty certain people looked out of the window and rushed off to discover India and Africa.” – Daphne, Nation.

The day was cold and overcast, the Kenyan had spoke about the decline on England, Steph had lost all his money, the amazing café had no customers, I wasn’t allowed to help at the gig because of health and safety laws, and I was fleeing London to party with a lot of drunk people. The gloom of England was everywhere.

The show finally rolled around, and I had a blast. At the beginning I was the only guy up at the front, holding onto the railing and dancing like mad. There was like a two meter radius from me to the crowd, I don’t know why. I checked to make sure I smelled ok and that no one had cut a massive hole out of my pants or something.

Then at some point I turned around again and the whole room was completely filled, and it was crowded, and everyone was dancing around me. Coldcut were laying down a lesson in dub, reggae, breaks and bass, and it was sweet.

Some girl came up to me and said something.

“What?” I shouted.

“What?” she shouted.

“Exactly!” I shouted

“What?” she shouted.

I can’t be bothered with girls in clubs, I was just there to dance. I regret that a bit, cuz she was pretty, and all the other girls that approached me that night were not. Even the one making out with another girl next to me. Several times.

Shadow came at 1:30AM and was pretty banging. He played all kinds of trap and juke and sweet weird music that everybody enjoyed. It was so cutting edge that nobody could really work out how to dance to it, but we all went wild anyway. About halfway through his set my nipples started burning like crazy. I kept dancing, Rick Ross woke up in a new Bugatti, and at the end of the set Giorgio Moroder donated his organs to give the sound so much body.

Shadow finished up at about 2:30AM, and I went outside to hold up my sign for London. There was pretty much no chance that would work. What kind of moron would drive to Bristol just for a bassy club night, not drink, and then drive home at 3 in the morning? What kind of moron would hitchhike there 7 hours early, not sort out a place to stay and then try to hitchhike back in the middle of the night? Me, apparently, and I also thought it was a good idea to keep buying snow cones until I couldn’t afford any more.

I lost all my remaining money in an arm wrestle, hung out with a girl until she ditched me in a crowd, and then headed to the train station with a random guy who asked me if I’d go with him. He said the club was closing at 4, even though the girl had told me it would be open till 10. I followed him anyway, and we shared a very difficult 40 minutes of conversation. He was a lower class Brit who’d lived his whole life in the area around Bristol. He gardened for a living, but didn’t even seem to have anything to say about gardening. He didn’t have very much to say at all. I did my one good deed for that day and bought him a train ticket, then fled.

I found myself at the road again at 5AM. I found the spot that hitchwiki.org suggested and stood holding my sign to the cars in the road, waiting for one to beep at me and pull into the gas station next to me. It was so cold and windy that I had to go into the gas station every twenty or thirty minutes just warm my body up. When I was outside I was jogging in place to try to warm up. I passed three hours in the fashion, and slowly began to feel very, very weary.

Coaches with big signs saying “040 London” were passing by me, and at 8AM I decided to give up. I was cold and tired, my nipples were still burning and I had a pain in my back. With great relief, I hobbled over to the coach station, paid my £20 fine for giving up, got on a bus, and closed my eyes. I was cold to my bones the rest of that day, and decided to spend the week wrapped up in blankets working on my website.

And that was that.

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