Miss Mandie

The Great Hitching Adventure

As I begin my first entry in six months, I want to ask the question – how do you define happiness? Is it the purchase of that car you’ve had your eye on for the longest time? Is it taking off on holidays? Is it the comfort you take in loved ones? Your annual trek to your favourite festival? Or perhaps it’s just that feeling on a Friday afternoon when you are escaping the office for the weekend? For me, it’s knowing that in every moment I am doing what I want to do. No fear of what the future may hold and no regrets for moments that have passed.

As I set off from the Alaskan CouchSurfing Collective, I was immediately consumed with the excitement of the journey. There is something about forward motion involved with travelling that resonates with the core of my being. It’s the anticipation of the sights along the travelling path, the feeling that absolutely anything in this life is possible. To me, the journey confirms that the world is indeed my playground – a place to be explored, full of interesting individuals to connect with, learn from, be amused by, to graciously receive help from and to offer love, support, humour and kinship to. What a friggin’ world we live in!

Hitchhiking the distance from Homer, Alaska to Vancouver, Canada – a small stretch of 4000kms through rather desolate, but majestically stunning scenery – has expanded my view of how we can travel through the world. It’s definitely not the quickest mode of transportation…one 24 hour period saw Kenny and I make it less than 10 miles (and we walked about 7 of those!). But that feeling when someone finally stops and says through their action “hop on in – I trust you, even though I have no idea who you are…I am happy to help you get you further along your journey”. That moment they stop – it never wears thin – it’s an awesome feeling!

At the time I started drafting this blog entry, I was in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. We only had about 787kms to Vancouver to complete our hitching adventure. I was CouchSurfing with Sandra, a self-professed hippie who opened her home, taking us in, letting us connect with her other comrades from the revolutionary 60’s/70’s at a riverfront BBQ, along with hikes through an ancient forest, shared meals and board games. She was yet another reason why I love CouchSurfing. That immediate connection and feeling of comfortableness with someone who lets their home become yours for a brief moment in time.

For that moment in time, my life/home/friends consisted of a brother and sister from Columbia, a couple whose riverfront pad was our BBQ hangout and open home for their many friends whenever they need, a couple in their sixties who still let the wind blow them from moment to moment (despite their children’s bewilderment about their lack of desire for security and stability of a permanent address), Sandra – who still has two daughters living at home who dreams of returning to Puerto Rico in the summer, and of course, my two travelling companions, Walter, the 6”4, metal-loving, narcoleptic Dutchman and Kenny, the 23yo from New York who has been hitching and travelling for over a year on a bank balance that hovers permanently around zero and is coding his own website www.triphopping.com at every available opportunity. After our few weeks on the road, these two became brothers to me.

The tales from the road as we made our way down to Vancouver are too many to retell here but you know what they say, a picture can tell a thousand words so if you want to see what the whole hitching adventure was like, scroll through the photo album above!