my first adventure.

when i was very young my parents took my brother and me on a cross canada trip to visit friends back east. Hitchhiking. my memories of the trip are vague and not all wonderfull but it was for sure one of the bigest influences on the rest of my life.
 when we left from victoria i was 6 and chris was 4. we took a passenger train through the rockies to start. mountains and streams and wild colors, blue sky and the brightest greens with fields of yellow flowers and the clacking of wheels over the joints in the rails. i think it was 2 days travel that way and we were given booklets with information that never made it into our minds and these heavy paper cutout train models that did stay, in my mind anyways.
  In calgary we visited my dads brother uncle bob, he's a sculptor and gituarist whos been compared to eric clapton which meant nothing at the time. Uncle bob built a lot of the scenery at drumhellers dinosuar museum which did mean something, we got to see dinosaurs! years later my buddy cameron got his head stuck in the t-rex's mouth there and sent me a picture.
 Our next stop was edmonton to see grandma quin. I had my birthday there and bit a coin she wrapped in wax paper and baked in the cake, it was an old person suprise for kids kind of thing i think.
Dad caught the mumps there and got very sick so we stayed a couple days. i remember seeing my first lightning storm but mostly it was just very hot.
  from there we set out on thumb, sometimes walking if we got let of in a bad spot but mostly standing on shoulders of roads with our little thumbs held high. people were very nice to us and although it took us over a week to get to ontario but we never had to spend a night outdoors either we drove through the night or people would take us home with them. We caught one ride with a greyhound driver in an empty bus, he took us in and in the morning his wife made us sandwiches for the road. also dad brought his tattoo gear so quite often we he would work on the people who picked us up and make money for the road that way.
  In ontario at the time beer cans didnt have a tab just a blister with a line scored into  the aluminum you pushed into the can. it was a new thing and dad liked beer so we learned to open these novel new beers for him He left us on the side of the road with mom while he went to a nearby beer store and we got a ride just as he got back once. just as they pulled over christopher managed to grab one of his beer that had just jogged across a parking lot in the blazing sun and open it! look dad im being helpful! SPLOOSH!! beer foam all over everyone!
 Hi there my kids are helpfull, how far are you going?
mostly we met good people but there was a black van on the praries somewhere that pulled over a couple hundred yards further up the road then drove away when we ran up, also the blackflies at one campsite ate me and chris so bad we were streaming blood from our scalps. their bites didnt hurt but it sure upset mom.
 In ontario we saw shad flies hatch and blot out the sun with their numbers. such a simple bug they have no mouths and there entire cycle takes only a few days. the highway was slick with thier bodies.
 We visited dads good friend robert in ottowa he's a jeweler now but him and dad worked construction and ate acid as kids. rob and his wife peggy took us to the parliment buildings for canada day and we saw the biggest fireworks show ive ever seen. EVER! the concussions took my breath away sometimes and kept coming so fast it was like a strobe light with thunder.
 they also took us to a museum with lots of airplanes and science stuff. i dont know if it was actually the space capsule or just a replica but i got to sit in it and it was small even to me at the time.
 We saw fireflys, and partied with the big people then left for montreal. i dont remember who we saw there but i do remember that people there were very friendly and the sounds of partieing carried on well into the night. my parents commented that there was no broken glass in the morning, something that sticks out and makes me want to go back even today. I had my first criossant fresh from a bakery in the morning there too. Amazing!
 On the way home we bought a pup tent and i remember the 4 of us crammed into it trying to sleep through an intense ontario lightning storm. that was very scary and our stuff was damp for the rest of the next day.
 We made it back to edmonton in time for chris's 5 birthday and again grandma quin got me with the waxed paper wrapped coin trick.
 really the hardest part of the whole trip was being told not to tell tall tales in class when we had to explain what we did that summer back at school. me and chris both got sent to the office over this story.