The trip home (and one more problem)

After my cardboard box was stolen, I needed to change what I was bringing home and I ended up with the enormous black bag and a large backpack as checked baggage and my back pack and my (also enormous) mexican hat as carry on's. Sarah's Uncle Dave gave me a ride to the airport which was really nice of him. The flight was a red eye, leaving vancouver at 11pm and arriving in toronto at 6:35am. Unfortunately, planes can't land in toronto before 6:30 because of noise regulations and since there was a tail wind we didn't end up leaving vancouver until about 11:30. That means I got about 3 hours of sleep (sitting up).

I arrive in toronto with roughly 150lbs. of stuff and go to the ttc bus stop. I notice that the express bus to the subway isn't going to come for another half an hour but in ten minutes a bus that goes across lawrence to the other subway is coming. I figure, how much longer can the lawrence bus take? Well, it takes about an hour longer. Mostly because it gets stuck in traffic within a 5 minute walk of the subway station. Also, the bus goes through the sketchiest parts of toronto that I've ever seen. Sometime on this bus ride I realize that my mexican hat was probably a silly purchase.

I also took the lawrence bus because I know that the subway is its' last stop and it will be easy for me to get off because I can just wait for everyone else to leave. I forgot that the ttc buses pull into the subway stations and let everyone on through the back doors. I quickly try to get off, but my black bag won't fit through the doors. It has to be turned on its side. So, I am standing on the platform with my bag stuck in the door with one backpack on my back and one on my front and my mexican hat in a huge crowd of people trying to get on the bus. At this point I feel like bringing all my crap on the bus was a really stupid idea. Luckily, everyone is nice and helps me get my bag through and I'm on my way.

After I get off the subway I realize that it has very recently snowed about 6 inches. This makes it very difficult to get a suitcase on wheels down the sidewalk. I stumble into my office where I find one other problem with being homeless.

Usually, when I travel and I am just about to come home I can't wait to sleep in my own bed. Unfortunately, homeless people don't get that option. I sleep on the couch in my office, which is heaven on earth compared to a Westjet seat.

Packing for the trip home (and thievery)

As many of you know, I spent a year and a half living in vancouver before I came to toronto for grad school. When I moved out there, my friend Derek just happened to be driving to vancouver from toronto to bum around for a couple of weeks and so I went with him. The car was a '93 mazda protege.

We were both really poor so we decided to try to do the trip without paying for any accomodation or going to any restaurants. We wanted to only shop in supermarkets. We made it to Dryden (about a 20 hour drive from toronto) before we went to a restaurant and we only spent about $1.50 each since we used our subway stamps to get free subs and they make you buy a drink with them.

We managed to make it all the way to day 4 of the trip and Banff before we paid for accomodation (we mostly slept in hotel mazda) and that was only because it was about -10 outside and there were 10 feet of snow. In vancouver, we didn't want to spend any more money than we had to, although we didn't feel too safe sleeping in the car in a big city, so we camped in a provincial park (and used the walk in sites) for 10 days, while we commuted half an hour to vancouver. It cost us $90 for both of us to live there, which is the same price as each of us taking the city bus from Surrey to Vancouver once a day (in one direction only).

In retrospect, that trip probably laid the foundation for me to start this hoboing journey.

Anyway, since I had the entire trunk of a car to fill, I brought a ton of crap that I wouldn't have been able to fit on a plane. A computer monitor and a laundry basket were among those things. None of the car trip included any of Sarah's clothes, which I estimate at weighing close to 250 pounds all together and fill up a closet the length of an average sized room.

Fast forward two years and Sarah and I are moving back to vancouver sans car (since Derek's car caught fire and was sold to the junk man and no one else I know is crazy enough to do the 48 hour drive). We now have all of two peoples stuff plus everything they accumulated over two years and not very many plane trips back and forth to take it all. We looked into renting a UHaul, but it would cost something like $5000 but all of my stuff put together isn't worth a fraction of that.

We looked up the limits the airline imposes on baggage and found out we can put 70lbs. of stuff in each checked bag and we can take two. We have an enormous black bag with wheels that we can fit 70lbs. of Sarah's clothes in each time we fly back and forth. Also, we throw out the laundry basket which was broken anyway.

Unfortunately, he computer monitor doesn't fit in the black bag and we have to send it some other way. Also, it weighs in at 47lbs. I figure that a box plus a pillow and some other padding will probably be under the 70lb. limit. I find a box and we jam everything in and tape it up and the whole package weighs about 65 lbs. Coincidentally, the limit that Canada Post puts on packages that are shipped with them is 66lbs. and since I was taking the bus home from the airport in Toronto (what else would a hobo do) I decided that carrying a 65lb. box would be pretty difficult. I found a post office that was open for a half hour and set off in search of it.

It turns out that 65lbs. is way way heavier than I thought. I can carry the box about 50 feet before I have to put it down for a rest. Luckily, Sarah's uncle lives near a Walmart and the Walmart is on the way to the post office. I don't like shopping at Walmart (it makes me feel like scum) but I have no problem using the shopping carts that are dumped near the edges of their parking lot. The box doesn't fit in the shopping cart but it balances nicely on top of it. I wander around near the mall for 10 minutes worrying about getting to the post office on time when I come to a curb that the shopping cart won't go over.

With about 5 minutes left to find the post office, I decide to leave the cart and box and run ahead to see if I can see the post office. Less than two minutes later I return to the curb and my box is gone. My cardboard box in a shopping cart has just been stolen. I can't imagine what kind of monster sees me (a hobo) with his shopping cart and carboard box and says to himself "Gee, I bet that guy has some valuable stuff. If he leaves it for even a second I'm going to steal it. Maybe I can sell his dirty rags."

I'm not too worried at this point about the monitor (since it wasn't going to make it back to ontario anyway) but I was worried about sarah's socks and a couple of her pairs of pants. She wasn't too upset that I lost her clothes, which was good and she felt sorry that someone took my shopping cart full of stuff.

The trip to vancouver (reviewed)

After I raced around like a maniac on the friday before I had to leave, I boarded a Westjet flight bound for vancouver. I must have been brain dead, because when I first sat down, I was actually in 10A instead of 10F. The girl who actually had 10A told me to get out, so in my embarrasment I slid across into the F seat. Turns out, I ended up in 11F and in a couple minutes the guy in 11F told me to get out. They probably all thought I was a terrorist trying to get any free seat but at least they didn't know I was homeless. The flight itself was pretty hobo, although they did give me two oreo cookies. Of course there was no movie. And no headphones.

The flight was really long and I slept a lot. When I got to vancouver we had to take 3 buses and a skytrain to get to Sarah's aunt and uncle's place in Surrey (more about Surrey later). I really appreciate them letting me stay there. I did think about camping out somewhere in vancouver, but it was pretty cold and it's hard to camp near public transit (and I definately wasn't renting a car for the whole week).

Sarah and I talked to paul and we decided that we were gonna rent a car to get to Kelowna (about 400km from vancouver through the mountains). I checked out enterpise and I think there was something wrong with there website since the compact was only $23 a day but the economy was $33 a day. This includes unlimited mileage in BC. If enterprise didn't have such great service I would call them hobo car rental since it's so ridiculously cheap. Well, I booked the compact (since there was no way I was gonna spend $10 a day to get a marginally larger car) and the website told me that it was gonna cost $137. The guy at the car rental place tried to scam me out of $8 a day to - get this - insure me against the deductible on my insurance. He said that driving on the highways could put chips in the windshield and I would have to pay for that if it happened. After I declined the insurance against my insurance and we were driving down the coquihalla a car in front of me kicked up a stone and put a small chip in the windshield which made me wonder if they were going to make me pay $5000 for the windshield (which could be how they make their money).

We got to kelowna at around 5pm (after having bought the cheapest mitts we could find between vancouver and kelowna). Then, we skied like maniacs for the next three days. I fell and hit my head 3 times on a snowboard and once on a set of skis, which made me think I had a concussion for about half the trip but it was so worth it.

Sarah and I slept on an air mattress in the corner of Joe and Alison's room but it wasn't totally hobo, since we had an en suite bathroom (although since there were only 2 bathrooms for 12 people, en suite means our bedroom was sortof a hallway, which is still way better than sleeping on a couch in your office, I'll tell you).

We both rented equipment and bought a three day lift pass all for $500 dollars. Incidentally, the snowboard and boots cost $30 a day to rent which I thought was outrageous. This made me really worry about enterprise breaking my kneecaps since there is no way they can profit on $23 a day.

When I returned the car I was a little nervous about the chip in the windshield, and the guy at enterprise wandered around the car with his clipboard. Turns out he either didn't notice or didn't care about the chip. It ended up only coming to $114 (since they waived the underage driver fee) which was amazing for a four day rental.

The vancouver ski trip

Well, tomorrow I become a trans-provincial nomad by flying to vancouver. Now, some of you may say, how could you possibly blow all that money on a plane ticket when you could take the bus. Well, in response to that, I am taking hobo airlines. They don't even serve a meal on a 4 1/2 hour flight. You also don't get a movie or any headphones. Sarah once went through westjet hell and got stuck in Calgary for 8 hours and I said I would never fly westjet again, but they were the cheapest by far and I'm willing to bring a sandwich on the plane. Well, I guess you get what you pay for and I paid $300 round trip. The cheapest you can do it on the bus is $230, which if you include meals (and your time is completely worthless) will still come out to more than the flight.

I am planning on going skiing at Big White in Kelowna and staying in a very nice chalet. But, don't worry about me having even a temporary home. Sarah and I are getting a discount rate to not have a bedroom (alas, it is not the cost that is the primary reason, but rather the fact that I don't actually want to spend 7 days skiing and not having a bedroom makes things a lot more flexible). Vancouver is supposed to go up to 9 degrees tomorrow which will basically be heaven on earth. I am sick of my shoes always being wet with slush.

The (new) computer

Since I am a Hobo living in a modern world, I felt that I needed a modern computer. The computer that came with my desk reset around 5 times a day, destroying all my work, which may have been acceptable in 1995, but this is not 1995. So, I went about getting a new computer to put under my desk. One night, very late, I happened to be getting a drive back home from Joe's place from Orion (I suppose it goes without saying that it wasn't my car). Since Orion had given me a lift, I offered to help carry his groceries up to his apartment. When we got there, he said that his brazilian girlfriend was coming and had a whole closet full of shoes and that he therefore needed to clean out his closet. He asked me if I wanted any of his computer junk, and I said sure.

The computer junk consisted of a 386 laptop with no power supply (which was released in 1985, not a computer for a modern hobo) and a motherboard with some RAM and a CPU attached to it. For those of you who are less computer inclined, it looked like part of the guts of a computer. The CPU had a Pentium 2 350Mhz chip on it. Incidentally, the Pentium II 350Mhz chip was released in 1998. So, with this collection of computer bits, Rasputin (my computer) was conceived.

The next day, I went hunting around for the cheapest case I could find (which I found at factorydirect.ca, the hobo equivalent of a computer store if there ever was one) which cost $30. When I finally plugged everything together I didn't expect it to work, especially since Orion said that the reason it was in his junk bin was because he had some problems with the RAM, but it worked like a charm.

I brought the computer to school and it now sits under my desk. I ran out of hard drive space the other day, and tried to get more free computer stuff off of Orion and he made some remark about the laptop. Well, you can't get everything for free. I found the cheapest ratio between price and space which turned out to be a 120GB drive, which, if real things could fit on disks would be enough space for all my stuff with enough room for me to curl up in to sleep.

So now, as it stands, Rasputin is complete and happily helping me work harder than ever (because I don't want to be a hobo forever).

The one problem...

So, I was talking to rosco the other day and I was saying that the one problem with being a hobo is that I don't have anywhere to store my bikes. Well, I actually do, which is where I used to live at 452 Richmond and hopefully they are ok, but I can't use them.

Anyway, I found another problem. Having rented a locker at the Athletic Center, I keep all my dirty clothes and shampoo and stuff there. On saturday, at around 6pm, I found out that on the weekends they are only open until 5. I had just finished rock climbing and was feeling pretty sweaty. I did find another set of showers at Hart House, but they don't have free towel service (although for some ridiculous reason, they have free lock service). Also, on sunday I went snowboarding all day and couldn't get in. I have been shut off from all of my valuable hobo possessions for three days now.

I will report back with any other problems.

A few details

I think some details of how I live my life as a nomad are in order to better explain the situation. First, I moved out of my apartment at 452 Richmond St. West on January 31st. Since then, I have been mostly sleeping in my office on either the couch or an air mattress, although I have also occasionally slept in Alison's room (who usually sleeps in Joe's room).

I have been showering at the Athletic Center which is a big step up from the shower at 452 Richmond. Always hot water, never have to wait. I rented a locker to keep all my dirty clothes in, so they don't stink up the office.

I have been eating really well. The grad lounge has a toaster and a microwave, and there is a fridge just outside my office that I have been keeping soya milk and some sandwich stuff in. Also, I have been eating out about half my meals.

I have had a lot of offers on places in the GTA where I can stay, and I plan on taking at least some of them up, although I am still getting adjusted to my life as a hobo. I would have to say, I really recommend it.

A Hobo in the Modern World

As many of you may know, I have become somewhat of a nomad. The word hobo got passed around a bit and I've decided that I like it. I imagine an old unshaven man with a stick over his shoulder with a hankerchief tied to the end and all of his possessions inside. It is very freeing and simplifying to have all of my stuff in one place and not have very much of it. Who knows, maybe one day I will have all of my possessions slung over my shoulder and be sleeping in a boxcar. Also, I decided to start this blog to let the world know about my hoboness. I'll be updating everyone on the status of being a hobo and other interesting things that I think the world should know about.