When I saw Kelly drive up from a distance in a huge tanker truck, I was thinking, “We always have bad luck getting picked up by truckers.” It’s partly because they don’t usually have seats for 2 people, and also some companies don’t allow their drivers to pick up hitchhikers.
“The truck isn’t gonna stop, I bet,” I told Evan.
“Yeah,” Evan shrugged. “We can try anyway,” he said cheerfully.
We put out our thumbs up high (subconsciously, maybe because the driver is high up in a truck?). The truck slowed down until it came to a full stop right in front of us. I was screaming inside. Maybe I did scream out a little bit. Maybe I also did a little victory dance.
“Where are you guys headed?” I stood on my toes so I could see the face of the person that was shouting to us from a driver’s seat. I saw a smiley middle-aged man looking at us. We told him that we were heading to Inuvik, which was about 10 hours away from where we were at. “I’m going to Inuvik airport but I’m not sure how far I can make it today.” That was really exciting for us because he was going to go to where we wanted to go! We got (climbed) into his truck after he rearranged his stuff in his truck, and we were off!
Evan sat at the front seat and I was sitting on his bunk bed in the truck. It was a good arrangement because Evan could translate Kelly’s English to the English with Evan’s accent for me.
“What are you hauling?” Evan started.
“Fuel for the airplanes. It’s basically diesel fuel. 60 ton total.” He answered. Wow. No wonder it feels like we are having trouble going up even a small climb.
Kelly is originally from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. He was so easy to talk to. He’s the kind of person that has a lot of interesting stories to share, but also shows interest in what you’re saying. He’s a dad of three kids and he’s particularly proud of the one that is working for Pixar now in the UK. It was cute when he told us that he just recently got together with his ex-girlfriend from 35 years ago. When he mentioned that his mom passed away 6 years ago, I told him my mom passed away about 7 years ago.
“What did your mom pass away from?” He turned around to ask me. It was nice to see his face but I was also a bit nervous about him not looking at the road. In the end, it was about trusting people, and trusting their driving skills.
“It was pneumonia.” I told him the whole story and how I resented the doctor for his misdiagnoses. He listened. There is always something soothing about telling a complete stranger about whatever you want to say. Whether I say too much or too little, it matters and doesn’t matter at the same time.
“How is your dad doing [after your mom passed away]?” He asked me as if he was my old friend.
We rode with him for 7 hours and we shared our whole life stories together. He even told us that he used to be a local star in Whitehorse for sprint car racing. He raced in many places in the US, including California, Oregon, and Montana. We looked up his name afterward, and he wasn’t kidding! Because of his connections in racing, he got to buy an old car that used to belong to Joe Kennedy. He even found a picture of John F. Kennedy riding in the car when he was a kid.
“Are you on Wikipedia?” I joked. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one.
“What’s that?” He turned around and asked me.
He has been driving trucks up the Dempster Highway since he was 18. He said he came up to Tuktoyaktuk by the Arctic Ocean by himself to work on an oil drill around the same time. “And I remember it was -67 C one day!”
“That was pretty young for you to come up all this way to work on an oil drill, right?” I had to ask. When I was 18, I had never thought about working in any kind of hard labor jobs. I was going to college, preparing to be an English teacher.
“Well, up here in the north, we are brought up differently, right?” He looked over to Evan as he answered. Evan understood. Kelly grew up in a very different background from ours. He is probably what American people would call a politically conservative person, especially when he tells us that he likes the gun law in the US more than the one in Canada. He clearly believes in climate change though. Not a person we met in Canada denied that climate change isn’t happening. In northern Canada, climate change has been happening right in front of everyone’s eyes.
After 7 hours of driving, he pulled over at a truck pull-out and we all went to bed. Kelly took us from the end of Tombstone Territorial Park to Fort McPherson on the Dempster Highway. It was a total of about 432 km and it took him about 7 hours.
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