A guy in a hostel in Kauai once told me I have the dumbest travel luck of anybody he has ever met. Looking back on my life I realize there is a lot of truth to his words. I DO have incredible travel luck.

My first solo travel experience outside of Canada was a four day train ride from Seattle, Washington to Jackson, Mississippi in February of 1993. My two best friends, Marian and Kirsty were also planning to rendezvous down there. The plan was to stay with Marians mom in what later turned out to be a cockroach infested trailer in a white trash trailer park in Vicksburg, Mississippi. That is another story though. Something with the title, “Rednecks, Rifles, and Road kill”.

My friends went down via bus – but I found a stupidly cheap train ticket and decided a better bathroom would make the four day trip better. This was a sound decision. Kirsty stepped off her bus cranky, sleep deprived, and constipated. I bounced off the train with a fistful of peoples personal home addresses – as Facebook and identity theft hadn’t been invented yet.

At the time I was 21 and living in Tofino – a cosy village of 800  at the end of the TransCanada highway on the west coast of British Columbia. Because the population was small and close knit,  many of us never bothered to lock our doors. People with negative energy rarely stayed in the town because nobody would hire them or give them any of the limited housing. In contrast to my peace love hippy world,  the US was viewed as a dangerous place. Media broadcasts were becoming increasingly dominated by reports of gang wars and the widespread ownership of handguns. We are immune to such reports now – but in 1993 it was shocking news. A lot of people in my community perceived me as friendly and guileless – so  I was bombarded with warnings about being careful – and perhaps not talking to ANYONE…

Out of peer induced paranoia, I decided to travel ridiculously light so I looked like a local simply crossing the street. It is still my policy to travel super light (carry-on only) but I think this first trip takes the prize for being the lightest a young naïve first world girl can travel. This is all I brought for a three week vacation:

On my back I wore, a long sleeved t-shirt, a pair of tights, a hippy skirt, and an army surplus army jacket. In my teeny cloth backpack I carried my sketchbook, diary, Walkman, two pairs of socks, a weeks worth of underwear, a pair of cut-off jean shorts, and a huge bag of Sun Chips to live off of for the next 4 days. I also brought a pillowcase to hold any clothes I bought while I was down there.

All well meaning warnings from my friends went unheeded straight out of the gate. By 10pm on the first night I had the whole dining car drunk and singing Don McLeans American Pie with me. By 3am the train conductor gave me his sleeping compartment – because we had talked through most of his shift and he wasn’t going to use it. The next morning, the guy who ran the first class dining car offered me use of the shower in one of the first class suites. Basically my solo journey was off to a fabulous start.

After spending two weeks as one of three hippie chicks (needing serious clothing advice) in the land of the heavily made up southern belle, it was time for me to hop the train home. This is where dumb travel luck kicked up a notch…

Due to the way my bank card was configured, I was not able to access the money in my bank account the whole time I was in the US. I did not have a credit card to fall back on either. Luckily I had a functional amount of money in travelers cheques so I was fine for the most part. I think I mostly blew my funds on alcohol, greasy buffets, and clothes if I remember correctly. When it was time to go home I boarded the train with $11 cash and a $50 travelers cheque for the ferry between Seattle and Victoria… No Sun Chips for sustenance this time. Clearly I wasn’t thinking a lot through at the time.

I call it travel karma – but the term dumb luck also applies just as well. Whatever it was – it protected me. I arrived in Seattle four days later fully fed with $41 and a new ring – but I am getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the how:

When I arrived in Chicago a fellow passenger whom I had told my story to gave me $30 before we parted company. I told him I couldn’t take his money but he told me he was home and could access more so it was a gift. So now I had $41. That $41 was still in my pocket when I arrived in Seattle three days later.

I had made a deal  with the cook on the train from Seattle to Chicago that I would keep him company and do his dishes in exchange for free food – so the lack of money for food didn’t worry me. I was a dish washer back home so I knew what I what I was doing in the kitchen.

As it turned out, my cook friend was not working on my train back – but the universe was still determined to look after me. By chance something crucial in the kitchen car had broken and they were not able to provide food to the passengers from it. Amtrak had to assume everyone on the train would have bought meals – so they loaded up on boxed meals at various points along the way and fed the entire train for free.

So how did I get the ring? An older guy from Detroit took a shine to me. He shared his smokes and bought me drinks throughout the second day on the train. He eventually gave me a cheap silver ring he referred to as a Russian wedding ring. I guess he figured he owned me after all that because he got extremely angry when I refused to sit on his lap. The son he was traveling with was 4 years older than me – to give an idea of the impossible age gap.

Mr. Detroit had also given a second ring to another girl on the train hoping we would compete for his affection for the third ring he had on hand. His exact words were, “I will give the third ring t the girl who is the nicest to me”.  Neither of us were materialistic or lacking self esteem so neither of us competed for it. Come mealtime that other girl and I were randomly seated together with a quiet guy who had kept to himself all trip. His name was Duncan.

While the three of us were casually talking about bread Mr. Detroit charged up to our table and in a jealous rage slammed a  bowl of coleslaw into Duncans face saying, “You think you are so cool…”

Then pandemonium broke out on the train. Eva, the head of the dining was a classic big black woman with all the power, presence, and attitude that went with being a big black American woman. She charged into the situation like a powerhouse of “no fucking shit”. It didn’t take long for the train to stop to let the police on. Mr. Detroit was now on his way to jail somewhere in Middle America.

Mr. Detroit’s hot playa son tried to defend his dad by bribing  Duncan with $20 in hopes Duncan would tell the police it was just a friendly food fight. Duncan rightly wasn’t going to play that game. Hot Playa Son relentlessly tried to  assert his bullshit story to the police – but the police told him to shut up – unless he wanted to go to jail too. Hot Playa Son had just gotten out of jail for dealing LSD – so he promptly sat down and zipped his lips. Mr. Detroit was lead off in cuffs…

Other than the Mr  Detroit incident the rest of the train ride was fun. I was still identifying with my artistic side so I passed time drawing portraits of the serving staff in the dining car. This ended up further feeding my travel karma because when the train arrived in Seattle it did not connect with the last ferry to Victoria. Luckily, one of the train waiters told me all the staff was staying at the Vance Hotel – so if I was stranded in Seattle I should connect with them there. I did  end up staying with the crew at The Vance.

I didn’t travel solo abroad for another 13 years – but this first journey was clearly a sign that I was made for the adventure of travel.