Free Roads: A Heavy Pack. Hitchhiking!

"Yea, I'd reckon that the days of hitchhiking are pretty much over. Back when I was younger, you didn't really think twice about thumbin' it really," Mark guffawed at me. A retired triple dipper drawing pensions from social security, the post office and another job, Mark dreams of getting a boat and RV and traveling the states. "Did you know it's legal to hitch a boat behind a trailer in 28 states?" My life was fundamentally changed by this resoundingly important information. "Wow, that's impressive," I replied, trying with great difficulty to express just how life-changing his previous statement was.

Over and over, I heard hitchhiking is a thing of the past, like lead paint or white MJ. "The world's changed, Jeff. There's crazy people out there." Well I'll tell you what, lead paint's still out there helping make our nation great, and white MJ... well, there's always more lead paint somewhere.

There's crazy people out there. Sure, maybe there's a few more than once upon a time the drug-induced comatose 60's, but that's just because the burying-bodies-under-the-porch and cannibalism-crazed people no longer keep to themselves. There was a time and day when nutters had the gosh-darn decency to keep to themselves and cozily murdered in their private culdesacs and  forlorn side streets. Then came the media and turns out you go bonkers, you get famous for a bit and your mugshots with the crooked glasses and terrifyingly large smile go viral, and suddenly, every hitchhiker is either murder-bait or just scouting for some throats to slit and hatchets to dull on bone... seriously, do you know what bone does to a blade?

Arrested for crimes against fashion and life, I presume.

Well, Jack Keruoac, I did you proud and I went crazy for a few days. A little over half a dozen rides in three days spanning half a thousand miles. Maybe I didn't make it halfway to Mexico in the back of a pickup truck, smoking a Lucky Strike and fighting the occasional sailor punk, but I got a taste.

So here's some tips on what to look out for when you decide to give it all up for a bit and stick out your thumb- while I'm no expert, I'm much more qualified than you, so wait, I am an expert- so perk your ears up and pay attention to these tips, amateur.

1: Start in a solid spot with not-so-solid stuff

So, you're sick of people mocking you for your bowlegged walk and the funny way you slurp beverages out of foam cups. After coincidentally quitting your job the day before that big fire broke out at work, you hit the road. Make sure you have a pack! Bring food like Clif Bars, peanut butter and jelly and tortilla wraps, canned sardines, and plenty of water in a camelbak or reusable container. Pack clothes- not too much, not too little, mostly socks and boxers. I brought a tent and sleeping bag and some other junk, but I'm insane.

After evading police patrols while getting out of town, you need to decide where to go, hopefully, a state where arson's not such a big deal. You can go big- get to a highway rest stop and head, y'know, away. Travel stops and such are a decent place to hang around if a long haul's the ticket you have in mind... or you can cowpath, which means hitchhike along local roads and state routes, because like cowpaths, you will zigzag across the landscape with the directional prowess of a lobotomized madman and eat lots of grass. Point is, know how far in general you want to go, and pick a spot to start from that doesn't suck. For instance, the center of NYC is decidedly a poor place to start a journey, much like your Aunt Linda's dinner table is a poor choice of venue for a conversation with any semblance of sanity. Aunt Linda's crazy, yo.

Not the cute crazy, either, the "nibbling on a crayon while staring at you with soulless eyes" crazy.

2. Embrace the Road

It's good to be free! You burned your bridges (ok, maybe just an office, so just one bridge) and the road is your bumpy, cruel, and occasionally maddening mistress. Fields of wheat, an open sky, and stories lay ahead, and the only thing stopping you is, well, you! There's plenty that's terrible about hitchhiking, but a feeling of freedom and joyful irresponsibility is one of the best parts. You can travel yonder and let wanderlust whirl you around like a particularly light tumbleweed, through golden wheatfields and well-mowed lawns and avenues of trees standing at leafy attention.

Now's the time to realize: being self-conscious does not work for the hitchhiker. While you want to look presentable and minimally murdersome, you need to reach out to people. Your mum will not stick your thumb out for you, and your buddy won't kick your legs to walk for ya. To stick your thumb out and succeed at being a derelict of civilized society, there's plenty that needs to happen. Get over yourself. You're interesting, but noone owes you anything, dammit! It's easy to feel entitled while hitchhiking, but thinking out loud and talking to yourself (like Aunt Linda does) helps you realize how absurd your thinking can be. "I'm a well-off white person who wants you to inconvenience yourself and pick me up at risk to yourself so I can shamelessly benefit! Aw, c'mon!"

Expect rejection. Not many people pick up hitchhikers, because most people are stupid and soulless floozies who stumble through life not doing much other than trimming their nose hairs and dreaming of happiness. These drones, set on automatic programming, find it easy to miss you on the road. They'll stare past you, at you, into you, through you, or at their glowing crotch as they play Candy Crush and nearly crush you in the process. I got stuck thumbing on an on-ramp for a few hours, a major intersection, what have you. sometimes, there's just noone that wants to pick you up. Ya suck it up, throw a hissy fit, and keep walking. Wait an hour, two hours, remember- you're not entitled to anything, shameless parasite!

"Ah, the beauty of being a complete bum..."

3. Be interesting and active when the situation requires

If you sit and do nothing, you will go exactly 0 miles while hitchhiking. Well, 0 might be a bit specific, there's wind and tectonic plate movement to account for, but let's just round off and say you're not gettin' awful far.

You need to be walking, thumbing it, smiling at drivers, asking where people are going, and thinking of alternate routes all the while. When I was on a rest-stop on I-70, I'd walk in front of all the trucks with a sign reading, 'East.' When someone cast a glance in my direction for a moment too long, I'd start a dialogue with them and shoot off a smiling, "Hey, how are ya?" Other times, when there was little interest in enabling a dreg of society, I'd sit and read a book by the main path in the rest stop looking generally pathetic, pitiable and harmless. Time and place, people. When I got a ride nearly 3 hours and a state trooper later, I was constantly talking to Eric. Eric, my longest and last ride, took me from an I-70 rest stop in Ohio to Niagara Falls. The whole time we were talking and I was making however extra fuel 180 pounds costs worth it.

Eric, who has a PhD in history, was a great driver. He told me about some of his other jobs, from milking cows in Canada to trucking cheese from Wisconsin to Alabama. Currently a bus driver in Ohio, he has a reputation as a mean bus driver, which caused me no little amount of laughter. He goes out of his way to pick up hitchhikers because, "They're interesting, alot more so than me. They have good stories." Eric also revealed I was a poor example of a hitchhiker, they're usually "between 30 and their late 40s and look alot more like tramps than you do. They're always heading somewhere, which I find odd because they don't have anywhere to be."

4. Suck it up, buttercup
There's a bitter moment of realization, a lump of rancid cocoa in hot chocolate, so to speak, whenever you do outdoor things. It's that moment when it's raining and terrifically cold outside at 2am in the morning and you wake up in a clammy, uncomfortable sweat realizing you have to pee. Or, you wanted to hitchhike at least 40 wundy-dundy miles today and ended up walking 10 heat-stroke and sobbing fit soaked miles instead.

Or you take a Greyhound/Mega-bus and encounter the colorful demographic of a city. In my own travel-induced, weariness-laden words:

"The person who had previously entered the Aggressive Odor event in the Olympics seemed to have incapacitated themselves and fallen off the bus, taking their singular stench cloud along with them. I was going to miss that stench cloud; it had the character of a thousand sodden trashcans or a dormful of once lava hot, now forgotten-under-the-couch hot pockets mixed with fresh sewage. It's characters like this that define the greyhound experience in a way ordinary travelers often struggle to do."

Easy and boring are normal.

Being adventurous with a touch of insane? That's the stuff stories are made of. Just remember that insanity means putting up with mundane troubles along with extreme problems: It's often a matter of, "My breath smells worse than the armpits of a thousand dragons" rather than "I wish I had more than two spoons and a motley sleeping bag to fight off this rabid jaguar." But do the ends justify the means- a world of inconvenience for an unknown goal?

Well, it depends. Are you asking a traveler?

"I'm glad I made it here after crossing the mountains of death.
But right now, I need to pee." -Struggles of a traveler

Getting to Charleston: The journey's the adventure

There's nothing like the right pool of songs flooding your ears to give you an ethereal feel of having a soundtrack to your life. It's best at those special moments, when you take a deep breath and enjoy yourself; you realize how incredible it is, simply put, that everything works and everything's okay. Usually, at least.
Welcome to my Charleston trip with Brendan York, we'll be your misguided travelers for today.

This picture is just a little gay, but I'm sure 12 instagram filters could've fixed that if I wanted.
For those who were wondering (noone, probably) that's a Tollhouse Pie from Kaminsky's
Most Excellent Cafe, which is a wonderful name and they deserve to thrive. It's on Market St.
in the middle of downtown Charleston, and I think people thought we were hoboes who stole it
when we were loitering around eating it outside at like 10pm on a weekday...

(Charleston, SC) York and I were on a bus in those seats where you're forced to face other people, and so most of the trip is avoiding eye contact and pretending those people aren't there as if simply looking at them will give you Hepatitises A-F, when an older African American man with disheveled clothing and an Air Force veteran cap plops down stolidly across from us. He begins talking at us (was more of AT than to, really), but that turns into mouth-frothing harassment after awhile and he's yelling something about Rosa Parks at us, two poor young white kids just wanting to go to the beach, please leave us alone, when another man sits right next to us with a bucket and some kind of long cleaning mop or what have you. The older man begins harassing him. They both stand, yelling louder and louder until BAM! the younger fellow whales him in the face.


That's travelling. You live that every moment, realizing you can do just about anything and noone except you cares, because treasuring a moment and creating an album of personal photographs to laugh at with your buddies is all worth it- noone likes listening to travelers because they're the only ones who know what is was like to be there, hitchhiking from the beach or not having a place to sleep that night. Retelling stories means glossing over your entire adventure to pick out the 'exciting bits,' and thinking, "How can I tell this person what it felt like to embrace the sun and walk along a road for miles with everything I need in a backpack, wielding complete freedom and a stupid smile?" That's the hard part of traveling... and you realize it's pretty difficult, don't you? I mean, do you tell other people how exciting ice cream is? No, you simply recall the experience was generally pleasant and you and the ice cream got on quite well.

Artist's rendering. Not sure where the boxing glove came from.
Also, the guy was black. And old. And had sunglasses on....
I'm firing my artist.

I regret googling ice cream war, why aren't there more
appropriate pictures of people just throwing ice cream everywhere?

(Dover, DE) We got off the plane and make it outside of Dover Air Force Base; it's 10pm at night by now and what else is there to do but loiter outside of the front gate of the military base, just assing around while a cop car circles by? It wasn't even one of those menacing drive-bys where the officer is deciding whether or not to jump out and start filling us with new belly buttons, much more a curious, lazy drive-by or three where he glances over at us to figure out what we're doing in his world, maybe ride us over for fun or something. Finally, our couchsurfing host for the night. Manny, pulls up with a smile bigger than a wolf's at dinner, (not exactly the same kind of smile, but the same size), and introduces himself while leaning out the passenger side of his car to two strangers with obese backpacks. Like, we're talking some serious type 2 diabetes up in these backpacks.

Seriously,  my artist is so fired, our backpacks aren't  even that shade of pink

And so travelers don't tell stories to most people because most people don't care to really listen, at least not carefully enough, and honestly, they're not at fault.

You need to be there! It's like the highest form of inside joke is that mutual experience of wondering if this stranger will be some weirdo or an awesome traveler type, whether walking through historic plantations is actually fun (it kinda is), and if hitchhiking from the beach will work (it should?).


(Philadelphia, PA) We got lucky when it turns out Manny was heading north the next day up to Philly- this is some serious living on the edge here, like a penguin walking a greased up tightrope, because plan B was wingin' it. (Spoiler: Plan B would've ended poorly.) Throughout the entire trip, even in Philly, Yorkie and I are approached by bums or hoodlums or strangers asking us for money, as if having a backpack the size of a triple bypass burger with extra bacon means that we have an infinite supply of money- why does that make us a juicy target for bloody panhandlers? The last guy in Philly, I just talked at him in Polish while walking away.

That's when we walked into Heaven's Food Court (not the real name, why it isn't is a great question because that's a great name for what we discovered), an entire city block's worth of food courts indoors. For some reason, there's a big market share in Philadelphia for Amish fast food, which I found very questionable on several moral and philosophical levels, but I just went with the flow.



So that's why I'll listen to Ugly Casanova's Lonesome Blues and lean back, smiling, because for a moment I'm traveling. It's a beach-walking, sun-smiling, deep-breath sighing song that's a short glimpse of the road ahead of you or a place you've already trundled through.

Almost like the show, but without all the gaping plot holes
and nonsense everywhere, no offense Lost fans

The world is quite the large place. In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a man invents a Perspective Vortex that gives people a true look at their place in the universe, and the experience is so traumatizing they're separated from their bodies and vaporized, in short. Traveling isn't quite that bad, really, less vaporizing and more walking and being lost in general... and there's nothing quite bad about it, let's be honest. It makes me feel invincible, unlike when Yorkles and I wound up in the Star of America motel in North Charleston where we were very impressed to wake up alive, let alone rested and covered in cigarette ash.

Next stop, West Coast.

(Written before I went to the West Coast, revised after I visited Hawaii)

The Running of the Thorns

Ohio is a beautiful state.

Not really. I'm just hoping that if states are indeed sentient, it read that sentence and, in the sweeping whirlwind of emotion and joy of being complimented for the first time ever, it stopped reading. Ohio is a terrible state. Even statistics, the holy grail of human persuasion, attest to it: Ohio has the 7th largest state population in the United States, and yet has achieved the admirable feat of the worst 10 states to live in. Is anyone surprised? With a lack of landscape, 6 months of hellish (well, not in the thermic sense of the word, this place is like a wind tunnel mixed with a bloody walk-in meat freezer) winter that drags on, and just general lack of appeal, noone is surprised that Ohio ranks worse in statehood than places like Wyoming, Oklahoma, or even Utah, none of which anyone really knew existed in the first place. (Seriously, has anyone ever met someone from Wyoming?)

How does this not look suspicious?

But yesterday, there was a glorious breakthrough. In an earth-shattering blow, spring broke through the impermeable suck barrier of Ohio and blessed us with 70 degree weather. What else does an incredibly good-looking person do on a 70 degree Sunday other than go for a jog?

Well, hopefully, they reconsider going on a jog.

A Look at the Past
You're on a side of a hill that is swathed in tall grass and bathed in sunlight. Looking around you, there are trails branching out like the arms of a baby born in Chernobyl.
But beware: just like not all of those arms are functioning, not all of those trails are actual trails.
This was the case when I was in Poland, not far from a sawmill in mountain country, mountain biking around. I climbed up cliffs with one arm, holding on to the bike with the other, jumped across chasms unimaginable to the ordinary mind, and cried pathetically when faced with biking down huge hilltops. I did not think such a capricious landscaping job of nature would ever befall me again, and yet, here I am, living in Ohio...

"Welcome to Ohio. Would you like a side order of regret with that suck?"

The Trails are Fake
Arriving at Bryant State Park with a smile on my face and a spring in my running step, I did what any rational human being would do: take the path of least resistance after seeing a sign, "Williamson Mounds," which sounded promising compared to the other destinations (Bradley Mudpits, 'Rocks', and 'Real live Trees') if I recall correctly. Not only are mounds only something that people consider something to behold in Ohio, but within 50 feet of heading in the direction of the mounds, the trail had deteriorated into a maze of amorphous, dusty paths going in all directions. What to make of this, you may ask? And to that I replied, alas with the rapid step of my feet, by shooting down whichever path looked most trustworthy, that is, barely any of them. This twisted joke of a trail continued through bushes and trees until I made it to a real, actual trail with wooden structures and a wide path of seemingly good repute
.
Life lesson: Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Do not go where the path may lead, instead go where there is no path and leave a trail."

Go for it, Emerson, make my day.

Thanks to selfish, introspective dung-heaps such as Emerson who blunder around in state parks blazing their own bloody trails, innocent joggers are led face first into the brambles down transcendentalist paths and pulled out weeks later after they died of thousands of puncture wounds, because did I mention half the barely-existent vegetation in Ohio is thorns?


The Vegetation is Murderous
If you've ever been to the Midwest, you know there's a lack of trees and greenery as serious as the lack of manliness in Prius drivers. Yet, when there's small forests, more like patches of forsaken, lost, and generally disheveled trees, it's almost as if the malice of the state itself seeps into the soil and sprouts the most terrible creations ever seen this side of the Mississippi.

Welcome to every state park in Ohio, pictured here.

Let's step back, (much like I did on my run backing away from a thorn tree, only to step into a bed of thorns) and imagine what a trail might look like:
After beginning out promising with a solid dirt path and tame plants, after 50 feet, the path quickly deteriorates into a  thin, snaking line of dirt bordered by the most murderous thorns you've ever seen. All over the trail are fallen trees and thorn trees, literal trees made of thorns which have smaller thorns branching off the bigger thorns. After you're finished sobbing pathetically on the ground after seeing one or two of these suckers, you'll try to walk around 'em, only to run into tiny thorns which attack your legs and arms with the gusto of a group of acrobat street performers on bath salts. Really, it only gets worse after that, and I'll spare you the displeasure of knowing the vegetative horrors of going on a run in the Midwest, or really anywhere, because although running and jogging are some of the most inferior forms of exercise, just a step above things like luge and competitive eating, or whatever, they're probably healthy or something..



The Traps are Real
As I slowed to jogs through forests of thorns and death, I'd catch glimpses "trails" in the distance between murder-death thorns and dash towards them with all the grace of a crippled ostrich. Getting on them is a relief, only until you realize it may not actually be a trail, but possibly only a narrow path where the factions of thorns established a narrow DMZ. What choice does one have? It's times like those that spur a man to believe in fatalism, or just the malice of nature (and Ohio); "Your destiny... is thorns." Well, this particular DMZ began to run adjacent to a waterway, and me being the adventurous fellow I am, I began looking for a way to cross it.

That's when I saw it. A pipe crossing the river. An old, rusty-brown and dead-moss white pipe just barely wide enough to shimmy across sideways, suspended 20 feet above a river that was questionably green. And, lo, on each side of the river where the pipe disappears into the hillside, a visible trail worn into the underbrush. An apparition? A mean trick of Ohio? An actual path where suicidal individuals regularly cross, daring fate to topple them over and end their misery of living in a bottom-10 state (Why don't they just move)?

"Hmm, raise it 40 feet over a river and it's perfect for kids!" - Ohio park planner

I dared not find out, til a few hundred feet later I ran into another treacherous trap.

A much nicer concrete bridge obliged me to cross into some kind of industrial complex. A sign on the tired chain-link fence read, "NO TRESPASSING," as if someone wanted to enter a smorgasbord of deadly  chemicals and industrial death-ness. And yet, the gate was cracked open just enough to evidence a trail WORN INTO THE GRASS, as if everyone in Ohio disregards authority like a dung beetle disregards hygiene. I almost entered, but decided not to on the grounds that I was in Ohio, and either a gigantic sinkhole would eat me moments after crossing the fence and deposit me in the laboratory of a mad scientist(s?), or an overly eagerly security guard would shoot me on sight.
I continued, alive and happy for not having fallen for the wily tricks of Ohio.

"CLEARLY off limits."

No Self-Affirmation

Anyone who prides themselves in being good-looking and working will tell you about the 20-80 rule, where a fifth of your time is spent working out and improving yourself, and the rest of the time is spent checking yourself out in mirrors and flexing gratuitously. Running is unpalatable because you can only do this in car windows and inadvertently look like a car thief/serial pedophile, or not do it at all because you're in the middle of a bloody state park and trees do not grow mirrors.
Even the occasional sucker who happens to be in a state park at the same time as you are, because seriously, it's a state park, will not be able to compliment you on your good looks and handsome pectorals as you speed past them, because a) you are so very fast! and b) you'll only ever get a cordial grunt and obligatory Midwestern handwave. The horror.




And so, a word of advice- just run while you can, not to sentient state parks hellbent on murdering all who enter; run to tropical paradises with palm trees and mangoes and comforting sand and blue waters, because the rest of us are stuck in old and cold Ohio, running and committing self-mutilation for entertainment.

"Enjoy your beaches and mountains while I roll in corn, chumps!" -  Everyone in Ohio

The Barren State and a Beautiful Woman

Nostalgia can be incredibly irrational- it makes us long for things that we used to enjoy; things that at one point might have been fun or we enjoyed doing with people we cherish.

But that's where nostalgia needs to stop. The worst thing you can do about a bout of nostalgia is to look at it like a small, unsuspecting child looks at a hornet's nest and think, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I tried to experience THAT." (Hopefully not again, though.) Stirring up nostalgia is akin to chucking dynamite into a perfectly good lake with still waters and living fish- it only looked nice because you weren't a big enough dolt to mess it up in the first place.

"Needs more dynamite"

   There are two main kinds of nostalgia, at least for the sake of this post, and I'll look at short-term nostalgia:  longing for a recent experience or place. Over Christmas break, as I rested in the comforting bosom of New Jersey with all its accompanying wonders, I began to long after Ohio.

Now let me give myself some space here- Ohio's not much of a state to begin with. It's mostly empty space that no one really bothered naming, claiming, or really even living in until the time came when the Department of the Interior said, "There's a big hole in America, let's just kind of pretend it's a state until people catch on."

A sobering fact: the population of Ohio is 7th on a list of 50 American states.
Let me give you a virtual tour of Ohio, and this picture will become familiar very quickly, because it resembles all of Ohio.

State destination brochure

A solid eleven-and-a-half million people live in Ohio. That's entirely too many. It's scarily too many. When states came up with mottoes, the legislature of Ohio, consisting of several wrinkly, reluctant old men who clearly have given up on life to the point of administrating a place like Ohio, could doubtedly come up with little more than, "Suck." In fact, that's probably the motto of the Midwest. While California cherishes their motto of, "We like beaches, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sunshine and marijuana" the best the Midwest really has to offer is "suck."

So understand my grave concern over the fact that I was, to any capacity at all, longing to return to Ohio. When it was finally time to drive back, I was lucky that night fell before I solidly entered the Midwest lest I break down into tears and purposely drive off a bridge for the lack of landscape and perfectly flat geography. You see, the main problem is that there would be no bridges, because the highest point in Ohio is two, maybe three inches higher than sea level, so I suspect.

Welcome to Ohio. We had a hill, once.

But imagine my surprise when the next day I saw Ohio covered in glorious snow! Now, if Ohio is an old, haggard woman with no redeeming physical features and no personality, snow is the full body suit that Ohio wears to disguise that fact. And unlike other disguises, which trick you into working for a sewage company for years because of a fake contract or cause you to mistake an assassin for an ordinary garbageman with a bad limp, this one is wonderful and glorious.

"Your qualifications to race in the Indy 500 seem legit,
especially with your racecar driver suit and superb mullet. Hired!"

Or rather, was. Ohio, the state of eternal suck, was not happy with her wondrous appearance. "I have entirely too much of looking beautiful and being desirable," she must've thought in her derelict and barren mind. And so, there came one SINGLE day of nice weather that melted away all the snow and uncovered the horrors beneath, namely, just Ohio. And of course, there was no way nice weather could've lasted either- the day after, it became miserable and horrible and so cold your eyelids could freeze open if you tried to cry at how disgusting the landscape is.

Next time, I'll be writing an article called, "So your eyelids have frozen open again..."