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