hitching

I got back home a couple days ago from a rather spontaneous road trip I went on with a friend. The plan was to hitch to vancouver and back, with part of the journey covered by driving someone's car for them up to vancouver (gas paid). That was arranged through craigslist. That would have been great, except that we were refused entry at the border because we didn't have enough cash on us. In our determination, we attempted to go to another bordercrossing, four hours away. But apparently, that's called bordershopping, which violates their immigration act. So they could have technically thrown us in jail for the night. Instead, we just got chewed out and detained for a couple hours to try to make us sweat. We ended up just having to take the guy's car back to Denver and pay for the gas ourselves. Other than not quite making it to our destination, the trip was very fun. We made some really cool friends while we stayed in Denver for a few days before hitching back.

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The act of hitching itself was a rewarding experience, having faith in the kindness of strangers to get us home. Out of the many rides we got, only one even approached being questionable as far as safety. The guy was driving rather fast, and talking even faster. And let's just say that I think I got second hand smoke from something other than tobacco. He got us out of the middle of Kansas City though. We were very grateful for that. When we started back from Denver, we got a ride really quickly, and from a guy in a very luxurious RV, driving his daughter to college. He drove us for 8 hours from Denver. We watched two movies and had some lively political debate. Other than those two, the rest of our rides were relatively plain. It was always as exciting as hell to be picked up, to have someone actually pull off the road to open up a momentary relationship of mutual aid. Often, the people who picked us up had hitchhiked themselves in the past, or had a parent that used to pick up hitchhikers. One was motivated by his recent conversion to christianity. Others didn't seem to need any special motivation at all - they were just willing to help us out. I think everyone benefited from each ride/pickup in some way.

At any rate, it was a whole lot of fun to do something so spontaneous and supposedly risky. I want more of that in the future.

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