I was traveling in Mexico and didn’t have enough money to get to Los Angeles from the Yucatan. So I got a plane to Neuvo Loredo, walked across the border, and started to hitchhike right there. I was trying to get from Loredo to L.A. Most people were just nice, and giving me a ride. But several were picking me up because they wanted something else. Namely, sex.
First, an elderly man and woman picked me up. She was extremely obese, the husband asked me if I would have sex with her because for some reason he couldn’t. I said no, and they just left me off when we go to their tow
Then, to get across Texas, two guys picked me up and took me all the say to Arizona. They told me they’d left New Orleans because people were hassling them, but they didn’t say why. They had a dog that was named after a character in some 80s TV series (“Dynasty,” I think), and they drand beer and threw the cans out the window. Then we stopped at a west Texas campground to sleep for the night. I had a hammock I’d bought in the Yucatan, and they had a tent. In the middle of the night one of the guys came up to me and said that they were gay and would like to have me “between” them. I just said, “Sorry, I’m not gay.” The next morning, they took me all the way to Arizona’s most desolate, hottest place, Gila Bend, where I waited two days for a ride. I had tow bollios.
The next time, I decided to get out of Berkeley, so I hitchhiked from there to the Cerntral Vally–Turlock, of all places. I slept there in the same Yucatecan hamock, in a grape vineyard, and then back, whithout a single proposition.
Yes, when I was 18/19 I hitchhiked with a few friends in central/eastern Mexico. We were intending to climb up a mountain and camp on it - we had been travelling in a van which we had a relatively safe location for and for some reason didn’t really want to drive it all the way to the point we wanted to start climbing from.
It was about 20 km or so, and we got two different rides. One in the back of a truck (it’s legal to ride in the back of trucks there, so that was a fun experience I never had in the states), and another in the back of a station wagon with a middle-aged man, his wife, and two kids (in retrospect he was probably more crazy for giving us a ride than we were for hitchhiking. I sure as hell wouldn’t pick up hitchhikers with my kids in the car!)
On another occassion, also in Mexico, myself and two friends got a long ride from a trucker from Guadalajara to Puebla, stopping in Mexico City. He was also middle-aged and told us pretty much his whole life story while we were sitting in that cab. This was in November of 2004, so the U.S. presidential election was going on and we managed to barely pick up a signal from this little beat-up radio he had, to learn of Senor Bush’s re-election.
On none of these occasions did anyone solicit any of us for sex. They were all actually pretty nice.
My car got towed once while I was hiking, and I had to hitchhike into town to bail it out. Very deserted roadway, a station wagon full of bikers stopped for me. As they opened the door, they had to pick up the gun that was on the seat so I could sit down. The car smelled like old bikers and gun powder. I was scared at first, but they were very cool, and even helped me break my car free, since we couldn’t find anyone around to negotiate its release.
In those days I hitchhiked occasionally, but I must say I never enjoyed it much.
I used to hitch all the time when I was a young military man and had no money. I usually was hitching to my girl’s house in Simi Valley. The only odd ride I had was from a guy who handed me this tiny little cigarette and asked me to light it. I said he could have one of my Marlboros, and he told me no, that this was his brand. Yeah, I was pretty naive.
I used to hitch a lot, mostly between two towns about 9 miles apart to get to work and back. Nothing untoward ever happened. Always got picked up.
Also hitched with a pal from Wormtown MA to the Croatan Ntl Forest on the coast of NC for shits and giggles. Took us a week. Got picked up by a bunch of drunk folks. Nobody really nasty. Got called ‘collitch boys’ by a few truckers.
But when we got there, after we set up camp, we met up with some ‘bad old boys,’ young men with trucks and beer and gimme caps, who were various shades of hostile. They left and a couple dudes stayed behind, Sean and Elton (this was 1985 people! Why do I remember that?), to tell us that if we didn’t vacate the bad old boys were gonna come back and pull a Deliverance on us (maybe w/ no buttfuckin’ but horrific beating Harry Crews-style). Talk about perpetuating Southern stereotypes!
They took us home to Sean’s trailer, where they smoked all our weed, fed us and sent us on our way the next morning. I still remember how soft the water was in the shower the next morning and how I had never experienced that and couldn’t figure out why the soap wouldn’t wash off.
Hitched around Europe in my younger days. Made it from Brussels to Basel in one ride, from a British trucker coming from England. We passed through Luxembourg and the northeast corner of France.
Only ever really hitch’d short distances. First time was after soccer practice in High School, before I had a car, and I’d missed my ride home. A friend’s mom saw me but didn’t pick me up, and in fact came up to me the next day to tell me how dangerous hitch hiking was (to which I replied “if it’s so dangerous, why didn’t you pick me up?!”) she was kind of a *****.
I also used to hitch to and from campus a lot in college when I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus, but everyone did it, and we’d usually get picked up by fellow students (and when I had to drive to campus for some reason or another I’d always pick up hitch hikers as a way to pay back some karma).
Had some crazy times, but nothing too bad.
My buddy, however, got picked up by a woman once who was apparently on her way to commit suicide by driving off a cliff. I guess she didn’t REALLY want to do it, hence picking up a hitch hiker, but my friend had to talk her out of it (she wasn’t threatening to go over the cliff with him in the car or anything, but still) apparently she’d been cheated on by her husband or something, I don’t remember. I just remember he told me, after he talked her out of it, she propositioned him for sex. He got the hell out of there as soon as he could.
I hitched in the late 70s. We used to hike over Mt. Manitou, then to the top of Pike’s Peak. Then we’d hitch back down. We stumbled across a few flower-child type hippies, but not much else. It was fun.
Hitched all over the place between the ages of 16 and 25. Lots of local stuff (Albuquerque to Los Alamos), but also longer treks (New Mexico to California; New Mexico to New York; Louisiana to Georgia).
Worst stretch of countryside I ever tried to hitch in was a nasty slice of west Texas: I was a (non-hitching) passenger in a car eastbound and he blew a rear tire and had no spare. We were just a ways across the border on Interstate 40, didn’t have a map, and the last place we’d been through was a tiny place called San Jon (which was actually back in New Mexico). With blown tire in hand, I began hitching. People will usually stop when you are so obviously hitching due to car probs, but folks were veering way off over into the left lane and locking their passenger side doors as they sailed past me at 60 mph. Guess they thought I was gonna leap at them and kill & eat them if they got too close. Had to walk the whole freaking 30 miles to San Jon.
Over the years I had many folks offer me a bit of food as well as the ride, in some cases even buying me a meal in a diner or truck stop, etc.
My trip to NY was probably most lurid:
a) I got picked up on I-40 by a couple of very drunk fellows from Tulsa Oklahoma, who apparently had to go out of state to get hooch. (Said Oklahoma was mostly dry counties). They managed to avoid colliding with oncoming cars and only put the wheels off the asphalt a couple dozen times and usualy not for long, but then their engine seized in the middle of the highway, turns out their oil pressure lamp was burned out and they’d been driving without much oil.
b) On the other side of Texas, I got picked up by a couple who were headed all the way back to NY and I shared the driving with them in shifts and we did it nonstop. Their very very first order of business when they got into Manhattan was to go into sections streets off of Lenox Ave until someone gave them some kind of sign, and then we went up a staircase, got patted down very professionally, then entered a room where my erstwhile companions quickly got down to poking heroin into their veins. When I thougth of drugs, I thought marijuana and LSD. Yowza!
I used to hitchhike fairly often in the late seventies-early eighties and continued picking up hitchhikers long after that. Never got picked up by weirdos but picked up two people that were kind of strange but not scarey.
I have hitchhiked more recently but it was along a heavily paddled river where the idea is to leave your kayak and gear at the put-in, drive your vehicle to the take out and hitch back so you can paddle downstream to your vehicle. You mostly get picked up by other paddlers but I have gotten rides with “civilians” also.
I hitched a lot in my late teens, as I was in college and had no car.
I have no interesting tales to tell. The only thing that stands out was one old man who turned his car around to give me a ride and kept touching my thigh. I didn’t realize until later that he was probably coming on to me. (I was a trifle naive in my youth.)
I have much more interesting stories about hitchers that I have picked up.
From Southern Ontario to Dawson City, Yukon, and back. Some of those roads it was hours between cars, some little more than dirt tracks, some still being constructed. It was a grand adventure, and I am glad I did it.
Ran out of luck getting rides once, but found a camp of Japanese sailors who shared their beer and barbeque. Shared too much beer before the beef and got so damn drunk that I was puking and taking a dump at the same time, while mosquitoes were biting my balls.
Met a guy who put me up in an apartment in Tokyo for a month. Really nice guy with a great family.
Camped out under a bridge in a pouring rain. A local stopped by to find out what was the story, drove 20 minutes to the closest store to buy some food and drinks for me.
I think I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again.
Back when I was a dumb young thing (18 or 19 maybe), my boyfriend and I decided to go to California. (We lived in North MS). He had a sister living in San Diego and I had a sister living in L.A. I think we thought that we’d go out there for work, although to be honest those days are kind of hazy so who knows!
Anyway, we commenced our trip in an old Dodge pickup truck I had. I don’t remember what year, it had big pie-plate reflectors around the headlights, a stick shift and a manual choke. It was a great old truck, but it used a bit of oil.
Made it to Jackson O.K., turned right and headed across Louisiana. A valve in the engine started tapping and I asked Doofus to check the oil which he pronouced “fine, quit worrying”. Few miles down the road it began some real knocking; again he said it was “fine”. My mistake was that I never checked it myself! As we got to Beaumont the dang thing threw a rod or something and he realized he’d been reading the stick wrong the whole time. :smack:
Anyway we sold the truck to some dudes we met there and proceeded to hitchike the rest of the way to San Diego. Most of the trip was uneventful. One man did take us to some place in Texas where he promised work for my b/f. Left us in a hotel and didn’t come back for 3 days. We snuck out and got a ride outta there - seems like it was one-way-out, like an island or peninsula.
Another thing I remember is waking up in the Painted Desert (spent the night out in the open) and being super-amazed at the beauty of the place.
The last leg (past NM I think), this guy was a Marine going to San Diego in a U-Haul and so the b/f and he split the driving.
Lots of more wild things happend in Cali but that’s another whole thread.
15 years ago I decided to see some of Alaska after working all summer and travel around before flying home. Hitched from Denali N.P. to Skagway and remember all 8 rides. What I hadn’t known beforehand was just how empty and untravelled some of these roads would be. Often there simply was no traffic at all and the waits could be both boring and frustrating as I tried to stay on schedule, mileage-wise.
Denali to Wasilla - Trucker that had just lost his wife who’d always ridden with him and needed someone to talk to.
Wasilla to Anchorage cutoff - 17 year old that just got off a fishing boat, showed me check in his pocket for 80 grand.
Anchorage cutoff to Palmer - some nice lookin’ lady in a van… maybe it was Sarah.
Palmer to Glenallen - Guy going to work at tanker terminal in Valdez.
Glenallen to Gakona - It was raining and this guy picked me up for a short ride on his way to visit an old sourdough. I look at him, roughhewn fella, and said “Hey, you run a halibut charter out of Homer.” He looked at me funny and said yeah, he did! I’d just seen him filet out a big halibut on the docks in seconds and thought at the time that’s one guy not to ever get in a knife fight with. Then the next year I was back in Homer, saw him at the Salty Dog and bought him a beer. Tony DiMichelle was his name, boat captain.
Gaucona to Tok - Sat at that damn highway intersection for 6 hours and maybe saw 3 or 4 cars. Desolate! Finally a couple in an RV picked me up. They sold their California house and made so much money off it they bought the RV and were travelling all over the US for a year to figure out where they wanted to live next.
Tok to Whitehorse - A couple in a camper saw me walking along a very desolate and bear infested area and stopped. I’d waited forever but finally just started hiking. He was dying of cancer and in terrible pain and had worn his wife out talking so they were both thrilled to have fresh ears. We ended up becomeing really close friends and they had me stay with them for several days and help with the driving. We actually got all teary when we finally parted ways. I’m sure he’s long gone now.
Whitehorse to Skagway - 2 guys in a P.U. w/ camper shell. While one slept in back the other drove. He immediately started asking me about being a Christian so I knew he was okay. But when we went through Canadian Customs they opened the other’s packpack and all these needles fell out. I thought oh crap, I’m in for it now but, thankfully, he aws a diabetic. We just made it to Skagway on time for me to catch the ferry down the inside passage by less than an hour, this after 8 days of travel. Went to Ketchikan, then flew to Sitka, Anchorage and back home.
When in HS in Chicago in the 70s, the SOP was to go to a bus stop and stick out your thumb, and see if someone stopped before the next bus showed. Probably got a ride 25% of the time.
When I was 19 I hitchhiked from Tallahassee, FL up the east coast to Maine and then back down to Virginia. I then hiked a couple hundred miles of the AT and got off the trail to hitch back home through middle America. All in all a fun trip, and I only had two weird incidents.
The first was from a fellow in an El Camino who stopped long enough to try and exchange oral sex for a ride in Tennessee. The second was outside of Tuscaloosa, where a guy in a Corolla picked me up an then proceeded to preach at me. The preaching wasn’t so bad, the miscellaneous issues of various survival magazines, porn magazines, pages from the Bible pasted all over the car, and empty condom wrappers was a whole different story. I was convinced he was gonna do something bad to me, but he mainly preached and let me out when he got to where he was going.
My scariest, probably, was a young couple in a pickup truck who already had one hitcher in the back. Thanks to them I wound up at gunpoint on the side of the road. It turns out that they (or he, with her consent) had brutally beaten her father and stolen his truck. When the cops turned on the lights to pull them over I’m just glad they pulled over. Being in a high speed car chase as a passenger in the bed of a pickup would have sucked.
I had some very nice experiences too. In Georgia an older woman in a convertible vette picked me up, bought me dinner, and drove me 30 miles past her exit because she knew that the police in her town would probably pick me up. I had a reverend pick my up in North Carolina, buy me dinner and some instant type hiking food. Two girls in South Carolina picked me up and took me to a party, and I ended up staying with them for almost a week. My favorite was a buy in a van with a CB who’s call sign was “Cherry”. He gave me my longest ride, paid for the meals, and arranged to have a trucker pick me up at the exit he was stopping at. Very nice guy, and lots of fun to listen to on the CB.
I used to have a journal of it, but it was lost in one of my moves. I did it to “find myself”, and didn’t really find myself. On the other hand, it was a lot of fun.
Agent Foxtrot and I hitched a ride on the Greek island of Aegina, when our rented motorbike unexpectedly sputtered to a stop. If you ever rent a motorbike, don’t trust the gas gauge, I’ll tell you that! Anyway, we were in our swimsuits and sunglasses, and there was a gas station a couple of miles back, and another one a couple of miles ahead. We stashed the bike in a large bush to hide it so it wouldn’t get stolen, and stuck out our thumbs.
A nice Greek lady with several kids in the back seat stopped for us. She didn’t speak any English and we didn’t know any Greek, but we got her to understand we needed some ‘petrol’. She took us to the gas station, where she explained our predicament to the owner. We bought a plastic water jug, emptied it, filled it with gas, and she drove us back to our bike. She never propositioned us or anything (not that we could tell).
Hitched a lot back in the late 70s. Because I had a beard and was usually on the shaggy side I didn’t get a lot of rides from respectable folks. It was just painful trying to go any long distances.
Picked up by a guy in a giant convertible Caddy who swerved across 3 lanes to get to me. He claimed to have just been released form prison in Mexico and was looking for an open bar. I had a couple of bottles of beer on hand (my secret to making friends) so we had a pleasant ride until that was gone. I ended up about 2 miles from where I started.
Picked up in Florida, 5:00 am, by three drunk guys who insisted I go to Denny’s with them. After breakfast and a tour of their dinky town they took me right back to where I started.
One of the few single women to ever pick me up (hitching) stated flat-out that she would like to take me home except that she had to go to work. So much for the hitchhiker’s fantasy.
It seems like most of these accounts happened quite a while ago. I wonder if people still hitchhike (in the U.S.–I think Europe might be different). I don’t think I’d try it now.
