Well. The whole Ted Bundy reference is a bummer. But my husband & I used to pick up hitchhikers if they “looked right.” One time, (I was alone in the truck) I picked up a hitchhiker who had his thumb stuck out & one leg extended back like he was going somewhere…I knew he was “grooving” [I HATE that word] to an inner beat. He had one of those chrome backpacks? Like a career traveler? I liked his sense of humour as in how to get a ride (look like a frozen picture “going”) & stopped. When he looked in the window I said, “I’ll give you a ride if you promise not to rob me or rape me.” He said, “If you promise not to rape or rob me too, I’ll get in.”
Another time we picked up a guy on 11E. (A trecherous, trecherous winding road.) It was pouring down rain. Traffic was snailing along so we’d had time to see him & discuss whether to pick him up or not. He was a Freak. (None of us ever called ourselves hippies.) We ended up taking him all the way home; “Go down straight aways & turn left. Now go for while till you go over the creek & turn right.” He said he was a candle-maker & we talked about that. Months later at the TVA & I fair, coursing thru the Jacob’s Building, (which exhibtied cars, honey, & the years best tobacco) we saw him at a booth. His candles were stupendous & he was selling a lot of them. When we all saw each other he yelled, “These are the people who saved my ass!” We talked for a bit & he gave us a really neat candle. We never burned it.
Hitchhiked in Europe back in college days.
Did it once in Thailand when I was stranded, but in general over here they’ll look at you like you’re from Mars if they see you doing it. It’s just not done.
My son hitchhiker from Toronto to Vancouver with three friends and :eek: two dogs!
They split into two groups of two people and one dog but I was astonished that they all made it there in relatively good time. Homeward trip starts soon and I can start sleeping again.
Apparently I’ve managed to miss a very common cultural meme. What’s with the towel references?
As to the OP; I’ve never hitchhiked, but have picked up 2 or 3 over the years. One that stands out was a country road back in the 70’s. I actually watched the car in front of me start smoking and expire. I offered the two occupants a ride to the next town. They asked if they could get some valuables out of their car first, and I watched dumbfounded as they loaded a half-dozen rifles into my trunk. Since they let me lock these in the trunk, I figured they weren’t much danger. It was just weird that none of the guns were in a case.
Usually I don’t pick up hitchhikers, though.
Douglas Adamses ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I’ve never hitch hiked in North America and never will. But have done it with friends plenty of times in Ireland and the UK. No bad experiences.
I hitch sometimes when I’m hiking. 
If I hike a trail and end up a distance from my car I will hitchhike back to my car. I’m usually picked up by other hikers or locals who see hikers often. I occasionally pick up hitchhikers if they’re obviously looking for a ride to a trailhead or into town, especially near the Appalachian Trail in NH and ME.
I’ll say. Once, I was hitching from Fairbanks to Haines, and we got stuck outside Delta Junction. There were about six other parties hitching at the same place, each about 30 yards apart. As one got picked up, everybody else moved up one spot. Took us most of the day to get a ride, as many of the vehicles were huge RVs driven by retirees who were too terrified to pick up the footloose. One thing I noticed, if a car with a cracked windshield approached, the chance of being picked up increased.
Is that where there’s an aluminum light pole that’s covered with graffetti, international stickers, etc? I was stuck there for 5 hours and maybe saw 3 or 4 vehicles before an RV finally picked me up.
That was when I hitched from Denali to Skagway, 8 separate rides in all. Another RV took me across much of the Canada stretch and even insisted I sleep nights in their vehicle. Marvelous memories of really good people up there. Later when I lived in AK and had my Jeep I’d often pick up hitchers and never felt uneasy in the slightest.
At one time there were actually people in America who didn’t own cars! A shocking state of affairs. Any long distance trip I made in those days (my college days) required finding someone going my way from the college or hitching. In both cases it was usually someone I didn’t know. I met some very interesting people.
I spent childhood summers in Poland in the late 80s and early 90s, and I remember the first time my cousin casually suggested hitching a ride somewhere. This was in the rural areas - farmland and tiny vacation cottages. There was a moment of complete culture shock/confusion: me horrified at the thought, her horrified at how paranoid Americans are (and teach their children to be - I was maybe 11 at the time.)
Absent cultural context, it seems like hitchhiking–both the seeking and the offering of rides–ought to be a very normal, common thing. Most drivers are going around with more passenger space and more energy consumption than is actually required for their transport needs for the day. It’s cleaner and more efficient for the community at large when this excess capacity is put to use.
Like numerous others in this thread, I hitchhiked in the 70s. My longest trips were from Connecticut to Iowa and back, and from Iowa to Albany, NY via Ontario. I was lucky in that I never had any bad experiences. I wouldn’t hitchhike, or pick up a hitchhiker, now… at least not in this part of the country; sounds like things are different elsewhere.
What do you say to the one legged hitchhiker?
Hop in.
I’ve picked up several hitchhikers, mostly in Iowa or heading down 35 from Iowa to Texas. I get a bit disappointed if they don’t have any stories to tell or courtesy laugh at my jokes. Unfortunately, it seems I haven’t racked up enough ride karma: I tried hitching in New Hampshire, but didn’t get picked up at all until my trail crew came back for me about an hour later.
The worst that ever came of it was that one guy was infested with ticks.
I’ve picked up hitchhikers only once. it was a couple from Colorado that were going to do an overnight hike on the Tanawha Trail along the Blue Ridge parkway. I picked them up at a parking area where they had left their car, and drove them to the trail-head. Coincidentally me and my girlfriend had just hiked the loop they were looking for, so we were able to tell them where to start and where they would have to fork off the loop and into the trail that lead back to their car.
Me an another girl hitchhiked from Toronto to Whitehorse, Yukon, and back, over one extended summer. It was awesome. It was the early 80’s, I believe.
There were places where we didn’t see a vehicle for literally hours. Met a lot of great people, saw some awesome country and returned safely.
I absolutely have to know more about this. Are there really that many Spaniards hiding in bushes in Scotland?
Earlier thread
When I first moved to KC from MN (early 80’s), I used to pick up hitchhikers on my trips to/from mom’s house.
The best was the guy who was hitching from NY to CA for a job (or so he said - he was already apparently a day late, and, thinking about it now, not sure why I was transporting him south, but that’s not important - maybe I was moving him from I-90 to I-80 (I’m certain I didn’t take him all the way down to I-70).
He was chatty (important, since one reason to give someone a ride was to keep awake/alert). Obviously a city boy, he remarked how neat it was that people had built their farms wherever there were trees in the midst of wide-open farmland/prairie. I introduced him to the idea of planting windbreaks to protect homes from the worst of the weather.
I don’t know that I’ve even seen a hitchhiker around here in a number of years.
I have hitched in New Zealand, Australia and once in Malaysia. In NZ, it’s pretty commonplace, which is why I started it there, as a 21-year-old girl, about 7 years back, so fairly recent. Had a choice of waiting a day for the bus or sticking out my thumb and seeing what happened. It’s a very nice feeling in some ways, as you know you’re only getting around because there are generous, trusting people in the world. At least until you get murdered by a psycho I suppose.
Spent a few months hitching everywhere around NZ that trip, and when I went back a few years later, I spent the whole month I was there using hitchhiking as my sole form of transport, just to see if I could. Almost never had to wait more than a few minutes, and only over an hour twice.
Only a few slightly awkward moments- one trucker whose mates were making crude jokes about ‘the blonde’ he’d picked up, over the radio, as we both sat there in awkward silence, and a few half arsed chat up attempts. No big dramas. Met some awesome people, got adopted for 2 days by an awesome Canadian couple, who were missing their daughter and said they felt like if they were being really nice to me, maybe someone would do the same for her, as she was backpacking round Europe. Got picked up by tourists, farmers, truckers, salesmen, mums taking the kids to school, hikers… Loads of different people.
I did successfully hitch with a fold-up bed in Australia, and a little in Tasmania, but generally paid for buses there, as the empty distances leave a bit too much scope for things to go wrong there, at least in the places I wanted to go. Also I kept forgetting which states it was illegal in… Here in the UK, I’ll pick people up, but most people won’t, so I don’t try it myself. That, and I have a car.
It didn’t seem to be common in Malaysia, but I’d made friends with a lady with a 5-year-old son, and they were hitching around as people would almost always pick up a kid.
I was brought up on hitchhiking tales from my Mum, as that was her main form of transport for years as a kid and teen before it got considered dangerous- including, age 8, hitchhiking with her sister and dad from England to Morocco.