4/19/2007 12:57:23 PM

I have hitchhiked in Australia,Scotland, and once in the US. I would recommend doing something like this in a place that is a little more laid back than the US, and that doesn't have as many crazies. Hitchhiking is more common place in the British Isles, NZ, or Aus. You are more likely to get rides, and they will also likely be from sane/interesting people. I did have a couple of amazing adventures that would not have happened on these trips otherwise.

4/19/2007 2:11:30 PM

Quote :

""seriously though, you are a moron, get a job and deal with the real world.""

This may come as a surprise to you, but there is more to the real world than a job.

4/19/2007 2:24:16 PM

interesting will read again.

4/19/2007 3:00:00 PM

Sorry fatcat316, the website i meant to post was http://www.couchsurfing.com, check it out if you ever want to do any cheap traveling.

You guys really suprised me on this one, I've gotten over 30 emails giving advise, warning against it, and just generally wishing me luck. I really do appreciate it. A lot of people have requested a blog, so when the time comes around for me to head out, ill be posting at

http://www.xanga.com/tntncsu, though, don't bother to check it for a month or so.

The next step is planning my 'route' and start a list of things to bring. I'll post again when we've got the general Idea of where we want to go, and I'd like to hear opinions if any of you have been to those places.

4/19/2007 5:01:29 PM

I haven't hitchhiked, but I have driven all over the fucking place on several month long excursions.

Just an FYI, most of the hostels I've stayed in around the US, you could barter for room-rate if you were really bad off. Normally it was like 23 bucks a night, but I met a LOT of people who traded a few hours of volunteer work for groups or cleaning in exchange for rooms.

Also, a lot of the small town hostels will let you camp in their back yards for 2-5 bucks or free.

Day labor is good times in a lot of places. You can spend a week working construction or landscaping (if you have the skills) and live on that for weeks to travel, eat and get pissed.

I also met a lot of people on the road that I mooched off of, without even asking. I can't even tell you how many free meals (and booze) i got at Applebee's and various bars just because I told good stories. If you are social, it pays off big time.

4/19/2007 6:09:06 PM

Nothing beats the hobo life! Stabbin' folks with my hobo knife!

4/19/2007 7:47:53 PM

^ thats pretty funny

in a way...

but whats not quite so funny is when you're getting the living shit kicked out of you in the woods and no one is around to help or call the cops, and the psychopath ex-convicts who are gleefully kicking you in the head start talking to each other about how they could cut you into bits and throw your parts in the river.

thats the time when you start thinking about how you wish you had a hobo knife.

that i didnt actually *have* a knife, yet i still managed to get away with my life, might be part of the reason why i consider myself an agnostic rather than an atheist.

or maybe not. meh.







[Edited on April 19, 2007 at 8:00 PM. Reason : ]

4/19/2007 7:55:58 PM

^How'd you end up in that situation?

4/19/2007 8:01:39 PM

it all started with a couple 12 packs of cheap beer, in a wooded park by a river on the edge of a downtown.

Quote :

"to be honest, I know I escaped being killed on a few occasions. My "escapes" were largely due to luck. One of the instances, I suspect, could have resulted in my autopsy photos being featured on "rotten.com" -- assuming my body would have been recovered. I'm not trying to sound cryptic about it, but i dont want to go into the ridiculously stupid details. Short story: (1) don't hang around downtown riverbanks drinking beer with homeless bums/ex-convicts/fugitives/junkies. (2) if you must do #1, don't be a bogart about it. even if it is mostly your money that purchased said alcohol, share it all, with everyone, willingly. It's not worth dying over a sixpack of cheap beer."

[Edited on April 19, 2007 at 8:11 PM. Reason : ]

4/19/2007 8:09:43 PM

Sounds like they were singin' hobos and not stabbin' hobos, at least on that day.

Quote :

"See, these are hobo signs! Good food… Sexy daughter… Mass hobo grave in cellar!"

Seriously though, good stories, keep 'em coming.

4/20/2007 12:05:02 PM

what is that quote from? a movie? i want to see it.

4/20/2007 12:22:38 PM

Quote :

"We need a weekly joe_schmoe story hour."

well this thread has dredged up a shitton of old memories i had mostly stored away. I'll be looking forward to 1985's blog when he gets started. until then, ill ramble about some random shit that happened to me.

...

So I'm 17 years old, I got expelled from my vocational school (for being a dumbass), my parents finally told me to get the fuck out until i was ready to get a haircut, quit smoking dope, get a job and finish my HS diploma. 'course i was too smart for all of that. so i loitered around Columbus, OH, trying unsuccesfully to deal weed. I just smoked all my profits, started getting into debt, and realized i was gonna wearing out my welcome at my friends houses pretty damn quickly.

I decided to hitchhike to Ocean City, New Jersey, where I had one of my few experiences getting laid the summer before during a family vacation. I figured i could be a beach bum and live under the boardwalk and score lots of chicks, right? (okay, yeah, i wasn't real smart)

I had gotten to Parkersburg West Virginia and some guy picked me up in an old '74 Chevy Nova ... we got to talking about my planned trip and he wound up selling me the car for $75. he lived in like this real dump of a shack in town with his toothless wife and 5 or 6 kids and they had a bunch of cars on blocks in his yard -- the whole picture.

the sale was legal with title and everything, but come to find out this car had no reverse. i didnt realize it til after i bought it. i looked under the car and a huge hole had been cut out of the bottom of the automatic transmission housing, so i could see all the gears and linkages. i dont know how the hell it worked without any fluid, but it did (!) I'm still kind of confused about that. but whatever. i had wheels now. also it had rear airshocks that jacked the ass-end up real high. that was cool.

I ran into some doper looking kids about my age hanging around downtown, wound up they knew someone whose parents were gone and having a party so i could crash there. turned out to be quite a "party", just about 7 or 8 dudes in their late teens and twenties, with various stages of tooth decay, some old guy about 40 they called Uncle Bill, and his biker-chick lookin girlfriend.

we drank cheap beer (Red White and Blue!) and smoked some ditch weed that may have been oregano and bragged about how much pussy we'd all gotten. i got it into my head to paint "MEGADETH" on the trunk of my car in huge letters styled like the band's logo, using black spraypaint and masking tape. everyone thought it looked pretty bitchin. So my car was christened "the DethMobile". which was actually pretty close to the truth.

stayed another day, driving a couple of the guys all around to do some rinky-dink ditchweed drug deals, then another night drinking that Red White and Blue and a big swordfight over two 14-year old girls until they threw up and got taken home.

Next day I left. Wound up going down Hwy 40 through Maryland late that night, one of the wheels on the car decided to leave. yeah, it just popped off and took off into the woods. the front end of the car dropped to the asphalt and ground off a shitton of sparks as i slid along the highway at 55-60 mph. it was at night so the whole thing was pretty spectacular. all the truckers and cars around me cleared a big path. a trooper stopped by and we looked for the wheel a bit, but it was gone. i got towed to a service station, and slept there in my back seat.

I woke up about 9am some guy was jacking up the car and started fixing the wheel. i dont know why he didnt wake me up first. he pointed out to me that 2 of the 5 lugs had already long been broken off, before the other two finally snapped. he also pointed out to me that the other front wheel had its brake fluid line busted and was leaking brake fluid all inside the drum onto the pads. "and what the hell is a mega death, anyhow? are you trying to get yourself killed, son?"

he charged my $25 for the new lugs, lug nuts, a used rim and tire, and labor. said he was "giving me a break 'cause he felt sorry for me" ... you could tell this guy thought i was the biggest retard hed seen in a while.

eventually I made it to Ocean City NJ. first thing I noticed is how dead it was. the place was not the happening place i remembered it to be. perhaps because this time it was late March, not the middle of July like when i had been there before. did i say i wasnt too smart?

so i loitered about on the boardwalk, played some video games, tried to find out where the weed was, met one guy who looked and sounded like Butthead from Beavis and Butthead. He said he could get some weed, but strangely enough the few other kids around there avoided us like the plague.

i went to sleep that night in the back seat of my car in a parking lot, and was woken up about 2 am by a cop tapping on the window with his flashlight. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was going to "get the fuck out of his town right now, if I knew what was good for me."

it was fucking cold as hell, so i decided that was a good time to head south.







[Edited on April 21, 2007 at 6:53 PM. Reason : ]

4/21/2007 6:31:45 PM

Just don't kill yourself trying to find yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

4/21/2007 6:51:16 PM

hmm. I considered hitchhiking to Alaska, when i got out of the Navy in Washington State.

probably a good thing i didn't. I'd have probably fallen off a commercial fishing boat and drowned, or something equally stupid.

4/21/2007 7:02:27 PM

This thread is indeed interesting. I have some tidbits from secondhand sources (books/articles and my dad, who hitched around N. Africa and Europe for two years):

1) Another big reason to avoid the homeless and especially the "hobo" crowd, for you, is that you are a college-educated person who is only doing this to experience it. You don't need to. From everything I've read, they can frequently take very poorly to this, for a variety of reasons. One, they know that somewhere you have access to money. Two, some of them think of it as kind of an "insult to their way of life." In short, nobody likes a tourist. From their point of view, you're so rich you have to pretend to be poor.

2) Definitely always be ready to get the fuck out the car when it slows down. My dad said that twice in Ireland (for whatever reason), a guy picked him up hitching and then started talking nonchalantly about all the gay sex they were going to have in a little bit. He jumped out at the first opportunity and shouted, "Peace!" while running his still-mercifully-un-raped ass off.

3) Don't do it. Join the goddamn Peace Corps instead. Help some people while you're undergoing extreme poverty, and then hitchike around that country. The gist of what dad's told me is that he felt safe hitchiking around North fucking Africa, but wouldn't think about doing it here.

4/21/2007 10:41:48 PM

^ absolutely sage advice.

i agree with every bit of 1) and 2), and can personally testify to their accuracy (i never did a foriegn country). i'll just qualify my own experience here:

Quote :

"[homeless people] can frequently take very poorly to [you ... if they realize you're] only doing this to experience it. "

i learned this one real quick. you will get your ass handed to you and fast if they think you're just playing them. the only reason i was able to fit in, was because i *wasn't* a tourist. the times i was homeless, i actually was homeless, and had nowhere else to go. You've really got to have nothing to lose. Or at least make yourself believe that. If I didnt, I'd have probably been terrified.

Quote :

"One, they know that somewhere you have access to money."

this, in and of itself, can get you killed. or at least seriously, seriously hurt.

refer to my earlier post about how to deal with money. that "debit card savings->checking transfer plan" ... it is something I made up .... in that it's how i would imagine I would do it if i had to do it again.

but personally, I never actually did it that way. I never had the foresight or resources. it probably would not work, and will probably hurt you, if you try to "hang out" with the homeless yet maintain a bank account

... so now I gotta backtrack here and distinguish two different modes of existence that i experienced:

(1) travelling in an itinerant manner (by hitching or by vehicle) with some sort of goal, however loosely defined.

(2) travelling/loitering/barely-existing in a homeless manner with no goal.

....

the way i understand it, the OP will be in mode (1). this is where you try to look relatively clean and sane, and manage your money, and take precautions, and potentially use some homeless-oriented social services when you're in a pinch, but largely remain separate from the homeless population and do not try to assimilate.

this is how i started out at age 17.

but then i soon found myself in mode (2). and stayed there for about year and a half, until i finally joined the Navy and got straightened up (somewhat).

after the Navy, I resumed mode (1) off and on for a couple years, but never sunk back to the level of destitution that is homelessness. Then I eventually got my act together, started going to college, and began my exciting career as a regular TWW poster.

... ok ...

so when i was travelling (in "mode 1" either by hitchhiking or by car) i always had some savings available to draw upon.

but when i was just aimlessly wandering and lived amongst the homeless, as a homeless person (and we're talking when I was 17-19 years old) i only had as much money as i could scrape up by my talents. and we're talking for the most part: Day Labor, selling blood plasma, selling counterfeit drugs to tourists, the occasional scams and petty theft. the group i ran with were all similar. no one had any hidden resources.

i can't imagine what would have happened if anyone were to have been "Found out" to have had a secret bank account somewhere. ... I truly believe they would have been seriously hurt or killed.

now some people went as far as panhandling, collecting welfare, and prostituting themselves on street corners. I had enough sense and personal pride to not go there. i think i always knew, even in the thick of it, that I didnt really belong in this lifestyle, that it was temporary.... and i needed to maintain some minimum level of personal integrity. it wasnt much, but it was all i had.

Quote :

"Two, some of them think of it as kind of an "insult to their way of life." In short, nobody likes a tourist. From their point of view, you're so rich you have to pretend to be poor."

kind of restates the previous, but it bears repeating. like i said before, when amongst the homeless "LEARN TO LISTEN A LOT, AND SPEAK LITTLE". no one will want to hear about your college adventures or your suburban lifestyle. and for god's sake, when you do talk, dont talk like you have a college education.

ok.

nuff said for a while








[Edited on April 21, 2007 at 11:57 PM. Reason : ]

4/21/2007 11:47:44 PM

write a book. i will pay to read it.

4/22/2007 12:15:04 AM

^

4/22/2007 12:20:36 AM

^^^
^^^^

Maybe I'm being naive or I just didn't really state my goals all that clearly.

I don't, under any circumstance, plan on hanging out with or near the chronically homeless. My goals aren't to understand what it's like to live on the streets or try to and empathize with impoverished americans. However I'm not blind enough to think that I wont be spending some nights hiding out on rooftops and watching my ass, but that's isn't what I'm setting out for.

I'm looking to do most of my adventures away from the cities. I want to camp for weeks in Utah and Colorado. Maybe I'll land a temp job in oregon for a month. I also want to do a lot of 'volunteer' work, where I think organizations would let me pitch a tent in their back yard in exchange for labor, which would be generally safer then crashing behind a dumpster.

That being said, my mode of transportation will be hithhiking which clearly has it's own set of risks. I'm not going to pretend that I wont run into psychos, drunks, and just generally bad drivers, but in my mind, that doesn't outweigh the benifits.



[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 12:26 AM. Reason : ^]

4/22/2007 12:25:56 AM

^ yeah, i actually did get that point.

and my own plans actually sort of started out that way too... but i was pretty unprepared for the larger world, and wound up flat broke with nowhere to go, and little ambition but to drink beer and smoke pot and "be hittin it up wit' da ladies" (yeah, i know right )

so my perspective is slanted in a different direction than your intentions. And I didnt mean to hijack your thread.

theres obviously a big difference between yourself now and myself at that time. I was a 17-19 year old kid, and a high school flunkie. youre, what, a 23 year old man with a college education. damn thats a world of difference right there.

i kind of just found myself in the situation due to my own dumbassery. you're preparing this with what seems like a lot more forethought.

for that reason, i think you'll be a lot more successful at staying away from much of the bullshit i got into.

even after the Navy, when i was in my early twenties, and knocking around the country with either a vehicle or hitching, i still was kind of clueless. i mean, i knew how to survive "on the street" and i did a fair amount of camping and through-hiking, but i didnt know anything about how to succeed in life. like how to hold a good job, or maintain relationships, or engage in social or business networking, manage money.

if i had gone to college first, then travelled around like that, my experiences would have been completely different and probably more complex and rewarding. but now im married with a kid and a rewarding R&D engineering job ... so that kind of shit is out of the question for me anymore.

so I envy you in a sense.

but also want you to be careful. you can quickly find yourself in some real WTF?? situations.

4/22/2007 1:10:28 AM

Quote :

"Maybe I'm being naive or I just didn't really state my goals all that clearly."

No, I get your goals fine, I just think it's pretty much inevitable that you're going to be spending a lot of time in less savory places, more so than you may be anticipating. The volunteering thing does generally sound safer -- but you're not generally going to know about such opportunities too far in advance, nor are they going to be all that terribly consistent from reputable folks.

This ain't Europe, which to hear some people talk is positively covered in hostels.

I think you'll follow the model that most people with similar goals do, which is that they will set out intending to avoid being among the chronically homeless at all to be safe. But being without a car, hotel money, or (for all intents and purposes) a home puts you automatically into a certain circle where you will encounter them; you get that. But then eventually you'll come across one or a bunch that seem like they're really good guys, for whatever reason, and maybe they are, but you've still broken that seal. And soon you're willing to hang out with a slightly shadier guy, because, hey, that last crowd was alright, and so on. Or maybe this experience will fall short of your expectations and you'll want to spice it up, just a little, just a little...either way, by the end you will have made decisions that right now strike you as being out of the question. Hell, in Peru (under much saner circumstances than you'd be experiencing), I went from saying "Wow, this new culture sure is interesting" to being disinterested whenever I wasn't trying to follow the scent of tear gas to the epicenter of the riot.

I think it was Patton who said "No plan survives its first application intact."

All of this said, this does sound really cool and the kind of thing I would do if I didn't know I was the type of person who, well, followed the smell of tear gas.

[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 1:14 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2007 1:13:04 AM

Quote :

"but you've still broken that seal. "

that was well put. great metaphor.

you listen to the Grumps. it's no bullshit, he speaks truth.

Quote :

"I was the type of person who, well, followed the smell of tear gas."

haha. and here my wife acts like I'm the only one who does that.

4/22/2007 2:02:29 AM

He won't listen to me because he knows me personally. Hell, he played poker in my house just last night. I also know that his screenname exists because he got "user name" and "year of birth" confused.

Hahaha, and the same thing with the tire departing the vehicle happened to me once, the day I got it inspected, no less, so it's not just chromosomally retarded white trash that fuck that up.

[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 3:07 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2007 2:58:12 AM

Quote :

"I also know that his screenname exists because he got "user name" and "year of birth" confused. "

oh schnap!

... and um... well you know, i shoulda prolly checked that shit out sometime before/during/after the sale



[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 3:10 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2007 3:08:12 AM

Meh, my dad's a fucking genius and he forgot to tighten the bastards on the minivan I was driving that day. He's sure to double check them ever since (he almost got my ass killed...to death)

4/22/2007 3:15:52 AM

Quote :

"1985: I also want to do a lot of 'volunteer' work, where I think organizations would let me pitch a tent in their back yard in exchange for labor"

ive been meaning to mention something along these lines.

one of the places i stayed later was a sort of commune. It was called "The House of the People". it was just outside the downtown area of a city about the size of Raleigh.

basically it was a private funded philanthropic effort to give people having some hard luck a place to live while they ostensibly tried to find jobs and what not. realistically, it was a gathering place of outlaws and junkies, who did the minimum necessary to follow the rules.

there was no rent. there were large common rooms split into male and female sleeping areas. everyone had to do some "chore" in the morning before leaving. cleaning or cooking or somethign. people had to be in by 11pm weekdays 12am weekends unless they had extenuating circumstances like a late job (I did for a while, washing dishes at a restaurant). there were supposed to be "no drug or alcohol use" in the house. whatever that meant. there was supposed to be "no sexual contact" between the men and women if they didnt arrive there as a couple and establish a separate room. yeah whatever.

my point is, that the guy they had "managing" this "House of the People" was some guy named Steve, who had a college degree (history, i think), and was a backpacking/hitchhiker going across country. til he arrived in this city and kind of got stuck. he somehow got hooked up with this philanthropic group and became the manager of "The House of the People" in exchange for free room/board plus a stipend.

and while he was always separate from us, "the people" (he had his own private room and all), he was definitely way a part the drama more than he probably ever intended.

i remember one day he kicked everyone out on orders from the sponsors ("the board"). the place had gotten overrun with crackheads so they had to make a clean sweep. people who had jobs and were actually trying to do right could reapply. which basically meant you just had to go present your case to Steve, and it was his judgement right there. I remember this one crazy crackhead bitch who was in his office right before my turn, threatening to kill him because he denied her.

i still had my dishwashing job so i got back in. but it wasnt a month later, someone found out a couple guys there were fugitives wanted on some crazy kidnapping and attempted murder charges in Texas, and they were hiding out under assumed names. Sheriff's deputies along with federal marshalls (?) raided the house, found all sorts of drugs on other people and shut the whole place down. apparently it was quite a fucked up scene (i wasn't there), several people were arrested, including Steve (although he was just detained for questioning and shortly released). I was supposed to give a statement to the cops. I called a number and left a message, but they never got back to me. they knew where i worked, so i guess it didnt matter.

I dont know what happened to ol' Steve after that... I heard he took his backpack and started heading west. as for me and some others, we got a voucher for 1 free month at the YMCA, since it was considered a housing "crisis".

so... is that the kind of "volunteering" you're thinking of?





[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 4:16 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2007 3:56:04 AM

Quote :

"Next day I left. Wound up going down Hwy 40 through Maryland late that night, one of the wheels on the car decided to leave. yeah, it just popped off and took off into the woods."

shit my memory is bad. I looked at a map, and it's Hwy 50 that I took out of Parkersburg, but I remember the wheel popped off on an Interstate, and it was definitely a MD State Trooper who stopped to help. so that must have been I-68.

just wanted to clear that up for those of you who are following along at home.

...

whats really interesting to me now, is that i must have drove right past Morgantown WV (home of WVU) and didnt even consider stopping. just knowing what i know now, i would have skipped Parkersburg (hillbilly hell) and gone straight to Morgantown (hip college town). who knows, my entire adventure could have changed entirely. See, my 17 year old dumb ass didnt know Morgantown was a college town. Theres one difference where a college education might help you!



[Edited on April 22, 2007 at 5:08 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2007 4:55:23 AM

Btt.

Setting out on a 'practice' hitchike to the beach tomorrow. Going to try a few techniques (asking for rides, creative signs, ...). Updates will ensue.

5/23/2007 9:28:51 PM

Good luck...I know a girl how hitchhiked back from Hatty to State once! Please be careful! I think if I remember the story correctly she used signs! She has a house at Hatty and her car broke down and she had to be back at State for a final or some crap! Again good luck and please be careful!!!

5/23/2007 9:33:35 PM

I'm sorry to dissapoint, tww, but I made it back and I didn't get raped, beaten, or beheaded. In fact, so little happened that it was rather disappointing in a way.

I set out at 8:30 for kitty hawk from Elizabeth City. The first few seconds that you stick your thumb out are extraordinarily awkward. You try to look people in the eye, but no one looks backs. Some of them wave, but dont actually pull over. However, it only took about three minutes to get my first ride. It was not what I expected at all, a middle aged mother and her 5th grade son, driving to school from a doctors appointment. Relief, i didn't have to worry about getting stabbed in the face. She talked about growing up in oklahoma with 17 siblings, and how she was one of the few that ever made it out of her town. An hour later, i was at the beach where I wasn't supposed to be until noon.

Blah Blah Blah, 1:30, time to head home.

This ride was a little bit trickier, I didn't have a real nice place hitch, so i picked a bike path in front of a bank, next to the highway. I figured people could easily pull into the bank to give me a ride. Not the case. I missed my first ride, a jeep pulled over about 100 yards behind me, and i didnt realize they had stopped for me until too late. The next ride didn't come for another 20 minutes. So im standing on the side of the road, with a driveway directly behind me. Of course, the lady that wants to pick me up decides to swerve through 3 lanes of traffic to get to me. she winds up halfway on the sidewalk and still manages to block two lanes. She rolls down her window, and her daughter asks:

"You're not going to kill us, are you?"

I'm pretty sure her mom was going to kill her before a hitchiker ever did. I got in anway, and the mom asked me to put my backpack in the back, so i couldnt pull out a gun. I couldn't figure out why she bothered to pick me up.

My last ride was a short one, just 12 miles by a man named James. He seemed genuinely kind-hearted, and exactly the kind of ride I was hoping to get. He was the only one of the three that bought in to what I was doing and offered advice.

So, Id say it was a pretty successful day. No weirdos, no perverts. Completely average people trying to help me out.

5/24/2007 3:28:32 PM

boring. Write back after your first shanking.

5/24/2007 3:45:56 PM

great thread....that's awesome you did a trial hitch hike......but kitty hawk is all normal people....head to downtown atlanta and back, then if you make it back share your stories

5/24/2007 4:27:26 PM

^hah, yea, that was kind of my point, to sort of ease into it. I'm sure Ill have horror stories for later.

5/24/2007 5:05:46 PM

we gotta get this back goin - give me somethin to read at work tomorrow

6/5/2007 10:47:51 PM

You gotta ask Joe_schmoe. I haven't hit the road yet.

Here is the current plan. On june 18, i have a friend flying here and we are going to drive to oregon on a road trip, mostly so i can get the feel for being on the move. That's going to last until august 1st. Then, Ill stay in oregon with friends for a few days while I sell my car and tie up any loose ends. Thats when i head out. I'll mostly try to stay in the pacific northwest/midwest in the beginning, since from what I hear, they are generally hitchiker friendly, But ill expand my travels as I learn and get more comfortable.

6/5/2007 11:35:18 PM

i never had any problems hitchhiking. i dont have any crazy stories about me hitchhiking, or picking up hitchhikers. all my crazy shit happened in the places i wound up for periods of time.

conventional wisdom says hitchhiking is dangerous, and not to do it, but i dont really know of anyone who had any real problems. worst ive ever heard about someone is getting sexually propositioned and having to exit rather quickly. it never happened to me. my "weirdest" ride was with some really fat dude in a car littered with food wrappers who just listened to talk radio the entire 2 hours and didnt say a single word. but you know, whatever. i was kind of glad he didnt want to talk anyhow.

so take that for what its worth. disclaimer, i didnt really do a LOT of cold hitchhiking. i usually had access to a car. i probably hitchhiked on about a dozen separate occasions. and probably picked up about 2 dozen different hitchhikers at various times.

i dont do it any more though. it just seems too risky. i have shit to lose now.

6/6/2007 12:31:58 AM

joe those quotes are from an episode of the Simpsons.

This thread is a good read, you should seriously consider writing a book or at least a short novel or something.

6/6/2007 5:27:42 PM

Young_Schmoe's Big City Adventures -- part 2

---

so i'm leaving Ocean City NJ, having been flushed out of a parking lot where i was sleeping in my car at 2am, by one of Ocean City's finest. "You better get the fuck outta my town, if you know what's good for you" were his exact words, if i recall correctly.

I was 17, almost 18, high school dropout (kicked out, whatever), not real smart about life, but i got his message loud and clear. He looked like he could've knocked me out with one hit of that big cop flashlight he had. and the sound of his voice made me think he would have, too.

I start driving my $100 Nova westward through back roads, still really tired, and I pull into a large shopping area parking lot and go back to sleep until i wake up cold and stiff sometime after daybreak. Not in any hurry, I spent some time at a pancake house breakfasting and coffee for a couple hours until I the waitress switched tactics from giving me dirty looks to the old "if youre not going to buy anything else..." Since she was such a bitch, I her a $5 bill for the $4.89 bill and told her to "keep the change". Man, was she pissed.

Eventually I get on I95 towards Baltimore. I had passed by Baltimore on the way in and it looked kind of interesting, so i figured i'd go check it out. There was a hitchhiker on the onramp to I-95, and I was feeling cool, so i picked him up. He said he was a college student in Philly going to visit his girlfriend and family back home in a suburb of Baltimore.

He was early 20's and i think he was pretty scared of my car. in addition to the big "MegaDeth" lettering on the trunk, it looked and felt like a deathtrap. the brakes were spongy and i really had to put my whole body into the brake pedal if i needed to stop in a hurry.

once he settled in he asked if I smoked pot, I proceeded to tell him what an accomplished, veteran stoner I was, so he pulled out a bowl and lit up. whatever he had was some potent shit, more than i was used to. i got quite stoned, and i realized that driving in morning rush hour traffic on JFK Memorial Freeway between Philly and Baltimore when youre high as a kite and in a shitty '74 Nova with bad steering and brakes ... well it kind of sucks.

There were cops all over. MD State Highway Patrol. I started getting really stoned-paranoid, and found that I was driving like 45 mph. The guy had to keep telling me to speed up. I don't think he was real impressed by my dope smoking skills. Finally we got to this suburb on the north side of Baltimore, and I let him out at a gas station off the exit. He didn't want me to drive him to his gal's house for some reason, I'm not sure why. I asked him what was fun to do in Baltimore, he said go to the Waterfront. And then gave me $5, which was unexpected.

I was still fairly stoned at this point, enough so that reading a map is kind of a pointless endeavor. I thought I was heading to the Waterfront, but I wind up driving city streets for what seems like hours. And driving through some hardcore ghettos. Rows and rows of tenement homes and block housing projects, people loitering all over the place. Yes, I'm a bad motherfucker from crackertown Ohio, in my Megadeth Mobile.

I finally come to the major part of downtown: skyscrapers, Orioles Stadium, all that jazz. I get out here and there and wander around. I drive around various parts of the inner city. As its getting towards twilight, i finally hit the "red light" district: the infamous Baltimore Avenue.

This place was all lit up in the tackiest way. Adult bookstores, bars, strip clubs, you name it. Hookers on corners talking to pimps and drug dealers. Itinerants and vagrants of all types. Had I known then what was in store for me, I would have never stopped. but to a sheltered middle class white boy, who had never really seen this on such a massive, dirty, low-rent ghetto scale.... It looked like a dangerously attractive playground to be explored.

6/7/2007 5:00:48 AM

and.......

6/7/2007 10:33:16 AM

tune in next month when i get off my ass and write another.

6/7/2007 11:19:07 AM

yeah it would be kick ass to say fuck it all and go hitch hike to colorado-but id be nervous about it

6/8/2007 1:40:24 PM

^Well, if you do, let me know. That's the area I'm gonna be in. I figure its now or never, before marriage, kids, carrer...

6/8/2007 1:47:26 PM

yes, write back more when someone tries to reach for your crotch in the passenger seat

6/8/2007 1:50:13 PM

don't leave us hangin man...make this like your daily blog, continued from the day before

6/8/2007 3:13:11 PM

personally I recomend riding trains over hitchhiking. just don't fall off!

6/8/2007 7:15:52 PM

dee dee do double post

[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 7:17 PM. Reason : c]

6/8/2007 7:16:55 PM

^ Have you hopped trains before? I thought about it, but wouldnt want to do it on my own, at least, not without someone to show me how the first time.

6/8/2007 8:23:22 PM

i knew some people who said they did, but I was too scared to hop trains, afraid it would get going too fast. seemed like an easy way to get killed.

it is definitely illegal. nowadays, it seems even more sketchy. i dont know the relevant laws, but I do know railroads have their own police forces, and what with interstate cargo transport being increasingly overseen by Homeland Security... i wouldnt fuck with it.

6/9/2007 12:34:57 AM

Riding trains is pretty incredible. its also very dangerous and very illegal. I say just hop on one and see where it takes you. trying to figure out routes and so on can be confusing. I rode from durham to atlanta once and had no clue where I'd end up.

These days there's lots of problems with riding- trains go fast 50 mph or more and rarely slow down unless coming into a yard so conceivably you could be on a train for many hours and never have a chance to get off. Boxcars also aren't in use much anymore so its hard to find a suitable container to ride in. They don't have many handholds to grab, and hardly a place to sit. also, trainyards are carefully watched by the yards own private police force, most of whom are less than friendly.

6/9/2007 1:56:58 PM