Hitching a Ride
17Dec2004 Filed under: LinkageInteresting article: What killed hitchhiking?
My mother hitchhiked from Washington state to the Yucatan when she was 19, accompanied only by her german shepherd, Pazanne. She tells great a great story of sleeping in a Mexican barn, and waking up to find a man tickling her toes and mumbling “oh, mamacita!” Sometimes I wonder how she made it through the experience unscathed (other than some bilingual tickling).
The last time I picked up a hitchhiker was in Olympia in 2001. Hitching is not uncommon around the Evergreen campus, and I picked up a woman who told me all about how she’d been up for three days on methamphetamine. That, my friends, is what killed hitchhiking.
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5 Responses to “Hitching a Ride”
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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leblanc
December 17th, 2004 at 1:03 pm
i hitchhiked only once in my life when i was about 15 trying to get a ride to work. the dirty old man offered me $20 to give him a blowjob, and when i said no he asked if i had any friends who might do it. that right there also killed hitchhiking.
Ivy
December 20th, 2004 at 6:47 am
How’s this for hippie love? My parents met hitchkiing. My mom’s car stopped to pick up a handsome, mysterious stranger on the NYS Thruway. The only place for the stranger to sit was in the back with my mom. They talked the whole time. When my dad went back to his commune, he proclaimed: “I just met the woman Iam going to marry and spend the rest of my life with”. Meanwhile, my mother went back to her college. He visited her at school, she dropped out and went back to his commune and made me. 30 years later, they are still together and still in love.
Ariel
December 20th, 2004 at 8:26 am
Best parental meeting story EVER!!
Oh
December 21st, 2004 at 12:19 pm
Hitchhiking isn’t that dangerous, IMHO, but it has certianly become massively inconvenient.
Last summer, I hitched from Seattle to Orcas Island for a friend’s concert. In one’s own vehicle, the trip to Anacortes (where one catches the ferry for Orcas) takes about 1.5 hours. It took me 8. I was detained and searched by the police twice while trying to get a ride out of Seattle, took city buses as far north as I could out of disgust with uptight Seattle drivers, got two 16-year old Everett stoners to pick me up in their unregistered car driven by a guy without a license, stacked wood for their grandmother and petted 4 pit bulls while they stopped to buy drugs on the way, and finally got to the fucking ferry.
Once on Orcas, things were much better. Island people hitch all the time, and I got a ride with a very kind woman and her 1-year-old son from the ferry to Eastsound. I got there just in time to see the last 10 minutes of an all-day festival.
However, my faith in human goodness and the worth of hitching when all else fails is unshakable, and has been since I was 10 years old. As a Boy Scout, I climbed Mount McGlaughlin with my troop, and was afterwards forgotten at the base of the mountain by my vapid scoutmaster.
I was alone, in my Boy Scout uniform, in the Siskyou Mountains. I had $5, a bottle of water, and 30 miles to go to my scout camp. I stood on the side of the road with my thumb out. Two young, bearded men in a battered Honda pulled over and let me get into their car.
After hearing my story (I think they were amazed at my naivete), they drove me to my camp (which I’m sure was far out of their way). They refused my money, and told jokes the whole way. I remeber a very distinctive smell coming off of their clothes and the car. Years later, I realized that they were stoned as fuck. Thank God for good-hearted potheads.
I was so lucky that good people had found me, although I’m convinced that good people far outnumber the bad eggs. The saddest part of the fear-based negative public image of hitchhiking is that good people are now less likely to stop for someone in need, making the chances of a bad person offering a ride much, much higher.
It’s really unfortunate. I will continue to hitch when needed on the Islands and out in the woods (oh, and anywhere in Oregon), but it’s certainly not good thing to rely upon frequently. It’s a pain in the ass.
dori
December 21st, 2004 at 3:38 pm
speed killed hitchhiking, the rave scene, the dead scene, the phish scene, the…