Hitchiking?

[Ideologue]

I bet after riding for ten minutes you were freaked out you hadn't seen either the shore or a German.

[Capetan Mihali]

I've hitchhiked a bit in the US, Canada, Germany, and Ireland in my younger years.

How was it?  Do you ever pick up hitchers these days?

[Ed Anger]

I'm surprised there isn't bits of Jacob scattered around North America.

[Zanza]

Not sure if it is considered hitchhiking, but there are websites in Germany where you can offer to take people with you if you drive somewhere and they pay you a bit for that. It may not be commercial in that you may only cover your own costs. I both offered and joined others with that system. Often had interesting conversations.

[Capetan Mihali]

Not sure if it is considered hitchhiking,

It's not.

but there are websites in Germany where you can offer to take people with you if you drive somewhere and they pay you a bit for that. It may not be commercial in that you may only cover your own costs. I both offered and joined others with that system. Often had interesting conversations.

But these rideshare things do sound pretty cool.

[Martinus]

No. Have money. Do not have death wish.

[The Brain]

I've seen movies about hitchhiking, it seemed nice.

[Martinus]

I've seen movies about hitchhiking, it seemed nice.

Yeah but you are probably looking at it from the perspective of the serial killer/rapist kidnapper.

[Tonitrus]

Never hitchhiked myself.

Only ever picked up two hitchhikers, both the last time in Alaska.

#1: Within the first few months I was here.  Was a fellow carrying a big box not far from Costco.  He was a German tourist looking for a ride back to his hotel after buying a brand new PS3 (apparently it was a big deal, because at the time, while it was $500 here, it was 500 euro back there  ).  He talked about how he just got back from climbing Denali the day before.

#2: Driving up to Denali, picked up a hippie-ish seasonal worker headed to the National Park.  It made for conversation and a less boring drive, anyway.

[Admiral Yi]

Wonder if he was a "trimmigrant."

Heard a story on NPR about people who follow the ganja harvest around to trim the buds.  14 hour days during harvest season, $300-$500 a day.

[Viking]

I picked up a guy once, but he was 50 kilometers from the nearest human being outside in the australian summer with his car lying totaled by the side of the road. I offered to drive him to the hospital, but he just wanted to go to the nearest gas station so he could call the RACA (Royal Automobile Club Australia). I agreed once I'd checked to see if he was concussed. 

[The Larch]

I only hitchhiked once in my life, when I was 17 or so and with a couple other friends, and it was inside my hometown, from the beach to the city center, as the buses were absolutely packed and it'd take us hours to wait for one to take us back home. A guy who was going back into the city alone took the 3 of us.

Not exactly hitchhiking, but I've taken with me unkown people in carpooling efforts for a volunteer beach cleaning campaign and in ride share trips like the ones Zanza mentioned.

[KRonn]

I may have picked up a hitch hiker when I was young and with a friend or two, but I've mainly been of the view of not picking anyone up. Never know who it is and what they're up to. I was thinking a while ago though that I can't remember the last time I saw a hitch hiker on the road. It seems like it never happens anymore.

[KRonn]

My uncle gave two guys a ride, in Massachusetts. They were at a gas station or store and needed a ride. Turned out that both were escaped cons and they beat up my uncle and left him for dead, took his car. Later on a motorist driving by saw my uncle lying by the road and helped him, called police and such. My uncle at the time was in his 60s or older; was lucky to have survived. The two cons were captured somewhere in a southern state not too long after that.

[Jacob]

I've hitchhiked a bit in the US, Canada, Germany, and Ireland in my younger years.

How was it?  Do you ever pick up hitchers these days?

I wasn't a very successful hitchhiker, to be honest.

In Ireland it was mainly short distance trips between rural towns and villages. Mostly it was other tourists doing the picking up; it was very nice chatting with them.

Earlier I'd tried to hitchhike from Denmark - from Ærø - to Ireland. I got as far as the German border and then my luck failed. None of the - not very frequent - Audis or Mercedes even slowed down, fewer yet after it started to get dark. Ooops. I walked for a while until I got to a town, looking for an inn in best adventurer style, but the only place I found was all full of crystal glasses and other fancy tableware... and they had no rooms to let. So I kept walking and eventually just went to sleep under a bush in a slightly damp field (didn't have any gear with me for that either). I woke up to a light drizzle and the sound of (very) nearby cows. It's damn cold at night in Slesvig in September if you're just wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. Luckily the next morning... maybe 6 or 630... some lady in a very beat up rust bucket picked me up. She was nice, but she didn't speak English and I didn't speak German. She dropped me off in Flensborg and I said fuck it, and took the train to London and from there Dublin.

I had another similar wash trying to get back to Vancouver from California. We'd gone down to an "Anarchist gathering", a bunch of Anarchists, punks, and assorted riff-raff and then the $300 K-Car broke, so we decided to hitch back. We split up at a truck stop near the I-something-or-other. The two skinny lesbian girls found a trucker to take them on fairly quickly, but for some reason me, the fat girl, and her dog had a much harder time of it. After a day or so of sitting at a truck stop, once again I said fuck it and decided to blow my rent money on a plane ticket back (since I was already missing a day or two of classes, and this would likely kill the whole week).

That led to another encounter actually... I made it to LAX, bought a stand by ticket, but the last three flights were all full and then the airport was done for the night. I figured I could've stayed at the airport, but no, it was shutting down and I had to go. I wasn't looking forward to that at all, but as I was walking out one of the air hostess check in crew offered to take me back to her place. I had all kinds of crazy notions about what might happen (partially informed by 90s gang banger movies being my only exposure to any kind of black life in California), but in the end she put me up in her main bedroom at her condo while she slept in the guest room until her husband came back from work (never met him, but apparently he was Norwegian and that was part of why she took pity on me). She even bought my shaving supplies, and she got up at 5:30 in the morning to drive me to the airport. A very nice lady, though unaccountably afraid of cougars coming out of the mountains to kill people and little dogs. BTW, the girl I was with did much better with the hitchhiking once we'd split up, and made it back to Vancouver in a few days.

The Canadian bit was mostly a trip from Ottawa to New York for the 25th Anniversary of Stonewall with a buddy. We did alright, but the US border guys wouldn't let us cross so we hitched back to Ottawa and that was that.

The hitch hiking itself was pretty uneventful. Mostly just small talk, or failing to make small talk due to language differences. It's mostly been the failures in hitchhiking that lead to adventures.

I haven't picked up any hitchers myself, having only driven for about a year now, and primarily in the city. I'm not opposed to it, but it kind of depends on the situation and who's in the car with me at the time etc.