Hitchhikers..any old/current hitchhikers out there?

[Tripper11]

In the 80's I hitched all over the place. Saved $$ on bus fare and got to see a lot of things and go places cheaply. Never had a problem. In the early 90's I hitchhiked acroos half of Canada, from PEI to Toronto. Manged that in 2 rides!
Made some neat aquaintences, heard and told some tall tales...

Share your stories.

[Mari333]

1. Back in the early 70s I did

Im glad I wasnt killed back then..it was all the rage at the tail end of the baby boomer phenomenon of the 60s.

[peacebuzzard]

9. In 74 I hitched around parts of Europe and saw the magic bus....

in Amsterdam that made trips(psychedelic and actual) to I think the destination was Morocco. I guess it really didn't matter. But I hitched from London to Scotland (by truck) back to Liverpool to Paris to Amsterdam to Heidelberg. Something like that. Met alot of American kids and draft dodgers partying out with their long hair and carefree. That was a very long time ago! :*

[liberalnurse]

2. I was thumbing out of New Orleans headed for Tampa....

Got dropped off in Biloxi, Mississippi. Local town cop immediately pulls up, checks ID and states, "You hippie types need to move right on out of my town, ya hear me? Go on, now get." He followed us right out of town too.



Was hitching from Pa. to Tampa again, 2 girls.... I think we were in South Carolina. Pouring down rain...a nice mature couple stopped, gave us a ride for about 30 miles to their destination, dropped us off and gave us their umbrella.

Got picked up by a rock band......They gave us marijuana, I don't remember much after that.....

Many more stories....got to go to work now.....:)

Late 70's..... When folks were cool.

[peacebuzzard]

12. Hey liberal nurse; seems like we shared some times!

I hitched with a girl pal too and had a Biloxi experience! Long time ago tho, had to shake the dust off those memories!!! ;-)

[Skittles]

3. I've picked up a few lady hitchhikers

concerned for their safety. You don't see near as many as you did in the 70's.

[H2O Man]

4. "An American Prayer" by JDM

I used to stand at the side of the road and figure out what the heck Jim Morrison was talking about when he said,"The hitch-hiker leveled his thumb in the calm calculus of reason." Now, I found that hitch-hiking was a form of transportation that dealt with maxima ans minima of definite integrals which have an intergrand that is a function of independent variables, as well as dependent variables and, of course, their derivatives. Still, it bugged me when cars drove by. I walked a lot.

[Tripper11]

5. One ride I got...

buddy pulls over, asks where I'm going, so I tell him. He asks me if I can roll, and of course I said I could, so he tosses me a little brick of hash and we were happy happy happy for 500 miles together!

[seventhson]

6. Man, the stories I could tell

I hitched to California twice from New York. One time back )one time I flew back in winter.

Colorado and back.

Florida and back twice (although I barely remember one of those trips back.)


Probably the most intense experiences involved rednecks in the South and Ohio who seemed like they were going to kill me and my African-American friend. This happened several times.

A gun was pointed at our heads and threats were made.

But we came through unscathed. But there was very real banter of a bunch of crazed vietnam vet rednecks who claimed they had just gangraped a girl and who chuckled about "swamp niggers" who were left in the swamp never to be seen again. Brothers and a cousin - and they said they were going to cut the ring finger off a Black gas station owner who was a retired NY City homicide detective to get his diamond retirement ring). I saw the knife but they figured they already pushing their luck and were in a hurry to get as far away as possible from the women they left behing in a motel. They even whooped and hollered when we passed the victim's husband racing the other direction on I-95. We felt lucky to make it to the Florida border alive (this was all in Georgia)

One of the rich DuPonts picked me up in his convertible once and I ended up moving in with a firedancing stripper in Key West and selling slices of watermelon with her daughter at mallory Square sunset.

Found a Gila Monster guarding a marijuana plant on a naval air base outside Jacksonville (we snuck on to and slept at the base in the barracks where my hitching buddy and best friend had served during the Nam years)

Made it hitching cross country in 72 hours from NY to San Francisco with three of us hitchhiking together (gotta ride outside of Chicago with a navy guy driving straight through and we took turns driving)

Vietnam vets and military guys were the best chances of rides and there were lots of folks generous with their mind enhancing or consciousness raising gifts.

Favorite memories:

Listening to Jimmy Castor Bunch 8 track playing the Bertha Butt Boogie driving through North Carolina in the wee hours of the black night way off the beaen path after hiking on the freezing !-95 for hours in the snow and then getting run off the highway by a cop who brought us to get coffee but would not let us hitch. The Brothers who picked us up drove us all night with badass music I had never heard (southern Soul music) as we dozed off in the warm crowded backseat with our backpacks.

Then getting dropped off in the middle of a cotton field at dawn and coming upon where a car load of Saturday-night Sunday morning drunk revelers who were "Black Indians" had gotten stuck in the mud as the sun came up at dawn and we had to help push them out of the muddy cotton field (I still have a piece of cotton ball from that field with the seeds in it in the pod)> we got muddy and dirty, but we helped get them out and they sure appreciated it on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning. They may have been still drunk from the night before but they were sure dressed to kill in what looked like their Sunday best. Musta been at some juke joint or sugar shack the night before.

Most amazing sites, walking by a chain gang in Georgia or Florida with almost all Black prisoners , in leg irons, moving sod up the bank of the highway and the redneck sheriff/guard acting like he was gonna shoot us with his shotgun and grinning/sneering and spitting.

Seeing a tractor trailer truck which had gotten a flat tire but kept going (16 wheeler and it was an outside tire on a double- so i guess th immigrnt driver - who did not speak English - thought it was okay to keep going) catch fire on the frictionized rear end and gradually the small flames engulfed the whole truck, the men got out in a panic and were trying to put it out and it engulfed the rea end, then the whole trailer and roof, then it slowly consumed the whole truck.

Finally it was fully ablaze, the traffic was stopped in both directions of the highway due to the blaze and smoke making visibility impossible on both directions and sides. We were walking along the highway and this whole event unfolded as we walked from about a half mile behind it for aboiut 10 or fifteen minutes until I was about a tenth of a mile away on the hot highway tar and the whole friggin' truck just EXPLODED! I kept walking towards kind of ambling and watching with big eyes in case there were any more booms towards the scene and about ten seconds later the UNIVERSAL JOINT came whistling down from above crash landing with a huge thud metally groan/bash about twenty feet right in front of me in the breakdown lane. It just landed with a dull thud and sat there (no bounce) chunked into the asphalt. Another ten seconds and I would have been merged with that chunk of machine metal apparatus for eternity.

I also met an honest to goodness shamanic boddhisattwa from Nepal who worked magic before my eyes and made me forever believe in the mystical - rewarding me with a small locked bucket of coins for a kindness I extended her.

I almost ended up on the crew of a marijuana smuggling ship with a mate who bragged of having sex with cows and I almost got sucked away by a waterspout or three - one time while recovering hand grenades and antipersonnel metalic pieces from a proving ground on a deserted island for scrap off of key west- and once while swimming on South Beach where the spout twisted out and rained down torrents of salt water just before getting to me. I saw it sucking up fish and seaweed which flew off the twister in a column of water 20 feet in diameter and two miles high like a gigantic mosquito needle sucking up the sea.

All of these were on hitchhiking trips.

Thanks for making me reminisce. And that is opnly the tip of the experiences.

I saw Big Fish this weekend and appr4eciate a good yarn. But these stories are all 100% true.

Glad you asked.

I will file this in my writing file.

[peacebuzzard]

11. that just reminded me (flashback)

of a time when I hitched with my friend from college in KY to Oak Ridge TN and us ladies were picked up a couple of times by these hard core rednecks on two occasions that we were both threatened with death if we didn't co-operate. I was scared but my friend was real cool and talked us out of both situations.
One other experience involved a boyfriend when we were trying to return to college after his beat up old car gave out. From Biloxi to West KY.
And another boyfriend in Ca. with a beat up car trying to drive us to Arizona. His car gave out also and we were picked up by a nice lady and her man driving a van. WOW! what cobwebs I have stirred! :*

[HEyHEY]

7. I once got picked up in two minutes

By a guy and his wife....the guy was in need of a kidney. He didn't ask for one but it made me chuckle inside to think that he was expecting a payment for the ride if you know what I mean.

[greendog]

8. Oh yeah!

Hitchhiked logging roads in BC to get to a trail head (1 & 1/2 days to go 60 miles). Hitched around the west in the '80's. Got all kinds of rides....brilliant and interesting people, sports cars and jalopies. Got a ride from 2 drunk rednecks on an icy road who passed the time by shooting at roadsigns along the way...got a ride from an tired old drunk cowboy with a pistol on the dash who couldn't keep his old truck on the road....I've slept in the bushes by the highway when I couldn't catch a ride...yeah, I know about hitchhiking.

[bowens43]

10. In 1976

I hitched from NE Ohio up to northern Wisconsin , back to Ohio then to Florida from Florida over to Louisiana . It was a blast. Met a lot of kind souls and a couple of very unusual people.