I'm Hitchin'!

From a very early age, I was encouraged to hitch hike to where ever I wanted to go. This was mostly due to the fact that my family didn’t believe in car ownership, and had some new philosophy that involved sharing and credit cards. Hitchin'The last time I hitched was actually the scariest time. My dad was competing in a bicycle race called “the Death Ride” and even though daddy didn’t want me to compete in the race he let me be a volunteer. My little brother and I got our volunteer shirts and decided maybe we would walk to the checkpoint where we would be working. I figured it wasn’t that far a walk – down and out of Kirkwood (pop. 150), down the road past the Kirkwood Inn (one of two fine dining establishments in the village) up past Immigrant lake, where people fish off the side of the road and at the mouth of the dam, and then up towards the pass. Once we passed the pass we’d be there, we thought. I was wearing flip-flops. We decided to stick our thumbs out to the open road once we passed emigrant lake’s fishing groups and realized we had quite a long ways to go. A lot of cars passed us, one slowed down, stopped and then drove off before we could get to it. A mean trick? Maybe. Finally a car slowed for us, and my brother and I looked at each other wondering if we should get in. It was a very recognizable car for anyone who had seen Get Shorty – the Oldsmobile Silhouette—the Cadillac of mini vans. It stopped, and a man slid open the door. I scrambled in back so I didn’t have to sit next to the fat, hairy man at the wheel. I looked around, realizing that the back of the Silhouette was almost entirely ripped out aside from the single chair I was sitting in. The man didn’t do much talking. He asked us where we wanted to go and then was quiet and probably happy that it wasn’t far. At this point my brother and I’s telepathy kicked in and we were both a little worried that this guy would pull over the Oldsmobile, black out the windows and then gut us like fish in the near empty rear of the vehicle. Thankfully he dropped us off and we made it to our posts on time, just in time to give water to the proud finishers of the race. But we’d never forget that we thought we could have almost died. Why was that man driving a car like that by himself out here in the middle of nowhere in the summer? He certainly wasn’t there for the race. There were little bags of chips strewn around the floor. Hitchhiking is strange. Both parties have to be willing to get themselves into an incredibly uncomfortable situation. There’s a little power struggle always between the strangers, knowing that anything could happen. The “Girl on the Road” didn’t get picked up willingly, but she was certainly annoying as hell once she was on her way. Suddenly there’s a feeling of regret for picking up this twig woman—maybe she would have been better off dead? No, it’s human nature to help one another even if it’s in a car.