Anecdotes

Best strorries from hitchhiker for hitchhiker

Name: Quentin
Titel: Mister
Hi, I have been reguarly hitch hiking world wide for more than 40 years. (1968/2015) and I believe my most memorable lift was with a New Zealand motorist in 1980. He stopped his VW bus to pick me up, just south of Nelson (S Is.) we were a mile along the road before I realised there was something radically different about this vehicle and this driver….The VW bus had no steering wheel, and the driver had no arms ! He steered with his feet and talked about his sailing experiences in the Bay of Islands….! On arrival in Nelson he opened and closed the sliding side door with his foot…..and wished me well, not once mentioning his disability. I have enjoyed many many unusual hitch hiking experiences over the years….but this remains the most remarkable of them all !

Name: Nick Attwell
Titel: Hitch-hiking
Just to say I find walking backwards along a roadside is a quicker way to be picked up, as opposed to walking with your back to oncoming traffic. Drivers are able to see your face and are more likely to pick you up, especially if you have a friendly smile on your face.

Name: Nick Attwell
Titel: Free Ride & B&B
Hitching at Keele (Staffordshire) services on the M6 heading north in the uk 1979 aged 18 with my then girlfriend Claire also 18 we were picked up by a middle aged woman in a Bentley. She was widowed and this was her husbands car. She enyoyed driving and this was one of her many excursions. That day she had decided to stop at Keele for coffee and saw us and stopped as she re-entered the motorway. She invited us to her house for the night offering to take us to our destination Lancaster University the next day. I am sure if I was not accompaied by Claire there is no way she would have stopped for a lone male (me) as she was a lone female so obviously she would have been wary. This is one of many lifts I have had both with a fellow hitchiker and alone.

Name: peter nolan smith
Homepage: http://www.mangozeen.com
Titel: Valley Of Pot

August 1972 was five years past San Francisco’s Summer of Love. A college friend from Crane’s Beach and I had hitchhiked from Boston to the West Coast in 45 hours. A mutual girlfriend, Marilyn, was hostessing topless at a Barbary Coast strip club. 3 months tips paid a year’s tuition.

After a few hugs and kisses, the 19 year-old nursing student gave us the address of a crash pad. She had little time for us. Her boyfriend was a biker, the VP of the Skulls. It was obvious that Marilyn wasn’t fucking either of us this trip and the biker warned us to fuck off.

Rico was actually nice about it.

Marilyn said that she would see us in September.

Peter and I aimlessly wandered around the city; the defunct Haight-Ashbury, idyllic Golden Gate Park, and the fleshpots of the Barbary Coast. The hippies had been replaced by junkies and queers. Peter was a botany major and wanted to see the redwoods.

I called Marilyn to say ?goodbye?.

The biker answered and said, Like she said see you in September, but if you see me, it will be in hell.

Not me, but I’ll be fucking Marilyn in September. Fuck you.

It was a brave challenge over a phone, but I didn’t feel safe until a pick-up gave us a ride across the Golden gate Bridge over to Sausalito. We traveled up Route 101 through the wine counties to the redwood forest. We slept surrounded by arboreal giants more ancient than Rome. The next day we reached Arcata in the early morning. A hippie coming south warned us against hitchhiking further north on 101.

Rednecks and no rides. Could take you a week to reach Oregon.

His adverse advice was accompanied by the paranoia aftermath of the shared joint. Peter and I headed inland through the Trinity Alps. 299 wound through steep-sloped valleys fortresses by wilderness evergreens. Willow Creek to Burnt Ranch to Big Bar to Junction City and finally Weaverville.

The town was miles from anywhere. An unspoken prosperity had enlivened the previously moribund Gold Rush town. The cars were new and the diners filled with hungry customers, mostly long-haired men in buckskins and tea shades. The waitress was a moonchild. Her smile promised a good time.

?Pot growers.? Peter whispered with admiration. We had financed this trip by the sale of two pounds of Jamaica Red. The town smelled of weed, sinsemilla to be exact.

?This is the ideal place to grow pot. He looked at the steep hills surrounding the town.

Several heads turned our direction.

The townies were used to being discreet. I shrugged an apology. Outside of the street Peter and I discussed pooling our money to set up a marijuana plantation. $500 could grow into $1000. Next year maybe $100,000. I almost walked back inside the diner to ask the dealers for a job, but a roar of motorcycles shattered the town?s serenity.

A pack of Harleys rolled up to the diner. The hippie bon vivants greeted the leathered bikers as long-lost brothers. They looked like heavier versions of Rico. Only five years ago the Hell?s Angels had killed off the Age of Aquarius with the murder at Altamont Speedway during the Rolling Stones? SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. Weed growers and bikers glared at Peter and me with hostility.

I lifted my hand to indicate that we were leaving.

No one bothered to watch us go.

Peter and I tried out hands at dealing back in Boston. I was no good at it. Peter paid for his tuition and the following summer went out to San Francisco with Marilyn to work as a bartender in the strip club. Neither of them returned to college in the fall. I heard about them from other friends. They were living north of the Bay Area.

His one year of botany made him the Einstein of the marijuana growers. Several of his future strains were mentioned in HIGH TIMES magazine.

And I couldn’t have been prouder.

At least one of us had gotten to live the dream.

Name: Lasse
Titel: -> The Season Starts Again!
We?ll go out again and met friendly peops from all around the world. I Like!

I got a lift by a test driver of porsche and was quicker then by train. I was token by a women of my neighbourhood 400 km away. Likely people took me home for sleeping there, a girl took me two times and we had nice breaks close to our route, and i walked in the night along the road, cause the way was splitted in two directions: in my way and into the driversway. Always I found my way and loving to go new ways. Thats impressions which causes my declaration of love to hitchhiking!

Name: breeze
Titel: peaceful man
Stuck out on the road for nearly 17 hours and this car pulls up. “hop in, man, where you going? I reply that I’m on my way to Cadiz. “No problem” he says. “Never been there so maybe [email protected] time to go there”. This guy could’nt do enough for me, he gave, no insisted that I hace 50euros even though I told him I had money. Turns out he was a Buddhist monk discovering the world as part of his “training”. His parting word was “OM”.Peace to you allxxx

Name: Paul Davis
Titel: Luv it!
I live in IL. and took a train to Texas 2 start my trip. I was 30 years old and just wanted 2 get away. I was head’d 2 The Grand Canyon. Once in Fort Worth I ended up at this cool lake with a nice safe spot in the woods. A bus driver that was at the park had told me about the spot after I told him my deal. In the morning I was packing up and a women was walking out towards me. She thought I was fishing. We started talking and she said she would give me a ride. Before that she took me to a Chanting center. She was from India and her name was Poo-nam. It felt so good to have these people chanting 4 my safe travel! After that she took me to her work so I could use the internet. She made me a bracelet the had the chant on it so I could do it on my own. After I left I new that this was a sign that things will work out 4 me on this trip.
Long story short I had a great time at the Canyon, spending 7days in the park! Have done alot more since then and that first time was a real learning exerience. back home after volunteering the rest of the summer now. I’f I cant get a cool job soon I’ll be right back out with my thumb up and a smile on my face!! I miss it so much!! hope every one who’s hitch’n right now is have a good an safe trip. Till next time!!
The Wander’in Fool,
Paul C. Davis ,Galesburg,IL

Name: WorldWalk-Peacetour
Homepage: http://worldwalk-peacetour.blogspot.com
Titel: From Senegal to Spain: A Tale of a Hitchhiking
So, this is how it all happened… Soon after we arrived in Dakar we started to realize that it was impossible to find a cruiser or freighter heading towards North America, there was no choice, we headed back to Europe. After walking through the Sahara desert we were not that stupid to walk all the way back, so our only chance was hitchhiking. It’s fast and cheap.

Dakar-Rosso-Dakar
We started hitchhiking at 1 PM and a young French couple picked us up almost instantly. They had a truck converted to a caravan, but they had to drop us off after Thi?s (60 mi), because we were stopped by the police for the third or fourth time there, the truck had a cabin for only three passengers. It was almost dark by then. -> read more…

Name: Jeff
I like the site, although all the anecdotes are in another language, Well I am thinking of hitch hiking for the first time, I got a long way to travel and dont have the money for a bus ticket, I havent made the absolute decission yet but I am seriously thinking about it, I need to b4 it starts getting to cold anyway, any tips or comments about my where abouts, or how its going for me send me an email. [email protected]