A Slight Hitch

"I don’t think anyone’s going to pick us up" groused Dave.

Irritatingly cynical he may have been, but it was hard to deny, it was looking as though he might be right. I wasn’t prepared to concede that point just yet however. We had after all, only been attempting to hitchhike for about two hours, and he’d been grumbling since the start.

We were making our way home after completing a long distance hike. We’d taken the bus part of the way but were now completely broke and still 80 miles from home. No big deal, I’d hitched that distance and more without a problem in multiple countries and was pretty experienced in the game. But I had to confess to a nagging worry that my previous efforts had always been flying solo. It’s a general rule of thumb (there’s a joke in there somewhere) that if you must hitch with a partner, it should preferably be female, blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. Dave was none of those. He was on the other hand, becoming increasingly pessimistic about my ability to procure a ride.

I was following all the rules; standing by a straight stretch of road where the drivers would have long enough to check me out, decide I didn’t look like an axe murderer and pull over on the wide shoulder I’d thoughtfully selected, and yet not so straight a stretch that they’d already be up to full speed and disinclined to stop again. I had my thumb clearly raised in the accepted style and was making eye contact with each driver as they sailed by, attempting to communicate by telepathy how interesting, clean and safe I was and how much their lives would be improved if they would only invite me into their cars. Oh and my friend Dave too. And our oversized backpacks.

Nada.

Hitchhiking isn’t a game for people in a hurry, or for those who need to live by a schedule. Yes, there have been times when I’ve been escorted to my destination by a succession of fast cars with barely a moment's wait between them. On one occasion I made it from my front door to the center of Edinburgh, some 150 miles away, in a whisker over 2 hours after being picked up by the first car to come along, driven by a company executive who by coincidence was following the exact same route as me. Other times I’ve had multiple lifts separated by no more than a few minutes. In Australia I once traveled 350 miles in 7 rides with no time to eat the sandwich I’d packed for lunch.

But more commonly a hitchhiking trip will require some hanging around. Sometimes for a long time. I was once stuck on a back road in an industrial area of Scotland and after four hours fruitless thumbing was just on the verge of walking to the next town and checking the train schedule when a delivery van came to the rescue by transporting me the 25 miles to a real highway. Another time, cold and hungry I waited for just over three hours on a desolate Yorkshire moor before being driven straight home by a lady who reminded me of my Mum.

But the thing is, you never know how it’s going to be. Sometimes you can wait all morning to get started, before receiving half a dozen rides in quick succession. Other times the whole day can be plain sailing while very occasionally you just get flat out stuck. Some hitchhikers turn down the offer of short rides, preferring to hold out for the longer run which might be along shortly. To me that’s a little like walking past a five-dollar bill in the hopes you might find a twenty further on. Also, if somebody has been decent enough to stop and offer a ride, then I’m not going to be churlish enough to spurn them. It’s true, there are times when you may be standing at a promising spot, and a short ride runs the risk of stranding you somewhere less appealing, but generally I’m willing to take what I’m offered.

The only downside to short rides is that you get weary of repeating the same conversational openers multiple times in quick succession. "What’s your name?", "Where are you from?" "What do you do for a living?" and so on. I once met a Canadian who swore the next question was always "Would you like a blow job?" but that never happened to me. Generally most drivers were just looking for a little conversation to break up the monotony of their own journey.

So to keep them entertained I sometimes got a little creative in my answers and rather than just repeating the truth over and over, would start to make things up. In my time I’ve been a trainee vet, a professional gambler, a chess master, and an Olympic marathoner among other things. Of course, there’s always the risk I’d run into someone who knew more about my chosen subject than I did, but in all my fibbing, I was only caught out once after claiming to be studying for the priesthood before learning my driver was the brother of a priest. Ironically, the only reason that popped into my head was because the previous driver had been a born-again Christian who tried to convert me.

But here Dave and I were, getting increasingly hungry and nowhere nearer home. Two hours turned into three and then to four and it was obvious that today wasn’t to be our day. We tried new locations, took turns, changed our clothes to look as appealing as possible but despite the abundance of traffic, nobody was stopping. Eventually, like the worrywart he is, Dave sloped off to find a payphone and called his parents. Oh the shame. I’d never failed so completely before.

A couple of hours later, up they rolled to find us sitting disconsolately on the grassy verge. They teased us mercilessly most of the way home, before handing us a newspaper. As I said, we’d been on a long distance hike and had been totally out of touch with the media for almost two weeks. Which meant we were the only two people in the country who didn’t know that there was an escaped murderer on the loose in the area with a manhunt extending over three counties.

I looked at the paper, and immediately felt a whole lot better about my hitchhiking performance. There, in two-inch high black type screamed that morning’s headline:

DO NOT PICK UP HITCHIKERS!

Now if only somebody had told us beforehand.