Hitch-hiking

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have you ever hitch-hiked?

from 16-20 we used to hitch from leeds down to london (and festivals, and , fuck, even birmingham once!) to see bands and go to clubs and shit, before i finally decided, fuck this, i'm getting the national express (course, eventually, i thought, fuck this, i'm getting the GNER, soon, i'll be at the point where i'm going to fly that journey)

1. hitched back from glastonbury once, we had to wait, like, 10 minutes, to get a lift out of there, and these girls stopped and let us in. we had 'leeds' signs, so we set off, then, on the way, they say

so, whereabouts in leeds you going
well, we're actually going to Bradford,
cool, we're going to bradford too, whereabouts?
uh, shipley
wow, thats where we're driving to!

anyway, turns out these girls live 8 doors away from me. i'd never seen them before in my life, and i haven't since.

2. walking towards brent cross, hitching back to leeds by myself, this car pulls up, i'm not even hitching yet, haven't got my sign out or anything. "where you going to mate", 'leeds', i can take you as far as Swiss Cottage. what the fuck? i don't want to go back into london. i think he was a mate of that guy trying to hit on Ronan, he had that look y'know.

3. coming towards the end of some acid after seeing Adorable, stood at the bottom of the M1 at Brent Cross. its like 3am, theres 2 pensionsers hitching as well. what??? after they get a lift i hear this rustling in the bushes behind me. i'm really starting to shit myself now, thinking, this is not a good time/place to be on acid. fuck! eventually, 10 mins later, this guy comes out. thankfully turns out to be a pissed geordie on his way back from an England match at wembley, his mates had left him. relieved.

4. on my way back from london, after an unsuccesful stint at living in DG country (a fucking ymca in romford - halfway house for criminals, that shit was grim, we had to bail out and got chased by these crackheads living there). anyway, i got mugged on the train before i'd even got to Brent Cross (went up the Cricklewood way instead). this gang took my money, but when they saw my hitching sign with 'leeds' written on it, they said "he needs it more than us man" and gave me my money back.

got a lift about midnight off these 2 geezers, but they were fucked. didn't realise straightaway, but they were off their heads and they'd stole the car we were in. they kept driving up to lorries and swerving past at the last minute. then they stopped dead in the outer lane, and said "we're all going to die". shit. they went past Watford Gap services on the M1, and i needed to get off to stay on the M1 cuz they were going up the M6, i said "can we stop here", "no mate, we cant do that", then they started going up the M6, then off into this housing estate in Coventry, they just stopped and said "this do you mate?" hell, yeah, i got out!

so, i'm stuck in a coventry housing estate at 2am. walked back to the M6, got picked up by the police, took to the next services, then hitched up to the M62, walking along there, 7am now, picked up by police again "get off the motorway NOW!" walked to somewhere called Whitefield, with my 7 or 8 pounds, i got a bus to Bury, a bus to Rochdale, a bus to Halifax, a bus to Bradford, and a bus to Shipley. got in 11am.

i never hitched again.

― gareth, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I once hitched 200 yards, coming back from a night out. My friend and I had resigned ourselves to walking, but stuck our thumbs out anyway. After an hour or so, we actually got offered a lift. Once we got in the car, and he asked us where we were going, I realised in my sozzled state that we were a stone's throw from my house. Very embarrassing.

― Mark C, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never had the nerve to hitch-hike. Someone might try to pick me up or something.

― N., Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

magari :-)

― Mark C, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I hitched back from Glastonbury once (1993? Year the Velvet Underground headlined?) when the transit van packed up. We got dropped off at service stations and politely asked passers-by if they wouldn't mind if we came along with them. Very successful strategy, actually.

― Jane, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Despite the dire warnings at school from Aylesbury Vale police, I have a vague memory of hitching when I lived in Spain about 6 years ago with another girl. I think we were suffering from the delusion that if you are in another country bad things do not happen (e.g. when people on holiday walk down the middle of roads) or possibly as it was the Costa del Crime I was hoping to pick up a Russian mafiosa type bloke. I cannot even remember if we got picked up now.

Me and an old boyfriend picked up a young girl in north Devon once. She was very nice and said she hitched all the time at which point I turned into a mum and told her she shouldn't and she was lucky we were nice normal people not axe murderers.

― Emma, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Got sent to cover Creamfields Ireland for magazine. Only found out I was going the day before and couldn't get advance expenses. Had only £15 of my own as it was the day before pay day. Met photographer at airport, hoped he had money, he only had £20 and was waiting for a cheque to clear.

Got to hotel etc etc. Then found out we had no way of getting to the festival, or back, or back to the airport the next day. Got a bus as far out of Dublin as we could and then had to hitch. No-one would stop as we had enourmous mounds of camera equipment. We put it behind a bush and some people stopped, although they nearly drove off again when they saw all the stuff we were carrying. Horrible. Most miserable festival experience of my life.

― Anna, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

in 1994,i hitch-hiked through scotland with a friend, it was a great holiday! it was also the holiday during which i learned (very early on, through the windscreen of a local car) that in the uk, you use 2 fingers to signal "fuck off", whereas we (in the netherlands) only use 1 (the middle finger).
nevertheless, most people were great. on the 3rd day, we got a lift from an old guy named ian. we were standing just outside of perth and were just trying to get as far north as we could get. turned out he was going to just that place, well, almost: thurso. alright then, get in!
the ride was very long, but pleasant. ian was full of stories; he was a man with a history. a funny thing was that he kept asking us to check the traffic behind us when he was going to make a turn... he explained that when he was a young boy, he had been in a car accident in which a horse, that was trying to jump over the car to avoid a collision, landed on the car, breaking ian's neck. his head was now supported by some "wires" that more or less anchored it on his torso, because of which looking over his shoulder had become a bit of a problem... this, however, did not prevent him from taking up his profession (building those rock-fences you see everywhere in the fields
despite his entertaining stories, after a while conversations ran dry and long silences fell from time to time. suddenly, he would blow the horn, without an apparent cause or reason. my friend and i looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and remained silent. then, 5 mins later, the horn was used again. upon inquiry, he explained that during long drives his thoughts would sometimes wander off, going to places that should not be visited... (mmmkay..) in order to keep his focus on driving, he would blow the horn now and then. somehow, that didn't really reassure us...
nevertheless, we reached thurso in one piece late in the afternoon, in the rain, with a nice trip to remember...

hitch-hiking is a (can be) great way to go on holiday, it's cheap and it's very likely you encounter something or someone interesting from time to time. mind you, only hitch-hike through northern scotland during the summer season when tourists are in continuous supply, because they're gonna be the only ones (apart from ian) who'll pick you up.

― willem, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

not true; in Ayrshire I got a ride from an old couple in a Beemer from Castle Culzean to Robbie Burns's cottage, because my bus had left without me. It was totally the wrong direction for them but they took me anyway. I caught up with my group and they're like "so THERE you are..." I wanted to punch them. An American student, in the country for 3 or 4 days and they leave me amongst the rocks and thistles?? Actually I was secretly looking forward to roughing it and sleeping in the boathouse. It was a warm day. But thanks to the old couple in the nice car I made it home to my crappy fucking dorm room.

the other time I hitchiked was when I slept through my train stop from Boston to Providence... I rub my eyes... "next stop, New London" as we pull out of Providence station... Christ... I had an audition in 2 hours. I got my stuff and waited for the right moment to jump, and realized that all the doors were locked from the outside. The train back from New London didn't leave until like 8 that night or something so I walked out onto the interstate and flagged this woman down... her car was absolutely stinking with cigarette butts; every surface was an ashtray. I was so nervous that I actually asked her if I could smoke. "Just roll the window down, honey." It turned out she was from Tennessee. She told me about her kids. One of them was named Dustin. "You know why?" No. "Most people think he's named after Dustin Hoffman, or something like that. he's not. I named him after Dusty Rhodes, the wrestler." Nice. She dropped me off in Mystic and I got another ride from a weird guy with a beard who had pictures of fish he'd caught all over his dashboard, but he could only take me as far as Stonington. Do not - I repeat, do NOT get stuck in Stonington looking for a hitch. It is full of khakhi- shorts-wearing pilot's wives and future fraternity brothers. "Grateful Dead sticker on a Cadillac" kind of thing. It started to get dark. Then it started to rain. Oh, and it was HALLOWEEN. I've totally missed my audition already so I go into town to a gas station and call every friend I can find. I wait for the humiliating pick-up ("yeah, I missed the station in Providence") at this crappy Stonington gas station and watch the cars pull in with like 4 bratty little kids wearing pirate outfits in the back, and their father in a full-body Tigger costume telling them to shut up... I never got a freakier feeling from upper-class white America in my life, and I've never trusted them since...

― Tracer hand, Tuesday, 2 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i hitched from berlin to prague once and saved myself $80 on train fare. though it could have ended up in disaster as one ride dropped me off at the czech border in the dark, rain, and wind. fortunatly, some scottish guy picked me up... also hitched in poland where its easy as fuck to get a ride. and slovenia.

― phil-two, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Done a bit. Wierdest moment was travelling over the Dutch/German border in the '80s (pre-Schengen) with intelligent but somewhat unhinged bloke who insisted my companion + I stepped out with all our gear + walked through customs ourselves (understandable precaution under the circumstances). To his credit he waited for us on the other side but then started laughing hysterically claiming he had a massive load of drugs in the car and we'd helped provide a cover for him. My gut feeling was that he wasn't taking the piss.

― stevo, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

1 time hitching from Christchurch-Timaru i got picked up by this creep who told me he always picked up hitch hikers 'cause he used to do a lot of it himself - then he goes into this story, something like "so I was hitching in the Australian outback & I hadn't eaten for days & I was stone broke when this fella picked me up & he said, look mate i'll give you $1000 if you'll let me suck you off" - then he looks at me intensely & says "A THOUSAND DOLLARS". I don't say anything. "WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?" I don't know. "This is for ME to LET HIM suck ME off. you understand?" Yeah, umm....yeah. "Well what do you think I did?" I don't know. "Well listen mate...I don't mind telling you...I reckon most guys...well they wouldn't tell their mates...but they'd DO IT!" & so on like this...then another story, more or less exactly the same except different geographical details & maybe different sex acts. After a while he stops & picks up another hitch hiker & while there's a 3rd person in the car he stops with the sex stories & just tells other weird stories like this stuff about how when he was at school, he went to school out in the country & it was like a 5 mile walk to school but you know what, "I knew my way by heart so I could just walk the whole way reading a book! & that's not all - my sister'd be walking alongside me - ON HER HANDS!" . The other hitch hiker was only going as far as Temuka or 1 of those places & as soon as he got out of the car the guy dropped straight back into the middle of the story he'd interrupted when the 2nd hitch hiker got in the car - "OK so there we were at this bikie party, there was 50 of these bikies there & this 1 chick, she just got down on her knees & sucked off every guy in the joint" blah blah blah. I used to hitch lots , I met TONS of creeps.

― , Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Creamfields Ireland Most miserable festival experience of my life

I had lots of money and didn't hitch and yet this is still true.

― Ronan, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

...yeah & of course when we got to timaru & i was about to get out of the car the guy offered me $1000 - "just to talk" - did i do it? well what do you think i did. i mean i wouldnt tell my mates...but you know.
actually if i'd believed for a second that he actually *had* $1000, who the fuck knows.

― duane, Wednesday, 3 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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