Tales of a 60-year-old hitchhiker

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

I knew they could see me. Families on their way to the lake, truckers hauling loads on deadlines, couples heading for church or breakfast – they all would have found me directly in their line of sight as they screamed into the westbound curve at 70 miles per hour. I imagined that for those 10, maybe 15 seconds, they thought: Is that a person on the shoulder? Where’s his car? What’s he doing? Looking for a ride? Really? Then, whoosh, they were past.

They were coming at the rate of about one vehicle every four seconds. That would be more than 15 per minute. More than 1,000 per hour. Times two, for the time I’d been there. I knew it wasn’t personal, but from where I stood, it was still a lot of rejection. The sun rose higher, its glare and warmth intensifying.

All I’d have to do, I thought, was hop across the median and turn my back on all of this – head east, back to the Twin Cities and home, and never tell anyone I was ever serious about hitchhiking 1,700 miles to visit a friend in Twisp, Wash., a small town in the mountains east of Seattle. I could be home in two hours, and spend my week’s vacation fishing.

Salon.com > Bill McAuliffe

Tales of a 60-year-old hitchhiker