Redding >> San Francisco

Free food!

I came to Redding for the bridge, but I'd just about stay for the blackberries. My CS host lent me his bike for a morning ride, so I spent a few hours seeing the river trail, doing some geocaching, and stopping every few minutes to grab a handful of delicious fruit. Redding is actually a rather incredible place. It has stunning scenery, cool bridges, lots of trails, and easy access to Lake Shasta and other national parkland. It's also full of young families: nearly half of the people I passed had at least one child under the age of 8 with them.

I stayed in town longer than planned, but at about 3:00pm I finally decided I should get going. I made my sign and started walking to the freeway, and got my first ride before I even left the parking lot. A New Zealander, in Redding while he studies at a seminary, saved me nearly an hour's worth of walking by taking me to my desired on ramp. I paused to fill up on icewater and burritos then moved out to the onramp. Plenty of space, great flow, near a gas station, and nothing worth stopping at between here and Sacramento. I felt pretty good about it.

In the car with Noah

I'd spent less than an hour (30 minutes, maybe?) when little yellow jeep-thing pulled off. Rickety as anything, and packed to the brim with camping gear, it's definitely the most interesting vehicle I've ridden in. It was a bit of trick to get myself and my bag in, but I was glad I did. The old man driving the car, Noah, was a really interesting guy to talk to. He had an incredibly well behaved dog, Mutt-Lee, who rode behind us on the trip. Noah had been up in the north west for the past few months, looking into some mines. Now he was headed back to his wife in Texas, but wanted to stop in on an Korean war buddy first and see if he was still alive, or lay some flowers on his grave if he wasn't. I wish the windows could have been rolled up to make talking easier, but the old car didn't have AC. Come to think of it, it may not have even had working windows. I think the crank for my window was sitting on the dash.

About a hundred miles after we started, he dropped me off at a rest stop before he took off on backroads to his destination. It was a pretty slow rest stop, but even so it only took a half hour of talking to everyone who came into the lot before I was able to find a ride to Vacaville. A young guy this time, I think he was about 23. He was a carpenter, and a graffiti artist who uses the tag 'Logic.' He pointed out a train in the distance, saying that he'd tagged a car on it. He does legitimate murals as well, but tagging is the main hobby. He explained his philosophies on it, talked about the hundred-plus other Graf artists he's met and some of the things that drove them, and how starting at 13 let to him becoming an accomplished shop-lifter to keep up his supplies of paint. He said that he only stole from big corporate stores, as he felt that they deserved it, and could absorb the cost. As we were talking, I mentioned that a fairly large chunk of the cost of items goes to pay for stolen goods. Looking online, a consumer might be paying at extra +300 a year because of the theft of others. He had no idea. It was interesting, because even though he's stopped shoplifting (getting sent to jail for nicking a stick of deodorant isn't exactly worth it), realizing how much people have to pay to make up those costs was a paradigm shift for him.

We got to Vacaville, and he took me to the best spot around. Lots of space, and pretty good flow. Slow going, though. I got bored after a half hour or so and started counting cars, telling myself that if I got to 500, I'd go buy some dinner. I don't think I even hit a hundred before a woman ridesharing down from Portland with a 19 year old freight hopper pulled over and offered me a ride to BART. Thanks to her, I met my goal: back in bus range before it was dark.

Now, some trip stats:

Saturday, July 23 2011
Distance hitched: 203 miles
Time: 5 hours
# of rides: 4
Total Cost: $1.05

San Francisco >> Redding

Sundial at sunset

Sometimes you have a good reason to go somewhere. Sometimes you don't. I went to Redding to see a footbridge, you decide.

The bridge in question is the Sundial Bridge by Santiago Calatrava, a well-known Spanish architect-engineer. It was his first work in North America, and is still one of a very few. It gets its name from the fact that it is a working sundial, the largest in existence. The unique cable stayed design protects the salmon runs beneath it by not touching any portion of the river, and allowing light to filter through the walkway to the river below. It's an absolutely stunning structure, which my few camera-phone photos cannot do anything even approaching justice.

Richmond on ramp

So, how did I get here? First, to the road. Travelwiki recommended heading up to the Richmond BART station, so I did (albeit by bus to save on fares). I stood out by the entrance to I-80 for about an hour and a half. In some ways it was a great spot: plenty of space for people to stop, and a high flow of traffic. But there was a downside...it's a poor area, which typically means people aren't interested in picking you up. I had a very nice Asian lady stop and offer to take me one town up, but I declined (chances of finding as good a spot up there weren't that high). She never picks up hitchhikers, but she said that I reminded her of her son. I thanked her and she went on her way.

The second guy to stop was a construction worker. Pretty cool guy, though more than a little bit racist towards Mexicans. He was rather fed up with the state of the economy, and how wages were constantly going down (something he attributed directly to low-wage earning Mexican laborers). He'd done a lot of traveling with his work, putting surfaces on tennis courts and playgrounds throughout the US, pacific islands, and Southeast Asia. He's done a fair amount of hitchhiking back when he was younger, when he worked as a logger up in Oregon (a life he left when he got tired of the fights that happened every Friday night, where the winners got the girls and the losers got nothing). He picks up a fair number of hitchhikers, as long as he feels they're safe. He also carries a .45 handgun under his seat, so that's a pretty fair number of people. He got me as far as Vacaville, where we found a gas station right at the split between I-80 and I-505.

There was another guy trying to get a ride up to Redding when I showed up. An older guy, tattoos all up and down his arms, no backpack. He wasn't sure how long he'd been trying for a ride, but he'd gone to the gas station three times so far for water. Nice guy, he offered to take turns on the corner, so we didn't over power it. I got a ride fairly quickly, a guy in a beat-up old truck. He was also a construction worker, though a job-site injury has forced him to slow down and do maintenance for old clients until he heals up. Great guy, but taking him up on this ride was a mistake...I'd assumed that, since there really isn't anything between Vacaville and I-5, I'd be able to get through the 505 without a problem. I was wrong. Really wrong. He was only going to the next exit, and so I went from good traffic flow with an ok pull out, to almost no traffic flow and a great pullout. After an hour or so I got tired of waiting for cars that were barely coming, and walked over to a gas station. I started talking with people in the lot, and found an old guy willing to drive me as far north as he was going. It wasn't very far, but it was something :)  His wife was out of town, so he'd decided to head up to Cache Creek and do some gambling. Apparently he's rather good at it. He graduated with a degree in psychology, paid for with winnings from his hobby.

By this point, it was getting pretty close to noon. Maybe later. I got dropped off on a fairly well traveled back road, and came across a fruit stand as I was walking. I asked the woman how much to buy one piece of fruit, a peach. She answered, "It's free. Here, would you like two?" You meet so many nice people out in situations like this....that made for an excellent lunch. Shortly after that, a woman pulled over and gave me a short ride. There was only a few hundred yards before getting back to the 505, where she dropped me off, but it was really nice of her to get me that far. She was on her way to work, and as I was getting out she handed me a homemade coffee cake and a yogurt from her lunch, insisting that I take it. Such a nice lady....I think her name was Tony. I ate the yogurt then, but the coffee cake was large enough to be a sizable part of lunch, dinner, and lunch the next day.

Turns out that this onramp was even worse than the first one. After 20 or so minutes and only three cars getting on, I decided I was better off walking on the side road and heading east to I-5, instead of north. It would add a dozen or so miles to the total trip, but I figured I was a lot more likely to catch a ride out there than standing at a dead on ramp. 

A few minutes into walking (walking seems to be a really quick way to get a ride), a young guy in a new truck pulls over. Joseph is his name, and he's just coming back from getting measured for a fireman's uniform for his new job. He's been a volunteer for the past four years, and now he's finally going to get paid. It's not something he's planning to make a career out of (he's banking on energy deregulation in the next few years, and is laying the foundation for a company selling natural gas), he just loves helping people. He's a Christian, and we started talking about that side of his life. By the end of the ride we exchanged numbers to keep in touch, and he gave me some tracts he carries. I really need to start carrying pass along cards so I can reciprocate a bit. 

You know when you're out in the middle of a bunch of trees, all alone, and you start doing crazy things? So, I got dropped off by the five, but no one was stopping. It was a fair ways off from any town, and while it did have more traffic than the other places I'd been, it wasn't all that great. It would be a few minutes between cars. I ran out of water partway through (note that it's probably close to 100 out there), and started amusing myself by singing opera at the top of my lungs, waltzing on the bridge, and having about as much fun as one person can when they're alone. It was a blast. Even if I looked kinda crazy, and had to try and make myself look 'normal' whenever I saw a car coming. But the whole being out of water thing got to me eventually, so I looked on my GPS for a map to the next town, and started walking down a road running parallel to the freeway. 

As usual, I didn't walk for long before I got picked up. This time by an older African American gentleman and a lady-friend named Dee. He used to live in the Bay area, working for a chemical company for a number of years, then quitting and working for a person who'd been his client, and eventually leaving to start his own company. One day he got a call from his father, saying he should head home to help out with his mother, who was really sick and only had a few months left to live. 19 years later, and he's still out here helping to take care of her. 

There was a really busy Pilot a ways up, a perfect place to get dropped off. I filled up on ice water inside and headed out to the on ramp. I hadn't even been able to make my new sign when a truck pulls off and offers me a lift all the way to Redding. Stephen, an Englishman from Newcastle, is a carpenter who's been in the US for nearly 20 years. He lives out in Marin, and was on his way to visit a friend up in Yreka. We talked about his ex-wife (she wanted to be a vet, but her father wanted her to study fashion design. She did, was successful in LA, then got fed up with the corporate life and now lives in Nevada working at an animal rescue.), his family (spread across the US and England, but still very well connected), and his own hitchhiking trip across the US. He'd been used to hitching rides around England when he was younger, and could easily get from the top to the bottom of the country in one day's travel. When he arrived in the US, he and a friend decided to hitch from San Francisco to New York City. A few days into it, they finally realized just how far that was. He got a great ride with a trucker, spending 6 days traveling around the mid west before getting off in Chicago and taking a greyhound the rest of the way to New York. So many stories on the trip....I could write a whole blog just about him.

I finally hit Redding at about 6:30pm. It took 4 hours longer than I was expecting, but I was at the bridge before sundown, and overall had a great time hitching. Lots of cool people, some great fruit, and an awesome bridge. Can't ask for much more than that.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance Hitched: 209 miles
Total Time: 10 hours
# of rides: 7
Total Cost: $3.00

San Francisco >> San Jose

The internet is a wonderful tool for hitchhiking. It lets you research major cities and find the best places for hitching, without having to wander the freeway looking for sites. It also lets you know that if you're trying to get out of San Francisco, your best bet is to take Caltrain as far south as possible, then try to hitch there. Getting out of SF otherwise is nearly impossible. I wanted to know how true this was, so I set aside an afternoon and decided to hitch to San Jose via the 280. It turns out that the internet is rather right about this route. It's a pain in the neck.

I started off where 19th Ave turns into I-280. Unfortunately...it's a rather hi-speed stretch of road, with very little space to pull over. I tried two different spots which appeared to have potential, but ultimately decided that neither was good enough to stay. I then walked down the road a mile, till I came to a formal on ramp. Great position, plenty of space to pull over...but not much luck. Another guy with hitching experience walked by and said hello. He said that I wasn't going to have much luck here. While he wasn't racist, it was simple fact that this area was Asian/Filipino, and that demographic does not pick up hitchhikers. Which is true. I've done a decent amount of bay area hitching, and I have had exactly one individual of Asian decent stop for me, which is not at all representative of the racial makeup of they Bay. The vast majority of people who pick up hitchhikers are Caucasian, with African American being the next most common.

It took well over an hour, but I caught a ride halfway to my destination. From one of the minority of Caucasians passing by, I suppose I should add. I got dropped off on what looked like a great spot: plenty of space to pull over, and a good amount of flow, with a road that's a fairly straight shot to San Jose. No luck. I had one car of teenagers pull over and offer to take me to the Hillsdale train station, but at this point I was still hopeful of getting a ride and so I turned them down. An hour later, with the sun below the horizon, I accepted a ride to the same train station from a Russian woman.

It was dissapointing to not make it to my destination by thumb, though not at all surprising. I knew what to expect, and got it. I imagine that if I had begun earlier, I could have made it to where I wanted to go. If I started at the on ramp, rather than the beginning of the freeway, I may have moved faster. Still, I don't think it's a route I'll try again. If I need to get south, I'll take the train, or relax and take the 1.

Trip Details:

Distance Hitched: 20 miles
Total Time: ~4 hrs
# of rides: 2
Total Spent: $10.75