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| Sundial at sunset |
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.
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| Richmond on ramp |
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
Total Distance Hitched: 209 miles
Total Time: 10 hours
# of rides: 7
Total Cost: $3.00
=-))))
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