Day 14-22 – Alaska

It's tempting to stay here, find a job, and eat fish every day for the next year. After net fishing while hanging over the side of cliff on the most dangerous stretch of a river. Actually…I just want to do that part. You need to be an Alaska resident to make it worthwhile, though, so I’ll be heading back to the lower 48.

Alaska is incredible. I haven’t done nearly enough exploration to satisfy me with this place, I will be coming back up here in the future, when I have the time to really get to see what it has to offer. I’ve met half of the goals I had for Alaska: I’ve walked on a glacier, and I’ve seen the Aurora dancing across the sky. I have yet to pan for gold or see a Grizzly bear, but I suppose I’ll have to try those the next time I come through.

The majority of this week has been with Adam and Alanna, two friends of mine that I met back in San Francisco. Through them, I’ve met a number of other people, and been to a number of places. Rather than use words, however, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Day 13 – Wide Open Spaces

1200 miles. That’s how far I’ve driven in a single car. Based on my average number of miles per day, this would have taken XXX days. Instead it took two. Hooray for awesome people who are going to the same place as you!

Driving through British Columbia is absolutely beautiful. But it does have problems. As A----- said, ‘It’s beautiful. Eight. Hundred. Miles. of Beautiful.’

Note: The majority of the following photos were taken from through the window of a moving car.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 679 miles
Total Time: ~12 hours
# of Rides: 1
Total Cost: $7.50

Day 12 – Animals!

Hooray for BC and the fuzzy things that live there! I’ve seen a larger variety of large animals in twelve hours of hitchhiking than I have in any other place except a zoo.

Early in the morning, I was picked up by A----- and F-----, a newlywed and her sister-in-law driving moving a truck and trailer’s worth of tools and life from Montana to Alaska. Also present was a Chihuahua named Moose, a feisty little dog who shared the car with me for two full days and still considered me a suspicious character. Granted, he also growled any time construction workers came over to say how long we’d be waiting at a segment of single-lane highway, or when F----- passed anything to someone else. He was a great little guard dog, and a beautiful one at that.

As I ran up the road to where they’d stopped, I saw my first three animals of the day: a black bear and her two cubs. I’d actually seen them an hour or so before hand, running across the road in the other direction. Apparently the grass is consistently greener on the other side of the road. Wish I’d caught a picture of them…or of the two other bears I saw later on in the day. I’ll note that these were the reason I didn’t camp out the night before: I don’t exactly have a good bear protection system in place right now. Tie a bag with some food up in a tree, but a dozen feet of rope doesn’t go too far.

Mountain goats were next on the agenda: after a stop for road repair, we passed a herd hanging out on the road. Barely enough time to snap a shot of the last few.

An Elk made an appearance later on in the day. Dangerous animals for cars: unlike a deer, you’re generally not going to kill it on impact. Because of its height, it’ll get knocked into your windshield, where it’ll flail around in your lap in a panic. Pay attention to the signs all around the highway.

Finally, the first wild bison I’ve ever seen. A whole herd of them had taken over the road and cuts on either side, dozens of massive animals with just as many calves. Perhaps a hundred in total? Crazy, crazy animals. Seeing a half dozen in a zoo doesn’t do them justice, and I imagine even this group didn’t do the herds of the old great plains justice. F----- taught both A----- and I an important lesson about bison: don’t stop for them. Go slow, drive through, and get away as soon as you can. Stopping makes them nervous, and nervous bison attack cars. And considering they’re as big as a car, they can do a heck of a lot of damage.

This took care of most the animals I was hoping to see on this trip. It’s been so incredible to see so much in such a short period of time! Now I just need to find a moose, bald eagle, and a big ‘ol grizzly!

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 600 miles
Total Time: ~12 hours
# of Rides: 1
Total Cost: $0.00

Day 11 – Oil Country

Hooray for an awesome experience staying with someone who’d given me a ride! And hooray for me not being an insane hitchhiker! It’s good when both of those things happen. i spent last evening camped out behind H-----‘s house in Dawson Creek, getting a full night’s sleep in before waking for a shower, shave, and awesome breakfast of toasted multi-grain bread with fresh-picked tomatoes. Days like these make me glad I don’t have to keep to a schedule: plenty of time to relax and chat before being driven to the junction to start a 11am hitch.

This has been an interesting experience, learning a bit more about the oil industry of northern BC. My first ride, J-----, works for a company that produces a salt water mixture that is pumped into wells to help along the process of fracking. It also replaces what’s pumped out, keeping things in balance. He used to haul the equipment used to drill new wells, and pointed out a crew that was in the middle or working through one. They’ll be in place for about two weeks, then cap it off, pull out their equipment, and be off to the next site. A different team will come in, set up the pump, and pull out the oil later on.

R----- hauls equipment for far off oil camps. His work provides him with a new pickup every two years: he turned in the last one with over 400,000 miles logged. The previous one was closer to 600,000. For today’s trip he’d been driving for two or three hours before we met, carried me for another three or four, then dropped me off before turning off the main road for another few hours of driving. The delivery was a machine for horizontal drilling. Not a clue how it actually works.

Oil really is the lifeline of this area. People make good money in the fields. They support the hotels and restaurants in the towns along the highway. All of the side industries needed to maintain the wells are a very visible source of employment. This area once had agriculture as a source of work. Now, the balance has changed. When the wells run dry, and cars stop needing oil, what will happen to northeastern BC?

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 281 miles
Total Time: ~8 hours
# of Rides: 2
Total Cost: $3.50

Day 10 – New Ideas

This blog is very much a work in progress, not just in the sense that I’m writing it piece by piece, but that I’m also coming up with new ideas for how to make this blog interesting to write and worthwhile to read. Today I started on two new micro-projects.

The first is taking pictures of everyone who gives me rides, and posting them on here. Hopefully this will explain individuals a bit more than my words, since I’m not able to write about every person that picks me up. I meet so many incredible people each day, and I wish I could show this better. I wish I could tell the full story of every person that I meet. But I have neither the time nor the skill to them justice, and so I’ll limit myself to the small amount that I do.

The second is a project that I won’t be able to complete till I get back to my standard laptop, with its editing software and non netbook specs. I’m recording 30 seconds of video from the ride that each person gives me, then I’ll attempt to splice them into a short clip of my entire journey, with each area that I’ve moved through. Not really certain how well that will work, as the video tends to be rather jumpy on parts of the road, but I’ll find out! I’m considering posting links to raw video on here…not sure if it’s worth it.

What else can I do to make this interesting? Suggestions?

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 576 miles
Total Time: ~14 hours
# of rides: 3
Total Cost: $9.00

Day 9 – O Canada

So, first day actually hitchhiking inside the borders of our northern neighbor. It definitely has fewer people, but wait times are about the same, and people are just as awesome as everywhere else I’ve been.

As usual, the first step to hitchhiking from a large city is to get to the outskirts. You want to get away the traffic that’s just going to the next exit, and get to the distance travelers. After taking the Skytrain as far as I could, I switched to a bus with a driver who knew exactly where to take hitchhikers. As soon as I walked on, he asked where I was headed, and told me to wait till the second time he crossed the freeway, as the first crossing had too much construction at the moment. He’d let me know when we were getting near, so don’t worry a bit. That’s the first time I’ve had a driver do something like that.

My first ride asked me if I’d ever had Poutine. Nope, but I wanted to. So off we went to the Costco food court, his personal favorite source. Tasty stuff! French fries with cheese curds and gravy, it’s definitely not the healthiest thing in the world, but it is pretty awesome. B----- had recommended a few really good places in Vancouver to stop buy it, and I’m hoping the next time I pass through I’ll be able to.

Hope, BC

The little town of Hope was my next destination, which happens to have been the scene of Rambo: First Blood. It’s also the world chainsaw carving capitol, home to a number of very beautiful parks, near enough to an airfield that you could see three gliders moving through the air, and has a visitor’s center staffed by a guy who thinks hitchhiking to Alaska is completely nuts. As a hitchhiker himself, he’s probably the most qualified person I’ve met of that opinion. Not that that would stop me ;)

My final driver was a tow truck driver with a car on the back. This is something new. I very rarely get rides from people who are in a work vehicle, maybe this is going to be different in Canada. That would be awesome if that’s the case, as I imagine that a lot of the distance drivers will be on the clock when they see me. I’ll find out!

Overall, it seems that hitching in Canada is very similar to doing so in the US. Good to know.

Trip Stats:
Total Distance: 128 miles
Total Time: 6 hours
# of rides: 3
Cost: $5.00

Day 7, 8 – Vancouver

I think I want to live here. Too bad that housing prices are insane, with even the relatively small house above B-----‘s basement apartment valued at nearly 2.5 million. She showed me a high-value set of condos on campus, technically ‘student' housing,’ but that sold out on the first day of pre-purchases with values in excess of a million. Professors are being priced out of their town, with a massive housing bubble that’s just waiting to burst.

The university is rather beautiful. It’s very large, with a wide band of trees separating it from the rest of the city. It’s nearly 100 years old, but is mostly modern in appearance. it’s obvious that many of the buildings are very recent. While I didn’t see anything boasting of the obvious star-power of what you might find at MIT, or South Korea’s *****, they’re very good looking buildings that appear to be very functional. The health science’s building had a massive sky-lit atrium with study space on the ground floor, lounges going up the wall on one end, and a wide, welcoming corridors on the other. The Population Studies building was also interesting, with a large, outdoor covered table, with enough all-weather plugs to accommodate several dozen students with laptops.

Something I noticed both on the university grounds and in the rest of the city was the massive amount of seating available. Everywhere I went, there were places to sit and relax, and a fair amount of it was in use. Coming from Hong Kong, where if you want to sit you’re almost forced to go into a restaurant, it was an impressive change.

I did find a few buildings especially impressive. I wish I’d seen the False Creek Energy Centre before doing my Arch 100A studio at Berkeley, or even my Arch 24 studio at CCSF. The building was a hot water heating plant for nearby buildings, providing all of their heating needs without having to use smaller, lower efficiency forced air systems.It was placed under a bridge, utilizing less-useful shaded space. Many of its sides were made of glass panels, with concrete tubes going down below the ground to show the basement mechanical systems. A number of panels on the outside explained the processes and purposes of the system. There was also an outdoor garden and seating associated with the building.

It was also awesome to hang out with B---- again. How many years has it been since the last page reunion? 4 years? It’s hard to get together, now that we all live in different areas across the world, but so much fun when we actually do. With any luck, I’ll get the chance to meet up with a few more pages on this saunter around the US.

Trip Stats:
Total Distance: 0 miles
Total Time: n/a
# of Rides: n/a
Total Cost: $34.50

Day 6 – The Kindness of Strangers

There are a lot of nice people in this world, more than a lot of people assume. All you have to do is give people the opportunity, and many of them will pull through.

Last night in Portland was awesome. I posted a message in Portland’s Emergency Couch group on couchsurfing, and quickly got a message inviting me to stay with a couple of awesome Alaska natives living in the area. There house was expected to be full, but they had tent space in their yard that I was more than welcome to have. So I took them up on it, and when things changed at their house I ended up getting a couch anyways. They also gave me a number of tips on where to go and what to do while in Alaska, like how you have to take a bus into Denali, or a recommendation to hit Thompson Pass near Valdez. This map book of mine is getting fairly well filled with notes and suggestions.

After a tasty breakfast egg scramble, I headed out to the freeway. D----- picked me up on his way back to Seattle after visiting family in Portland. He’s a laborer, holding down a variety of jobs that keep his employment fairly stable, even in this economy. Not a bad strategy. He also has a hobby of dumpster diving, something he’s been doing for decades. He used to be the only person in Seattle doing it, back when he began. It’s become much more competitive, and people have stopped throwing away as many things. He’s found rings and other jewelry, pieces of gold that weighed as much as an ounce. As he said, if he’d held on to all the gold he’s found till now, he’d be sitting pretty. But, that doesn’t matter very much, and doesn’t bother him. That’s just the past.

Bridges! I didn't stop in Washington

As we got closer to Seattle, D----- mentioned that he didn’t have any plans for the evening, and he had a bag of Canadian coins from his dumpster diving that he wanted to convert at the currency exchange near the border. Plus, he had this rental car till the following day, and there wasn’t any point in just letting it sit in the street all night. It’d been a while since he’d been to Blaine, the last city on this side of the border, so he’d go ahead and take me to the edge of the US. And he did. He drove over an hour past where he was going, without being asked, just to help me out a little bit more. It was such an awesome thing for him to do.
Of course, not everyone can readily believe that someone would go that far out of their way for someone they’d just met, with no compensation other than gratitude. This includes border police. We made a mistake, and missed the last turnout on the US side. D----- didn’t have a passport with him. We had to stop at the gates and go into the customs building, where they interviewed me, and then interviewed him. They asked me a bunch of questions about who I was, where I was going, and why. They asked me even more about why D----- had driven me so far out of his way, implying that there must be some reason for it. All I could say was, nope. A lot of people are just plain helpful, and this sort of situation isn’t as rare as people think. I was given back my passport card, and ready to be on my way. I hung out an extra half hour or so, while they ran D-----‘s passport and interviewed him. Then he was given a paper stating that he hadn’t been in Canada, so he could cross through the US gates, and took off on his way, while I went off on mine. He gave me the ziploc of Canadian coins he’d collected to use on my journey. Then I was across the border, caught a ride to Vancouver, and pointed in the direction I should go by a fellow light-rail passenger.

A lot of people like to help out others, even complete strangers. The whole premise of hitchhiking is based on this. But in our daily lives we so rarely get to meet these sorts of people, we so rarely experience this kindness. But now I do. For the past week, I’ve been almost exclusively with people who go out of their way to help others, and it’s infectious. I’ve found myself more willing to help others, and more actively searching for opportunities to do so. I love being on the receiving end, but perhaps even more I look forward to many days and chances to not get, but to give.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 304 miles
Total Time: 8 hours
# of Rides: 2
Total Cost: $9.00

Day 5 – Check the Map, Stupid

There’s a lesson that you learn when you research hitchhiking: listen to, but don’t rely on the advice of non-hitchers when trying to find the best place to thumb.

Hot chocolate while using wifi in Portland

I forgot that lesson, and spent the first few hours of the morning walking along a freeway to get to the place I should have begun, and could have reached in twenty minutes by bus. My CS host mentioned that there was a fairly busy onramp to I-5 within walking distance of her house, and without studying it via Google maps and streetview I took off. It was a fairly busy onramp…but for local traffic. I decided to follow it, not knowing how far from the actual interstate I was. Five miles of walking, first with a not-so-wide shoulder, then loud traffic that gave me a headache. Not turning around because the main freeway could be right around the corner, or someone could stop and pick me up, but no luck. Within a minute of getting to the onramp I’d originally planned on going to, I had a ride all the way to Portland.

The moral of the story is simple: the suggestions of others are no excuse to not think for yourself. Ask for advice, get help when you can, but remember that in the end, you are the one responsible for what happens to you. Think before you leap, or accept the consequences.

Incidentally, the walk also gave me another chance to eat blackberries, and I met a guy who’s been camping in the bushes near the shoulder for the past year. He invited me to a BBQ he and some others who lived there were going to have, after he’d turned in a few bags of bottles. I turned him down, but it was a nice offer from a cool guy. So you can have fun even when you do something dumb :)

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 113 miles
Time Traveled: 2 hours
# of Rides: 1
Total Cost: $8.00

Day 4 – Balance

The world runs on equilibrium. Not in the sense that everything is the same all the time, but that bad follows good, good follows bad, and that the world needs both to keep in balance.

The famous pickle and mustard dog

Yesterday was rough. Many hours on the road with very few people paying me mind. Today was the balance to that. Minutes after getting on the road, two cars turned around and offered to carry me to Gold Coast. M---- not only got me to town, but has a friend in Anchorage that he suggested I drop in on. He also dropped me off at a diner and gave me enough money for a more solid breakfast than the oatmeal I’d made earlier. A few people inside stopped to chat because of my sign, one of which, D-----, paid for my meal before I could use the money I’d been given, then drove me to the edge of town. While I stood near a beautiful bridge thumbing down my next ride, a woman and her son came up and gave me a loaf of artisan-style garlic bread. They apologized for the day before, saying they’d seen me but hadn’t been able to stop. Shortly afterwards an older couple picked me up and drove me to Langlois, where I ate a hotdog that had been recommended to me by M-----. After I’d finished my meal, and they’d finished a visit to a cousin, they came back and drove me another hour or so up the road.

At my next stop, I saw a tarp blowing along the side of the road, so I grabbed it and tied it to a guardrail. A man and his son stopped, saying it was because I’d taken care of it. I gave them the tarp, and got a ride to a post office. Minutes later I was on the road with a logger, who dropped me off near his home, saying that if I was still around in about an hour, he’d be back and would take me to the next town. Even with me stopping to explore the sand dunes and eat a bunch of blackberries, I’d caught another ride before he came back. A professional caddy for a nearby resort, he had a side business traveling along the coast and even being flown across the country for his regular customers, helping them maintain the level of caddying they’d come to expect. I had no idea how much caddies did for golfers. It’s a lot more than just hauling around someone’s bag, apparently.

The manager of Rite Aid picked me up on his way home, dropping me off in Venita. I had to walk along a detour because of an accident along the freeway, but still managed to get a final ride to Eugene before the sun went down. And after a blast of 50 or so emergency CS requests, I had a host for the evening before the bus system stopped running.

Yesterday was long and hard. Today, everything worked out well. I got where I wanted to go, met a wide variety of awesome people, was well fed, and overall had a great time. It’s a lesson in balance. Some days are great, some days are poor. They will always balance each other out, but with one caveat: balance does not mean equal. The balance of the world is not 50% bad with 50% good, but is a dash of bad, a bit of meh, and a whopping serving of great.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance: 208 miles
Total Time: ~12 hours
Total Rides:8
Total Cost: $0.00

Day 3 – Slow Times in Beautiful Places

Just over 25 miles today, with nearly a full day on the road. It was by far the slowest day I’ve had…but probably the tastiest. And you know what, sometimes these slow days can be pretty awesome.
I left the home of where I’d spent the past evening at about 9am. A quick stop for noodles, then walking till I caught a short ride across the border into Brookings. And thus ended the majority of my riding.

I spent nearly an hour on the road, alternating between flying my sign and eating from the blackberry bushes alongside my spot. After an hour or so, I punched holes in my sign, cut one of my animal balloons in half, and took off with my sign now prominently attached to the backside of my pack (updated from reading ‘NORTH’ to ‘ALASKA: Day 3’). I walked till I found a cut off to the beach, then decided I needed a break. I’d had less than an hour’s sleep the night before, due to a long lasting conversation with the previous evening’s host. As soon as I found sand, I took off my pack, sketched for a few minutes, then laid down on the ground and crashed out for an hour’s worth of power-napping.

After a few more minutes of blackberry picking, I started down the road, stopping at any place with a significant shoulder, until I came to a warning sign that said ‘SLIDES.’ For some reason, I didn’t feel like walking on that particular stretch was likely to be safe. I stood at the top for an hour or so, with the occasional car passing me by. I pulled out a copy of the Funny Times T----- had given me yesterday, and alternated reading with thumbing, a very pleasant way to pass the gaps until cars showed up on the horizon. Not much luck, though. I eventually flagged down a guy who motioned that he was only going a short distance, making it clear that, by this point, I just wanted to get past the next mile of slim shoulders, and didn’t really care if that’s as far as he could take me.

Getting dropped off at a small restaurant/resort down the road was perfect, as I was able to fill up my by-then-empty water bottle. Much easier than knocking on the doors of scattered houses, or boiling water from creeks. By this point I’d realized that I wasn’t going to get a house to sleep in this evening. It was time for my first night of stealth camping.

What is stealth camping? It’s the art of camping where you don’t have permission, be it on public or private land. To be honest, it’s not something I really enjoy doing (due to the questionable legality), but if the option is set up a camp in an unused space, based on leave-no-trace principles, or wander around on the road at night, it’s not a very difficult decision. My hope today had been to get another 25 miles or so, where I could have beach camped legally in accordance with Oregon state law, or into a town where I could CouchSurf. The best laid plans….

I found a stretch of road that was wide enough for cars to stop just as the sun was setting (I wanted to leave as early as possible in the morning), then hid my backpack and wandered down the hillside till I found an appropriate place to camp: outside of view of the road and on a bare enough patch to disturb the minimum amount of vegetation. That it provided an absolutely incredible view of a nearby inlet was a perk. After being treated to a beautiful sunset, I pitched my tent in the dark and went to sleep.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance Traveled: 23.5 miles
Total Time: 8 hours
# of Rides: 2
Total Cost: $12.00

Day 2

Again, a day of meeting awesome people. It started out when I left C-----‘s house, where I’d spent the previous night. I ran into a hitchhiking harp player, on his way to Seattle. I told him my plan to walk up the road, and he promptly told me that was a very bad idea. He’d hitched this road before, and if I went any further it’d be miles until I came to a place with a wide enough shoulder for people to stop. Instead, I should go back to where I’d tried the night before. By far a better place, according to him. And you know what? So it was. Within a half hour of getting to the stop light, I was on my way with another one of the best rides I could ever ask for.

There’s a lot to learn when you meet new people. R------ is a contractor and, due to the economy, bartender. As we talked, he told me about a building material I’d never come across before: redwood pipes. While reading up on them online has shown that there were different methods of construction, the one he had grown up with in Point Reyes involved binding slats into a pipe with metal bands. As long as they were kept in use, constantly wet, they could go on being used for years. He had no idea what their life expectancy was, since they’d existed for years and had yet to fail.

I mentioned that I’d been to the Sea Ranch Chapel, and he told me about the three men  who built it, people who he’d actually known. A rather interesting crew, from the sound of it. They weren’t exactly the best wood workers, as can be seen by the quality of the construction, but they were given free rein to do whatever it is they felt worked best for the place, and that’s what they did. No real plans, but if something looked like it worked, they’d do it, and if not, they wouldn’t. It was more of an art project than an architectural building. And when all is said and done, the end result was incredible.

He was planning to go further down the road, almost to Arcata. He had to stop and pick up his girlfriend and her daughter first, and said that if I didn’t mind the detour I could come along and he’d take me as far as he could. Sounded good to me. As they say, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. And so we went to her parent’s house, where I was offered a much more substantial breakfast than the almonds and raisins I’d been snacking on, and I met another set of incredible people. The daughter, T------, was especially fun. She even  gave me a few issues of the Funny Times to read on my travels (something I’d be glad for in the days to come). As we talked about my travels and their plans, it came up that while R------, K------, and T------ were off to the fair, K-----‘s parents were heading in the same direction, but would actually be going further, into Arcata. They offered to take me up, and even packed me a lunch for the road! It was a very kind offer, and one I gladly accepted. And was glad I did, because on that part of the journey I learned more about gold mining than I could ever have asked for! I learned the basics of panning, hand sluicing, using pump systems, and the like. I didn’t realize how much of a community there is that does this, or the regulations that surround it. S---- and S------- have been at it for years, though, moving up through the various methods. It’s a hobby, not an occupation (it doesn’t pay for the gas to get to the spot), but it sounds like a fun one. I think I know something that I’ll have to do when I get up to Alaska.

Trip Stats:

Total Distance Traveled: 230 miles
Total Time: ~11 hours
# of Rides: 6
Total Cost: $0.00

Day 1

The adventure has begun! I am now on my way to Alaska, via the coastal road as far as Portland, then inland to the Alaska Highway. I’ll be hitchhiking the entire distance, and couchsurfing as often as possible. Otherwise, I have a tent. I’ll make use of it as often as I need to.

A question that is sure to arise is, ‘why hitchhiking?’ There are many other ways to travel, some of which are very inexpensive. So why do something so unsure, so unsafe, and anyways, isn’t it illegal too? The short answer is, even with problems (which are generally exaggerated) hitchhiking has many, many benefits. But first, to address the concerns.

 Isn’t it Illegal?

I started this trip at the Golden Gate Bridge, where I met two other guys who were hitching to Arcata. They’d been on the far side of the bridge, where I’d planned to go, but a half hour after they started thumbing a California Highway Patrol (CHP) car parked nearby. The officer didn’t get out and say anything, but it scared them off and they walked back across the bridge to try and find a bus that would take them further up the road. They warned me against going to the other side. I did anyways. 30 minutes later I was on my way to Point Reyes with a beautiful Czech girl from San Jose, and her Swiss friend.

Why wasn’t I worried about the CHP? Simply put, hitchhiking is perfectly legal in California, and in most other states. There are restrictions, such as not being able to cross the ‘no pedestrians’ signs on the freeway, but if you follow them the police will only smile and wave.

But it’s still dangerous, right?


This is where it gets a bit tricky. Is it more dangerous than flying? Almost certainly, if only for the reason that mile per mile, you’re 265 times more likely to die in a car than in a plane. The same thing goes for taking a bus, train, or heavy rail, though not cycling. So yes, since hitchhiking involves standing near and riding in cars, it’s one of the most dangerous forms of transportation.

Src: Theanphibian, via wikipedia

But that’s not what you’re wondering, is it? It’s about crime, about crazed drivers picking up hitchhikers and doing terrible things to them. As some people often say, it’s just plain too dangerous now-a-days. But is it? Honestly, it’s hard to say. The most recent formal study in the US of the situation was done in 1974 by the California Highway Patrol. A long and interesting read, the conclusion was that, while not having data on the exact numbers of hitchhikers prevented them from saying exactly how dangerous it was, an intuitive look at the numbers shows hitchhikers to not be in significantly more danger than the rest of the California population. It also shows that single women were 7 times as likely to be victims of crimes as men, and 80% of those sex related. So please, go with a guy if you hitchhike.

‘But that was then, it’s so much more dangerous now!’ Yes, it is more dangerous nowadays, if you look at the number of reported crimes. It’s more dangerous to buy milk from the store, to park in a parking garage, and to walk your pet rabbit. Of course it’s going to be more dangerous to hitchhike. But proportionally more than it was before? I doubt it.

And now, why I hitchhike


There are many reasons, which I’ll go into other days. The most important one is this: you meet absolutely incredible people while hitching.

Sea Ranch Chapel! Dedicated on my day of birth, too.

After leaving the Czech and Swiss girls at Point Reyes, I hit the road with a sign saying ‘NORTH’ strapped to my backpack. Within a mile, I was picked up by a British/American family taking a relaxing drive up the coast. For the next four or so hours, we drove through incredible scenery. They’d traveled parts of this route before, and pointed out areas where they’d stopped for kayaking, and pointed out areas that would make for great spots in the future. Getting close to Sea Ranch, the mother spotted the Sea Ranch chapel, an architectural landmark that I’d studied in school. We turned around and spent some time looking at it. I explained geocaching, and we stopped for two of them, finding one.

As we neared their turnaround point, the father asked his 12yo daughter (who happens to be a diver who’s placed 1st in national competitions, knows a diver who will be representing the US in the next Olympics, and has a GPA that puts my UC Berkeley-graduating skills to shame ;) what she’d rather do: stay in town so they could find something fun to do, or drive another hour or so to Fort Bragg, which would get me closer to my destination but mean they’d have to turn around and head straight back. She chose the extra miles. See what I mean about how you meet awesome people?

Hitchhiking teaches a person a lot about gratitude, and about service. It’s hard not to be grateful when you’re constantly the recipient of the kindness of others. It makes you want to pay it forward, and to help others out in return. So when you’re given the chance to do something in return, it’s pretty easy to say yes. This ride, I was given a folded sheet of paper with detailed instructions: Open it after I get out of the car, then write down the name of every place I go while on this trip. At the end of the trip, return it. L-----, Challenge Accepted ;)

Trip Stats:
Total Distance Traveled: 173 miles
Total Time: ~7 hours
# of Rides: 2
Total Cost: ~$14.00

The Real Thing

And now begins the actual blog....just as soon as I'm in one place long enough to type!