Saved! (Not in that way.)

Zack, the young driver, was a little taken aback, I think, when I looked across at him through the passenger door and said, "I have to ask you: Are you sober?"

I'd vowed to start asking that directly after a harrowing ride earlier in the day had left me in a quivering heap. And was he sober? Was he ever.

Zack -- who reminded me of my nephew Brian -- and his young wife, Chelsea, who reminded me of Gwyneth Paltrow, were a couple of students from Brigham Young University-Idaho, on their way to visit her parents in Colville, Wash., just north of Spokane. Married two years, he was closing in on a degree in Geology and Business and she on Elementary Education.

They'd picked me up in their small sedan -- "Hope you don't mind riding in a ghetto car," Zack had said, apologizing as I got in -- just outside of Alberton, Mont., west of Missoula. The sun was dropping in a cloudless blue sky, bringing those lovely, cool, backlit shadows to the valleys. It was about 6 p.m.,I'd just spent three hours on a well-baked freeway shoulder outside Missoula, and if I didn't get a good, long ride, I might have to find a cheap motel in Alberton and face a long day Wednesday. They were going to Spokane, which had been my goal for the day but which, in Missoula, had seemed to fall far beyond hope.

Turns out they had seen me on the shoulder in Missoula as they'd driven into town at mid afternoon from the opposite direction, and noticed my sign, which at that hour had read, "Spokane." They did some shopping, had lunch, and hours later were heading back the other direction when they saw me again, this time a mere 10 miles down the road in Alberton, with the sign now reading the more achievable "Idaho."

Zack's dad had once hitchhiked from Provo, Utah, to Arkansas. But Zack had never hitchhiked himself, and had never even picked up a hitchhiker before. Why me?

"We saw your sign when it said, 'Spokane,' " Chelsea said.

"And you didn't look like a drug addict," Zack added.

I t was a spectacular ride over several passes and across the Idaho panhandle into Spokane.  Zack told me about his mission work in Brazil and Chelsea about the sudden struggles of the lumber business her dad works in. Unfortunately, I was so tired -- and relaxed in the good, cheerful company -- that I didn't take any pictures.

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I believe I was lucky to be alive to have Zack and his wife pick me up.
In the morning I'd been picked up in Butte by Steve, pulling over in yet another tiny sedan with all the windows open. He was zooming down the highway before I noticed the open can between his legs. Green -- maybe O'Douls, non alcoholic? I couldn't smell anything, and his driving was steady.
Steady between 85 and 90, that is. He grew increasingly animated, waving hands as he talked incessantly over the roar of his disintegrating muffler, letting the car steer itself down step curves, between a truck in the right lane and a jersey barrier on the left. Truly frightening.
I'd asked him, too, early in the ride, why he'd picked me up.
"God wanted me to," he said, adding that he'd passed me, driven several miles down the road, and turned back to come and pick me up.
Later he added that he hadn't picked up a hitchhiker in six years. The last one was a woman who had come from a Rainbow Gathering and hadn't showered in a week. "My car smelled for months," he said. Funniest thing I'd heard all week. I do thank him for that.
Toward the end of the ride he explained, "When I'm driving, I just always have to have a beer."
God's will? God save me.