First, farewell

This trip and this blog have become an obsession of mine in the last 10 days. There are a lot of other thoughts that I need to examine -- context, insights, motivations, etc. -- but it's time to let this blog rest as the record of what was basically a really nutty vacation idea that became a head-spinning and energizing adventure. I won't bore you with what's to follow -- the poking and prodding, the strengthening, the focusing, the detection of weaknesses and the repackaging into what I hope can be a magazine article. We'll see about that. Meanwhile, hop in and enjoy the ride, and feel free to e-mail me at code612@gmail.com

(Again, for best results, read from the bottom up.) 

HItchhiking signs: Art, science, or neither?

Before I left on this trip, I bought a big, thick, Sharpie and a large piece of foam board, which I cut into smaller rectangles to make signs. I came to believe those with specific locations worked best. But the question remained: How close and how significant should the location on the sign be?

Here's how I used them: 

West. I started with this one, in Minnesota. (It's in the early blog post with the picture of me getting on the commuter train out of town. See "Departing in 2 minutes" post. ) It got me a couple of short rides the first day (see "Day 1 adventures" post). After holding it for two fruitless hours at the on-ramp at Albany, Minn., the second day, I sat down and made

NoDak. John Berger, the rodeo guy hauling bucking bulls who picked me up and took me all the way to Mandan (see "Clean Cut Fellows" post), said he was impressed I knew the local term for "North Dakota." 

At Mandan, I distinctly remember making a sign that read Glendive on one side, which I hoped would get me into Montana that night, and Billings on the other, which would get me further down the line -- to where the mountains first appear. But I must have left that in the car with Dan (see "Montana fishing" post), who drove me all the way to Bozeman. There, under tree outside a convenience store, I made the sign for 

Missoula. And if I got that far, well, I might as well write Spokane on the back. I got to Three Forks, Mont., that night, and the next morning Dan the Beer Man took me straightaway (well, with a little weaving at 90 mph; See "Saved" post) right to Missoula, where he was going. He said the sign is one reason he turned around after passing me (the other being the voice of God). There I held the Spokane sign for two hours at a westbound on-ramp at the center of town, before wandering off under a tree for a short break. I guessed eight of 10 cars getting on the freeway there had had Idaho plates, so that's when I shortened my swing and made a different sign reading 

Idaho. Maybe the Idahoans didn't know Spokane is just beyond their state line. Maybe they thought I was a shameless social leech, or that sharing one's car space was an attack on rugged individualism, or was otherwise anti-Idaho. Who knows? Maybe the sign should have read "Famous Potatoes." Anyway, after three hours total I finally got the ride all the way through the Idaho panhandle to Spokane. (So there, Idaho! See "Saved!" post.) That's where I got off the interstate and began the final leg, 166 miles on two-lane roads through what I'd heard would be a desolate stretch of eastern Washington, though towns that were just dots on the map, to my ultimate destination, Twisp. The back of the Idaho sign was blank. But what to write on it? Where would people be going? Figuring people might be hauling boats to Roosevelt Lake at Grand Coulee Dam or taking the kids to see an engineering marvel, I wrote: 

Coulee Dam. It was a couple of hours before Dan Redfield (see "Police Escort No. 1" post) picked me up just outside Spokane and took me 80 miles right to Coulee Dam (the town). He'd seen my sign traveling the opposite direction into Spokane for a meeting, and damn if I wasn't still heading to the same place when he returned. In Coulee Dam, I checked the map and composed a double-decker sign with the names of the two towns 47 miles further where there would be junctions I needed: 

Brewster

Pateros. Of the trickle of traffic up the hill on Hwy. 174 out of Coulee Dam, a remarkable number of cars turned off on the handful of side streets in the quiet town before they even  got to me. Then Duane McClung, the tribal corrections officer, picked me up and drove me about 40 miles to Bridgeport and Chief Joseph Dam. (See "Police Escort No. 2" post.) I wasn't quite to Brewster/Pateros, so I walked through Bridgeport with that sign. In my pack, I still had my trump card, which I'd made back in Coulee Dam: a sign with one small (but big) word: 

Twisp. I never used it. Cloud pulled over in the Audi and, after I told him I was actually going beyond Pateros to Twisp,  told me he was, too, and he'd take me all the way there. (See "The Best Came Last" and "Arriving in Style" posts.) I believe I left the Brewster/Pateros sign in his car, because I don't have it now, and the Twisp sign is on a small shelf in my pal Don's house, on the mountainside there. 

P.S. : For the trip to Seattle and the airport, I was out of white foam board and used a small piece of brown corrugated cardboard reading, "Seattle." I'm afraid it had sort of a transient, "homeless/broke" look to it, but Seattle's the only place on Hwy. 20 anyone is going, so maybe it didn't matter. (See "Twelve hours from Twisp" post.) I either left it in Jim Hunter's car or tossed it in a trash can; it was different from the others, and I hadn't grown attached to it. In any case, next time: Much more artful signs. 

Twelve hours from Twisp (I'm back)

All it took was two rides, plus a plane ride and a Metro Transit bus, and here I am back in Minneapolis, quite a different place from Twisp, Wash. But my luck closing the loop on this odyssey was as good as ever.

Don gave me a lift the first 14 miles to Mazama, just north of where he lives, so I could catch traffic taking Washington Hwy. 20 through the mountains to Seattle -- really the only place anyone on that road would be going. Twenty minutes after we said "Next year!" a fellow in a sharp little Infiniti pulled over. Jim Hunter, from Twisp, who was going to, yes, Seattle, to see his sister.

As we rode through the spectacular snow-capped peaks around Washington Pass and wound on down Hwy. 20 (sunroof--required equpment for a drive through the mountains)  Hunter kept the stories coming. He's retired from about as many careers as a person can list: teacher, soldier, military trainer. He's a former semipro and college football player (Central Washington U). He's got permanent ringing in his ears from getting hit by a rocket while training troops in Iraq. He had a knee replacement two years ago. Doctors found four of his vertebrae had been shattered when he was younger, and grew back together. He's got some PTSD from his work in the Middle East, which cost him a romantic relationship.  He lived 20 years in Alaska and has traveled all over the world training parachute jumping and other high-end military skills. The blue thing hanging from his rearview mirror? An "evil eye" from a recent trip to Greece. He's a gentle-seeming and curious  guy who really loves driving his car, which he was happy to share with me for about five hours. . .Five hours, because he decided rather than wait in a long line to take a ferry to see his sister, he'd drive me all the way to the Seattle airport, then keep driving around the far south end of Puget Sound to his sister's place.

For me, it was a huge break. I wouldn't have to fight my way through the city down a crowded freeway to the airport, or find some public transportation. It saved me hours, probably. What was in it for him? We got to drive in the carpool lane through the heavy traffic on Interstate 5 in Seattle, he noted, and the conversation helped pass the time.

He gives hitchhikers a good once-over before picking them up, he said, adding that I looked OK. He hates it when a young woman is out there on the shoulder and he slows down, only to see the boyfriend and two dogs pop out of the ditch. And he's bugged by the same thing Dan from Idaho (Day 3, Ride 10) mentioned: hitchhikers asking him for money. I didn't. Then he offered me a sandwich.

Hunter was Ride 19 since last Saturday morning (not including Don's lift this morning). He dropped me at Sea-Tac  at 3:40 p.m. PDT and I said I hoped to see him, too, next year. Which I do.

I still had no ticket, but was on a Sun Country flight to Minneapolis at 5:30. It featured a "picnic in the sky" -- complimentary hot dogs. Who knew? It was just after 11 p.m. CDT when I got on the light rail heading for downtown Minneapolis. It featured the usual loud Friday night kids. Hennepin Avenue was a shock, only half a day from Don's mountainside -- crowded, loud, garishly lit, gamy. The No. 4 bus was the same on all counts. So you can imagine the relief to get off at my corner -- not that I was home (though I surprised even myself by doing the trip in less than a week), but that I could hear crickets.

Don, the Mountain Media Mogul

Don Nelson and I used to work together years ago at the Star Tribune. Apparently because people get crazier when they get older, he recently bought the weekly newspaper in Twisp, Wash., the Methow Valley News.

Here are a couple of glimpses of Don's executive lifestyle, starting with the view from his shower.

Police escort No. 1

Colville Confederated Tribes
police Sgt. Don redfield drove me 80 some miles, Spokane WA to Coulee Dam. Note the light strip, top of windshield. He wasn't on regular duty.
Sent from my iPhone

Police escort No. 2

Duane McClung, an officer with Colville Tribal Corrections,got me about 40 miles further, to Bridgeport, where he lives. He included several stops for photos and a lot of insights into his beautiful part of the world. This was at Grand Coulee Dam.

Sent from my iPhone

Arriving in style

Cloud (yes,as in the sky) was the 18th and final driver to pick me up, delivering me to pal's office door in Twisp. A ride in an Audi convertible up the
Methow Valley at dusk was truly a final, fortunate, fab flourish.
Sent from my iPhone

The best came last

I've arrived in Twisp, Wash., in the heart of the breathtaking MethowValley, carried along on the last day by miracles, luck, serendipity, irony. . .all the things required to make a wacky idea reach the finish line.

Great to see my pal Don, now a mountain media mogul (weekly paper, circ. 3,000), right there on the main street of Twisp where people can park and talk in the middle of main street and where there's still an actual working phone booth in front of the post office. It's been a long time, and he looks good in his natural (if way different from Seattle) surroundings. More on that later, since we've got a lot to talk about.

In preparing for this trip, I'd developed a healthy wariness of the state of Washington and its reputation for not giving much quarter to hitchhikers. Walking on side roads is legal, but "soliciting" -- sticking one's thumb out -- is not. Interstate? Stay above the entrance sign, which to me means fuhgeddaboudit.

So today with some trepidation I headed out of Spokane west on U.S. 2, for the 166-mile trip to Twisp. After a short lift a few miles west and a long wait in hot sun, a guy pulled over in a sleek, narrow-windowed sedan. A cop, it turned out, driving from a meeting in Spokane back to Coulee Dam, where he's a sergeant with the Colville Reservation Tribal police. (He also recently was a patrol officer in. . .Twisp!) Sgt. Don Redfield drove me about 80 miles through the wheat fields of eastern Washington -- where I wouldn't have wanted to be trying to snag a ride -- to Coulee Dam. He was an entertaining guy who knew everything about wheat, geography, history, you name it. He'd seen me on the way into Spokane, from the opposite side of the road, and picked me up when he spotted me only a few miles away maybe three hours later. His take on hitchhiking: It's much more common on the reservation, and he picks up hitchhikers because it's often a way to get the carless out of harm's way.

Coulee Dam is a small community (with one of the world's largest dams) reminiscent of Grand Marais, Minn. -- the hill behind down rises quickly above a huge water body, in this case Roosevelt Lake. But there's even less traffic up the hill than there is up the Gunflint Trail. It was hot. It was quiet. Nap time. Then a small red Chevy pulled over. Another cop! This one wearing a uniform of Colville (Reservaton) Tribal Corrections.

Duane McClung said he'd take me all the way to Bridgeport -- close to where Don might even be able to come and pick me up. But McClung, who's done three tours of duty in the Mideast and is heading back for a fourth, also shared his love for the place where he lives and works. He took some extra time to stop and let me take pictures at overlooks at Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, told me that (I didn't know this) the hydro people feel threatened by the expansion of wind power, practically ordered me to pick some sage to take home, showed me the hill he runs regularly and, an avid deer hunter, spotted a deer skittering in the sage. Regarding hitchhiking: "Times have changed. People have changed." The serial Green River Killer in the northwest in the early 80s meant "the crazies ruined it for everybody."


He dropped me in the small, remote migrant worker town of Bridgeport. A few cars crawled through town; the sun had already dipped behind the foothills. I noticed the only motel in town had been boarded up perhaps 20 years ago.
Then an Audi convertible approached. "This would be nice," I muttered to myself. The driver gave me a thorough look, and pulled over. I was trying to get to Pateros, where Don said he might be able to come to pick me up. But when I said I was actually going to Twisp, he said he was going right through there.

Cloud was his name. It was Ride 18 of the journey, and proved again that patience was powerful. With the top down and the Grateful Dead on his satellite radio, we cruised up along the Columbia River and then along the Methow, as twilight followed. Cloud talked about hitchhiking with his late wife all over the world, about the lumber business he's in, and his 40 years in the valley, and how, of course, the best way to see the mountains is in a convertible. I silently added: Especially at the end of a five-day hitchhike. After 1,700 miles, hours of truck noise and heat, sore back muscles from carrying a heavy pack, and encounters with a range of people I couldn't have imagined, I'd arrived in style, convinced once again (and, I'll say it here: finally) there was nothing to fear about hitchhiking except drunks and deadlines.

Elena's sign, beyond the Great Divide

Sent from my iPhone

Last day?

Twisp, WA: 166 miles. Of 2-laners

The M

If there's a town in Montana that starts with Z, then every letter of the alphabet must be cast in white stone on hillsides across the state. This is behind the U of Montana in Missoula. I spent three hours looking at it this afternoon, discovering new dimensions of patience while waiting three hours -- 2,000 drivers, maybe? -- for a ride.

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.

Ancestors' thumbprints, light pole, Three Forks, MT

The inscription reads,
"Rainbow. Krystal. 7/1/81. Good Hitching to you all. Mosquitoes are fierce!"

It's etched on the east side of a lightpole at the bottom of the approach ramp to I90 at Three Forks, MT.

On the opposite side of the pole was one dated 8/8/74. That would be 37 years ago.

It's like the Pompey's Pillar of hitchhiking, or -- the grimmer view -- the statue of Ozymandias, or like finding a copy of Phoebe Snow's first album, on vinyl, beneath the sofa cushions.

I hope Krystal got a ride, and that she's on the road still. .




Sent from my iPhone

805 a.m. Thumb out, Three Forks, MT. Listening to meadowlarks, not traffic.

Dare I ask if the top line is a joke?

Sent from my iPhone

Montana fishing

Day Three on the road to Twisp (Washington; is that the title?) and I'm starting to find a rhythm. Breakfast, heave the pack on the back, walk, drop the pack, wait, wonder, listen, ride, talk, get out, eat, have some water, take some notes, wait, wonder, listen, ride some more, get out, etc. etc. and hope I put in some good mileage and get a motel room.

Right now I'm in Three Forks, Mont., a legendary place for trout anglers. This time I have no flyrod, but it feels like I've been fishing. Most of the day I stand and face a heavy current. The noise is constant, like a fast, rocky river. I find myself focusing on what's coming at me, and missing the sky, the passing clouds and their shadows on the cedar-dotted rimrocks. I keep checking for feeding lines -- in this case, merge lanes or construction slowdowns where the fish might be more likely to bite. And of course the suspense is excruciating. Is this car my ride? The next one? And when I finally pull one close to hand, is it a really big one?

Today, a very big one. About 20 miles outside of Glendive, Mont.,  a fellow in a dusty Saturn station wagon pulled over.
"Where you going?" Only a little younger than me. Short hair. Mustache. Another driver with a tiny dog in his lap.
"Seattle, but anywhere west," I said, figuring 75 miles to Miles City was about the best I could hope for.
"How far are you going?"
"Idaho," he said.
Score!

Dan was his name. He, too, has been working in the oil fields, driving a water truck, working 100-hour weeks since June, heading back to Caldwell, Idaho, for a week off, maybe until Labor Day.
"Best money I've ever made in my life," he said, even though he described the entire enterprise as "destroying the planet. No two ways about it."
He's been living in a big camper/trailer in his boss's driveway in New Town, N.D., , since there's no other housing available in the region. "I don't live there; I just work there," he said. He'll do it for maybe five more years, and then. . .maybe hitchhike, he added.
A former long-haul truck driver, Dan had also hitchhiked all over the country when he was younger.
"Never had a bad experience. Never," he said.
We sorted out the geography. He was going to Boise, so he'd have to turn south at Bozeman, Mont., while I continued west. But it was still probably 300 miles. He stopped in Miles City for a brief visit to his sister, and dropped me at a coffee shop, but made good on his promise to return and pick me up for the rest of the ride. Turns out he was a birther, very concerned about the government tracking us all via GPS, and thought Catholics were suspicious and odd and sort of anti-American (since they're not Protestants). But he and his dog Tea were good, relaxed traveling companions. Besides, you don't argue with your driving host in the middle of shade-free Montana on a 97-degree day.
When he'd first picked me up, he surprised me with an immediate question.
"Do you have money?"
I was a little startled, and quickly said, yes, I had a little money. Turns out it's the one concern he has in picking up hitchhikers.
"It can be expensive," he said. "They want to smoke your cigarettes and eat your food and drink your water."
Brought my own. So all was well.
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Two other rides (details later):
**Kevin (pronunced KEEvin), a 20-year-old, barefoot self-described "hippie" and young father from Glendive who's not working in the oil boom "because you can't work in the oil fields and smoke pot." But he starts tomorrow cleaning rooms at the Days Inn, where I'd stayed. He got me about 20 miles to Terry, MT, where Dan picked me up for the long ride to Bozeman.
**Joe, who screeched to halt on the shoulder at Bozeman in his doorless Jeep, actually kicking up gravel. He'd been in town only a few weeks from Idaho, landed one job as a D.J. in a strip club ("Playing music for naked girls!" -- Jeeps make a guy shout) and another with a landscape company, and was soon going to web design school. He took me about 20 miles to Three Forks, where I am now.
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Eleven rides so far, 976 miles, not including the Northstar train ride to Big Lake.
Past two days: 876 miles.
Today: 394.
Left to Twisp: about 600
Left to Seattle: abut 800
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Nice weather expected again tomorrow.
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Someone asked today what I wish I'd brought.
Answer: More hours of sunlight, and a sherpa. (Pack is heavy. Shoulders raw.)
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Subject for later: What's up with truckers? I've never in my life gotten a ride in a semi. But several people  have told me to go door to door at truck stops, and have them ask around on the CB for drivers going m way. Wasted half an hour doing that today. Is it just legend?
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Goal for tomorrow: Get going early, by 7 a.m.,. and get at least to Coeur d"Alene (338) or Spokane (371).
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Are these posts too long? What do you want to know that I'm not addressing?

Granddaughter's sign getting some mileage!

Sent from my iPhone

Maybe I'll just stop here for the night

Sent from my iPhoneThree Forks, MT. Holy macarooni!

W. N.D., E. Mont. Feel like gold rush places. It. Really is jobs, jobs, jobs. Boom

Clean cut fellows

I hear often that hitchhiking is dangerous, because you never know who's going to pick you up.

Today it was John Berger of Mandan, N.D., a late-20s kid hauling eight "bucking bulls" home from a rodeo in Rice Lake, Wis., along with one pony and, in the cab of his pickup, his gentle rat terrier, Spike. He was my big break, driving me from Albany, Minn., to Bismarck, perhaps 350 miles, in comfort. He also taught me a lot about the rodeo world, and cattle/bulls -- his grandfather has bred three world champion bucking bulls.

Then there was Alan Fehr, director of psychological health for the North Dakota National Guard. Dressed in camouflage, he drove me another 100 miles to Dickinson. Then, as the sun was dropping, there was Terry, an effusive oil well driller, golf tournament organizer and general hard-working favor doer.

I asked Berger why he'd picked me up. "You looked like a clean-cut fellow," he said. (Thanks to Paul Miller for the suggestion to wear a white shirt!) Later he added it was important that I'd had a backpack wth me. "A friend told me never to pick up someone who's not carrying a pack. They're running from something," he added.

Fehr's wife is the superintendent of schools in Dickinson--and a former reporter. Terry actually thanked ME when he  dropped me off at a motel in Glendive, Mont., after dark.
"It's easier to drive when you've got someone to talk to," he said.

These are people I should fear?

OK, one guy pulled over to pick me up, with two teenagers in the truck with him. CLearly drunk. I actually turned that ride down.

Altogether 14 hours on the road today, but Berger had been right -- once I got into North Dakota the rides got longer. Even so, most of my waits were very long -- several hours in places. I don't remember that from the old days.

Tomorrow's weather forecast is calling for 97, dry and windy across central Montana. I'll fill the extra water bottle. But at this rate I could be in Twisp, Wash., by Tuesday. Ahead of schedule.

Thanks, Elena!

Sent from my iPhone

Bismarck, ND

Sent from my iPhoneThanks to Buckin' Bull hauler John Berger of Mandan.

Day 1 adventures

Today, a hitchhiking first.
As I was standing at the top of the entrance ramp at Monticello, my huge and heavy backpack at my feet and holding my little sign reading "West," dude on a huge motorcycle swerves to my side.
"Are you kidding?" I asked.
"Nah. Put your pack on the back. I've got bungees," he said.
"I don't have a helmet," I replied. That turned out to be maybe the dumbest thing I said all day. My driver, well-built in a powder blue muscle shirt, a constellaton of hardware in his face, wasn't wearing a helmet on his bald head and probably never has. (Found out later he doesn't wear sunscreen on his head either.
His name was Dale. He was going as far as the Clearwater exit, maybe 10 miles down the road, then to a church event where the congregation was giving away household belongings and serving hot dogs and ice cream to whomever showed up. He insisted I come.
"Nah, just drop me at the exit," I said.
"You ought to come. We'll feed you. You thirsty?" he asked.
I wasn't, and I'd just eaten. But he was still insisting.
I'd been realizing, in the first hours of this outing, that my approach to time was going to have to change. There was no schedule, only the mercy of drivers who were to pick me up. I could stand at an interchange waiting for a ride that might not materialize, or I could go see what this church event was all about.
"How long did you say you'd be there?" I asked.
"Oh, just a little while," he said.
"What the heck," I said.
He leaned into an exit ramp and we headed for a road I was familiar with, that paralleled the interstate to Clearwater. It curved and rolled along lakes and green farm fields. I turned my hat around. I have never ridden on the back of a motorcycle, much less a 1000cc model. Maybe it was even 1500. (A Yamaha Venture?) Open air, wind, leaning into curves. . .this was traveling, I thought.
Outside the Church of Living Waters in Clearwater, about a dozen people sat under a white canopy managing the cookout and what looked like a flea market, but at which everything was free. "Good Christian people," Dale had said on the bike, and indeed they were -- upfront about their relationship with Jesus and grateful for it, without trying to convert me. A few drivers stopped and picked through the free clothes and household items and had some ice cream and then it was time to take everything down. Naturally, Dale stuck around to help, and he was my ride, so I helped move tables and piles of clothes and disassemble the canopy. We'd been there an hour, maybe more.
As we were leaving, I took a few pictures and Dale told me a little bit more about himself. He'd just gotten out of prison in May, after two years of a seven-year sentence for drug violations, the abbrevation earned by going through "boot camp." The church has been a lifeline, he said.
He said he'd drive me to St. Cloud, and on the way, we stopped to help a kid push his disabled car to the shoulder.
"Planting the seed," is what he was doing, he said. It's why he'd picked me up he said. And truly that's always been reflected in my hitchhiking experience -- the people who pick you up often are born-again Christians, with an affinity for travelers -- maybe especially those who appear lost or poor or just clueless. And just as often, they're former hitchhikers, returning some long-ago favor. Replanting a seed, maybe. It doesn't really matter, I don't think -- whether out of a religious motive or a sense of basic fairness, the end result is the same. Someone gets helped down the road, and they'll likely do the same for someone else.

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The rest of the day -- not so good. Long waits for short rides. One visit from a Stearns County deputy with a lecture to get back to the top of the entrance ramp, where there was NO chance I'd find a ride, much less one going any distance. Then a heavy sky spread over central MN, threatening storms, and the mosquitoes came out to remind me I am no longer in the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District. I checked into a motel. I'm not more than 100 miles from home. Maybe not even. And much of that I covered by train. Hoping for an early start and longer rides tomorrow.

Sent from my iPhoneDale, the biker

A hitchhiking first

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"Departing in 2 minutes!"

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3rd St., 1st Av. N., Mpls

Sent from my iPhone1700 miles to go

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Packin' my A game

Some basic prep today -- calling state patrols along the way to find out what hitchhiking strategies are legal and what aren't.

Minnesota.  I was transferred twice, finally to an information officer, where a machine asked me to leave a message. That was eight hours ago. No governmental intrusions on my home phone yet.

North Dakota.  For reasons never stated, the Fargo office was closed at 1:14 p.m. on a Wednesday. I tried Bismarck and a person answered. Hitchhiking's OK, I was told, except on a few bridges that don't have walkways. The officer said, to my surprise, that he sees hitchhikers "quite frequently." Are they getting rides? I asked.
"They come and go, so I assume someone is picking them up," he said. That was encouraging. Then he added, "Be careful. It's not like hitchhiking was 30 years ago."

Montana. "Hahaha!" the dispatcher said when I told her I was planning to hitch across that vast state. "That's a weird thing to say!"
What's weird about it? Don't people hitchhike out there?
"Oh, yes, they do. But I don't think I've heard anybody say they're planning to! Usually it's just people who've broken down and need to get some help."
I thanked her for that perspective. Then she added that hitchhiking was "not a safe thing." But the "few incidents" she mentioned involved people getting hit by vehicles -- not muggings or kidnappings or the like.
"You've got to be totally on your A game," she added. "But good luck. It sounds like it might be an adventure."

So tomorrow I'll try Idaho and Washington. But I'm expecting more of the same. The website digihitch outlines federal laws that basically prohibit you from being on the road itself, but not the shoulder. There might be state-to-state variations. The most cautious practice clearly will be to work the approach ramps and not even go on the highway.

Elijah Wald, in his book, "Riding with Strangers/A Hitchhiker's Journey,"  recommends working the truck stop parking lots. I've never tried this and it seems sort of un-hitchhikerlike (more sort of hooker-like), with an in-your-face quality I think I'd find awkward. I want to be closer to the road; it seems more in the spirit of the thing.

Wald, a lifelong hitchhiker, has plenty to say about safety. Hitchhiking today is safer and more effective than ever, he argues: The perverts and predators are all working the Information Highway, instead of out driving around wasting gas. And there are fewer hitchhikers than ever, reducing competition for rides. I'm guessing and hoping he's right.

More good intentions

Since I'm a journalist, this adventure will also be something to write about. (OK, it already is.) And that will add a potential wrinkle, since I'll want to take a few notes during my rides with people. Why did they pick me up? I'll want to know. Why did they trust me? Aren't they, like everybody seems to be these days, afraid? Why not? Where do they fit on the quirky, contemporary social spectrum. . .near the isolation side, happy that their phone number is unavailable to anyone, or near networking and Facebook? And when might we stop for coffee?

I envision posting some pictures, narrative and conversation. Maybe I'll write a Travel section story when I get back. Maybe not. But this way I'll have something written regardless.

I'll direct a few friends and relatives to this blog. I'm not interested in a wide following. I'll want a few people tracking me -- people whom, not long ago, I might have sent postcards to -- but mostly I just want to document the trip. That's a personal tradition that goes back more than 50 years, to when my aunt and uncle would take me on their wide-ranging road trips each summer and I'd amuse myself in the back seat by writing down my observations and making maps and lists (states and capitals visited, rivers crossed, animals seen, etc.),  and storing the pages in a coffee can with all the placemats, matchbooks, cocktail umbrellas, motel postcards, wrapped sugar cubes and local color I could collect. I've loved road trips ever since, obviously, and they are funny, astonishing, embarassing and sometimes heartbreaking to recall. And I never, gazing up out of the back window at the endless heave of the passing telephone wires and breathing the smoke from my uncle's cigarettes on those first long trips, imagined I'd one day be that old man of 60, alone along the road west, hoping for a ride. But somehow it doesn't surprise me.

Mission statement

I turned 60 this year. For a lot of people, that’s the time to go climb Mt. Kilamanjaro, learn to surf, have dinner in Paris, cut back on the salt, retire, buy an impractical vehicle, eat/pray/love, whatever. Me? I’m going to hitchhike to Seattle. 

It’s an adventure, like all those others. It’s also cheap. Like me. 

And it’s  time. I used to hitchhike a lot. Long distances and short. Cross country, or to school. But’s been almost 30 years since the last time I stuck my thumb out on the shoulder of a highway. I want to find out what’s changed since then, if anything, in me, and in all the drivers, dreamers, workers, joyriders, liars, blowhards, generous souls and escape artists with whom I share the road. 

From Minneapolis, where I live, to Seattle is about 1,700 miles. I’ve taken a week off to do it. I’m figuring five days ought to get me there. (I don’t know why I’m figuring that, really, and it’s not as though there are a lot of people these days to ask.) With luck I'll also manage a side trip north from I-90 in Washington to the Cascade Mountain town of Twisp, to see an old friend of mine who's embarked on his own kind of elderventure, having just bought a daily newspaper. (And you think my plan is nutty?) 

 I’m sure to be an oddity out there -- not just a hitchhiker, but one that looks, well, kind of old, you know? Old enough to have his own wheels, for example. And a little craggy. Therefore: suspicious. On the roads character judgments are made at 70 mph: Is s/he trustworthy?  I’ve read you have more luck if you’re with either a woman or a dog. But I haven't taken up with either lately, so I’m going solo. And that gets back to timing. Unlike a lot of other 60-year-olds (maybe most), I don’t have anyone to tell me I can’t. Soon enough my kids will probably be setting limits for me, noting that wandering is one of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe this plan is also a sign of dementia, but right now it feels like a plain old urge to head west in the summer, do it before it would be TOTALLY crazy. 

So Saturday morning (Aug. 20), I plan to catch a commuter train and ride to the edge of the Twin Cities, get off, start walking toward I-94, and get thumbing.