Been re-reading The Canada Chronicles by Matthew Jackson recently, which is an account of some guy’s hitchhiking adventures over a four year period in the 90s in my country. Fun read, made me wonder if anyone here as any stories they want to share (will also accept shout outs for someone else’s cool hitchhiking story).
I hitchhiked a lot in my twenties, ie in the 1970s, and only had a couple of scary experiences. Once my boyfriend and I were picked up by a guy who was a Vietnam veteran. He told us horror stories while driving at high speed down one of NZ’s windiest roads. Another time in Australia the driver turned out to be a drunk. It was a long ride so we stuck with it, until it got dark and very frightening. My boyfriend finally persuaded the guy to let him drive.
The best hitchhiking experience was in France, around 1980. A friend and I got a lift from a very friendly, nice man. He knew a scenic route to Marseille, ok fine. At one point he asked if we smoked, and produced a big bag of weed. Bonjour! Very strong weed. Happy days.
Aaaand then he ran out of petrol. On a deserted stretch of scenery. It’s ok though - he had a jerry can in the boot and put out his thumb to hitch ahead to where he thought there was a petrol station. He was away for a very long time, and we started getting paranoid. There was a briefcase in the back seat. We opened it, and it was full of pornography - photos stuck to boards that fit exactly into the case. Sacré bleu!
Very stoned and fearing the worst (kidnapping), we decided to hitch away and abandon the car. Stuck out our thumbs and a car stopped. A man jumped out, and it was our driver! The petrol station was closed, so he had hitched PAST us to another one. He put the petrol in the car and we continued on our way. He took us all the way to Marseille as promised, gave us a couple of joints and waved us goodbye.
Not hitch hiking per se, but when I was living in Mexico for my last semester of college a guy passing in a car saw me out walking and offered to give me a ride. He dropped me off at my destination which was a few blocks away and that was that.
No, the dangers being female made me far too nervous to do that.
I do remember seeing around one handful of hitchhikers during my childhood, but we never picked them up. I can hear my mothers tongue click when I asked why we didn’t help them.
Came here to say this. Lock doors as soon as you get in, and start driving. Don’t rummage around, it gives time to potential attackers to get you before you even start the engine.
I don’t see as many hitch hikers now, but maybe because of my travelling routes. Even then, I still won’t pick anyone up.
Ya. Beats walking. All my experiences were good. Haven’t hitchhiked in 20 years tho.
I’ve personally only hitchhiked twice.
The first time isn’t all that interesting. I was camping with my parents as a teen. I was a smoker at the time and had ran out of cigarettes. My parents didn’t know about (or were deliberately ignoring) my habit. The closest place that sold smokes was about a two hour hike away. So I told everyone at camp I was going for a hike and hoofed my way there. I managed to finangle a couple packs of cigarettes, but was at a loss - I knew I was going to be in shit if I just disappeared and returned four hours later. I decided to try my luck and stuck my thumb out. After about 15 minutes, I got picked up by some guy in a pick-up, pretty chill. Got dropped off at my camp with no one the wiser.
Again, not interesting in itself, but was a “Whoa, some people actually do pick up hitchhikers these days” learning moment.
Second story is only slightly more interesting:
Still a teen (about 16-17 I think?) living in Victoria, BC. A friend who had moved to the mainland had come back to visit. One evening, I asked “Hey, have you ever been to Saltspring Island?” He said no, and it was decided among our crew that this would change the next morning, since none of us had visited.Saltspring is one of the southern gulf islands off the coast of Vancouver Island, about a half-hour ferry ride from Victoria. Naturally, as my mother would be quite concerned that her son was going on an ocean voyage, I spared her the worry and simply didn’t tell her. Three of my friends and I got on the first ferry of the day and made it to Fulford Harbour.
Now, Saltspring didn’t have a bus service, and while there is a taxi company it’s pretty expensive. So as my friends were starting to worry about how we were going to get anywhere interesting, I stuck my thumb out. My visiting friend stared at me like I was insane.
“You have to be joking.”
“Dude, just trust me on this one.”
“No one in their right mind is going to pick up four random guys.”A couple minutes after he said this, a sedan pulled over. Suddenly, all of us were crammed in with this delightful seventy year old woman, telling us about the local artisan she was visiting and the sizeable artistic community on Saltspring. She dropped us off in Ganges, the main town on the island. We spent the rest of the day puttering around, smoking terrible green pressed hash we bought off some kid there (who took us on a small tour that ended at a glass shop for a pipe, disappearing by the time we made our purchase), and generally having a pretty chill time.
Eventually, it was time to go. We struck up some discussions with folks in a parking lot near the edge of town. There was a guy with a passenger van that seemed promising, but unfortunately he already had some hitchhikers and couldn’t take us. There was another couple who was willing to take us, but only had room for two passengers. After some debate, we split up and left the other two to finangle their own ride.
Originally, the couple said they would drop us off at the ferry terminal, but after a little while they changed their mind and dropped us off in front of a yoga retreat. We were there for about an hour and a half.
Now I was starting to get worried. If we didn’t make it to the ferry by the last trip, we were capital ‘F’ fucked. None of our parents knew where we were, we had no place to stay, we had no idea how the other guys were faring, etc. Finally, a passenger van stops. It’s the same guy from before, only now with more room and the other two guys in tow. Apparently, they’d talked to him again, and came to some arrangement where he’d come back and get them. Everyone involved was pretty relieved.
So we made it back to the harbour, got on the boat, returned to Victoria and made our respective ways home. My mom greeted me with the following:
“DID YOU GO TO SALTSPRING ISLAND?!”
“What? No! Why would I go to Saltspring Island?”
“I didn’t know where you were, so I called [friend who didn’t come with us] and he said he thought you and your other friends were going to Saltspring!”
“What? All four of us going to an island 30 minutes into the ocean, with little money and no car? That’s crazy, who would do that?”I don’t think I’ve ever fessed up to my mom to this day.
I hitchhiked a fair amount in Ontario, Quebec and Michigan in the 90’s.
Loads of fun. Nothing bad ever happened, but some fun stories and close calls on the US side.
Since there’s nothing better than a close call story, are there any you’d like to share? Feel free to balance it out with one of the fun stories as well if you want (since close call stories, as well as sheer bad outcome stories, colour a lot people’s impressions about hitching).
One of the more memorable ones was crossing Windsor to Detroit. After paying $2 to take a shuttlebus across as no pedestrians were allowed. Once we got to the downtown Detroit side we knew we would have a hard time getting a ride. We thought we’d look for a city bus to take us to a hitchhiker friendly highway. It was sundown, and you could literally see the junkies and nightlife crawling out of every nook and cranny like a bad zombie movie as the sun set. We went into a gas station for a map or directions. The gas station attendant freaked the fuck out at our presence.
He yelled at us " You guys are going to get robbed or killed just for your backpacks. You won’t last 20 minutes walking around like that. It’s getting dark and the crazies come out at night. You have to get the fuck out of here now! There is a greyhound station 2 blocks north, 1 block east. Get the fuck out of Detroit while you still can. Go now now now!"
Our faces went dead serious. We said thanks, confirmed direction by pointing and ran. Well as “run” as you can do with an 80L camping backpack. As we did, the orange glow over the city got dimmer and sundown turned to twilight, we saw the most concentrated group of unfortunates, and we were drawing attention. We heard catcalls and the like directed towards us. Yelling. A fight of somekind and gunshots or a car backfiring. We don’t know because we power-walked like olympians on meth.
We got to the greyhound and found a bus leaving in our direction for something cheap $12 that got us to Ann Arbor. We temporarily lost our taste for adventure. Our American friends during our visit to UofM suggested we do the same thing backwards to avoid dying. They concluded that we were book smart, but not very street smart for a couple of hitchhikers. We agreed.
As for fun, a different friend and I were hitchhiking in Northern Quebec near Ville-Marie and met two lovely Quebec girls from Montreal doing the same thing as us. We saw each other at a greasy spoon getting some warmth and hot coffee after a cool night in the woods and our backpacks identified the four of us as compatriots. We just smiled and waved to our intrepid fellow travellers.
We met again a little later trying to hitch rides in the opposite directions. After waiting for a while with no cars offering and little traffic, we crossed the road to chat. Turns out they were lovely people from Université de Laval, looking for adventure on the cheap like we were. We all got along so well, we decided to camp together just outside of town for one more night hoping weekday traffic would be better.
We spent a lovely night together drinking shoplifted wine around the campire, sharing stories of the road and school and dreams of what post uni life will be like. Good times.
Used to hitchhike all over south west Scotland when I was a kid in the early '80s.
No real drama or stories except the one time three of us were hitching and the car that pulled over was being driven by a guy who was locally known as a ‘kiddy fiddler’.
Two of us hopped over a dry stane dyke, leaving just one kid to get a lift with him. Nothing happened to him, but in retrospect it was a shitty move on our part.
Oof - glad your friend got out of it unmolested (…no pun intended, I swear). Given everyone came out ok, chalk this one up to live and learn.
As I recall, we all just teased him for being so monumentally ugly that he was safe from molestation. It was a simpler time!
Like Mr Garrison being mad that his dad didn’t love him enough to molest him.
Yes, and I have also picked up hitchhikers. Hitchhiked from north England to Scotland, picked up a few times locally, never any trouble, no adventures.
I picked up a hitchhiker just outside Edinburgh once, and drove him all the way to Devon. The first thing he said was “Aren’t you afraid to pick someone up when you’re on your own?” I replied “You’re right, I’ll drop you off at the next lay-by.” His face!! Happily he realised how dumb he was, apologised, and we had a good trip.
I hitchhiked through Ireland about eleven years ago. It’s not that easy to catch a lift in some parts, but I met a lot of lovely people during this little adventure.
Nice! Is there one moment of your adventure that jumps out when thinking about this time (granted, it’s likely a lot of interesting stuff could have happened along the way)?
I was kind of stuck on a mountain road in the middle of nowhere and it started raining cats and dogs. The weather and the road conditions made it unsafe for me to continue on foot. I held my thumb out to catch a lift and the first car passing by picked me up. It was a lovely young family with their two children in their van. They asked me where I wanted to go and I told them ‘just down the mountain back to proper roads’, but they insisted to drive me to where I actually needed to go, which was a detour of at least half an hour for them. Great people. :)
