Has anyone here ever hitchhiked?
 

.....back in the day.


I did once, late 1980's, great story.

Many, many times during college in Minnesota 1977-81. Had good luck, but it could get a tad cold.

I hitchhiked from Jersey to Florida back in 1984, took about 2 days.

All the time. It used to be 'normal' for us in NYC/Long Island...despite what our mothers told us.

Across Canada (Victoria, B.C. to Halifax), summer of 1974.
Across Europe (11 countries), summer/fall of 1975.
Edmonton, Alberta to La Paz, Mexico, spring/ summer of 1981.
Phoenix, Arizona to Toronto -- via Deep South, Eastern seaboard -- fall of 1981.
First two trips were solo; last two with the girlfriend who became my wife.

I was at Macalester those exact years and when I was bored at night, I used to drive around and give hitch hikers a lift now and then.

In the Seventies, my family lived 3 miles down a pine forest-lined road. Before I could drive, hitchhiking was a way of life. At first it was just local stuff. I would get picked up by friends and neighbors.

After I could drive, my lot was not much better. My first few cars were unreliable to say the least. I still Thumbed more than I drove...

Two quick tales...

My parents, after I moved out, moved to NJ. I stayed behind in Mass. ( I was in love, don't you know. Of course, her and broke up about two months afterwards...LOL). The next summer, Mom and Dad rented a place on the beach on Long Beach Island in Jersey. The car I was driving was not up for the road trip. I thumbed down with out incident. I spent the week there and thumbed back to Mass. On the way out of New York into Connecticut I was picked up by a guy in a Sanford & Son pick-up truck. He seemed "cool" but excessively stoned. After a few miles he reached under the seat and pulled out a cigar box of heroin packets and offered me one to snort. That was not my thing. I refused and waited until the next exit approached and told him that I would get off there. There was a rest area. It took about an hour to catch another ride. About 10 miles down the road , there was a wrecker and blue lights. The Sanford & Son pick-up was kissing a tree down at the bottom of a hill some 50 feet off the road. :eek:

A Second....

After my freshman year at UMass Amherst (Zoo-Mass), I ,being a freshly minted Deadhead with tickets to 3 shows in three different states and again with a car that was not road-trip worthy, decided to hitch to the first show. I wound up spending nearly three months on the road hitching or catching rides with Deadheads going to the next show in the next town. Of course, my favorite memories were of catching rides with "Twirl Girls". For non-Deadheads those are the stereotypical peasant-dress-wearing female Deadheads who spent the entire show spinning and twirling in a serpentine-like dance. Those segment of the summer have a whole extra set of memories.......:D The Dead circled back to Springfield Mass towards the end of the run. Having seen 24 shows that Summer. I left the Circus and went home to Marlboro...........:)

Was always afraid to. Dad was a cop and heard too many stories.

Of course now we call jumping into some stoned guy's car "Uber" and its perfectly respectable.

Haha yes amazing we all survived, not all did.

But yah it really wasn't scary. I did it a few times, also picked up people a few times.

But yep best story, was I was at a bar with friends, Lime Rickey's, just outside of Chicago, not sure how I got separated from my friends, but did and was like F' it I'll just walk home, shouldn't take more then 5-6 hours.

Threw the thumb up as cars passed, and got lucky, car pulled over.

About 5-6 people in the car, but they made room. Guys and girls. They were still in party mode and hit a park and we continued to party. Hit it off with one of the girls and even went out with her a few times after that. But still had an hour or so walk after that to complete my journey that night, or early morning I should say.

You all that did it across states and across country, that's amazing!!!! Fun times.

Within the last 10 years, I was driving north on the Cross Island Parkway around 4am. It was a Sunday morning and I was driving from my apartment in Floral Park to after hours spots in either Astoria or Jackson Heights...where ever the early morning would take me.

[By 2010, I started going out later and later. If I went out at 5am, I'd be still having fun, but my partying would be significantly shortened, I would save money and wouldn't be tying one on. Tying one on was what Sunday afternoons were for.]

So, it was the Sunday after Belmont. On the Cross Island, I saw a disabled car in the right hand lane. Now there is no shoulder over here, so this car was in a precarious position. Then I saw a woman opening the drivers side door with a solo cup. I said to myself, "This woman is in trouble". I pulled over and she tried to get me to fix her car. She was completely loaded. There was alcohol in her red Solo cup. She got in the car and we got off at Northern Blvd. Somehow I was able to figure out she lived in Glen Cove. She propositioned me a few times. I am certainly no saint. At that time, I was definitely more of a creep. We finally got to her house and she invited me in. It was a big old house. I declined. Not because I was this upstanding man, but I really had no idea who was in that house.

Anyway, I got to the after hours. I remember driving home around 7:30 - 8:00 am and coming south on the Cross Island Parkway and the car was still there.

In the 70's, I worked for a bank located on the Sunset Strip. It was routine to see young ladies (white go-go boots, mini-skirts, hippie chicks - you get the picture) hitching from one club on the Strip to another or to someone's home off Laurel Canyon. I met some interesting ladies, got lucky less times than you'd imagine and now wish I would have gone into some of those homes in the Canyon. Might have met The Mama's and Papa's, Joni Mitchell, Zappa, Morrison or any of the dozens of talented musicians making that scene. It's too bad you don't realize you're in a "special moment" until it has long since past.

Peace and Love!

At a bus stop
 

I have never hitch-hiked. I always thought it was a bad idea, too much risk involved.
However, when I was around 18, before I had bought a car yet, I was waiting for the bus at a bus stop. I was on my way to the Race Track, to make a play on the ponies. There was a horse I wanted to get a bet on. The horse was in an early race, and I was running a little late.
As I was waiting on the bus, a guy on a nice convertible pulled up to the bus stop and asked if I wanted a ride. As I said, I was running a little late, and I really wanted to make that bet. So I said sure, what the heck.
We did some small talk, and then he said hey, would you I like to go do this with me, or go here with me, etc. I realized he was a gay guy (not that there's anything wrong with it, as Seinfeld famously said). I said no, I really had to get to the race track, that I was going to my job there. I was working at the track at the time, but right now I was only trying to get there to make a bet.
So he dropped me off at the track, and I was able to make my bet. I don't remember if the horse won or lost, it probably lost. They usually do.
Hitch-hiking, generally a bad idea.

Back in 1960-61 I used to hitch hike back and forth to college. Granted it was only 20 some miles one way but I never gave it a thought. This was in Wisconsin where it, at times, got cold. The best ride I ever got was from a couple of hunters heading north for deer hunting. Their car was packed to the brim but they stopped and I squeezed in the back seat. Also rode in back of pick up trucks and cabs of 18 wheelers. Because of this I never hesitated to pick up a hitch hiker. The best one I encountered was one year I was going to visit my mother in Wisconsin and I lived in Maryland. Somewhere in Indiana I picked this young man up. We were almost to Chicago and I was a little tired and asked him if he could drive. He assured me he could so I let him take over. Just on the other side of Chicago he woke me up and said a police car had its lights on and he had to pull over. He then said he did not have a drivers license. The cop came to the window and said the two cars were going pretty fast but he couldn't tell which one was really speeding since one was along side the other and he didn't know who was passing so he let both cars go with a warning. He didn't ask the young man for his drivers license, thankfully. When the cop drove off the young man was shaking so bad I had to take over driving again I let him out just outside of Rockford, Il.

When I was a teenager I used to always pick up hitchhikers. They were mostly people I knew of but didn’t really know well. I came from a small town. Wouldn’t pick up any now unless my family was not in the car and depending on what they looked like. People are pretty crazy these days.

I used to occasionally hitchhike the 30 miles one way home from my junior college classes, depending on the schedule of the guy I sometimes rode to school with.

My most memorable attempt at hitchhiking was during what those of us who were there like to call "Doug's Big Adventure".

Short version - I was on tour with a band in Europe in 1985, and woke up in the back seat of a random car the morning after a show in Ridderkerk, The Netherlands. After making my way back to the venue that the band had performed in the previous night, only to find that nobody was there (not a surprise really, since the show had ended 12+ hours prior), I was attempting to hitchhike to Amsterdam (location of the show the next day) when the Dutch police stopped to inform me that hitchhiking was illegal in Holland. So I took the train.

Let my adventure be a lesson for those of you who plan to get completely stoned out of your mind on Turkish black hash (which has been known to have a hallucinatory effect on some) for the first (and maybe only) time in your life : don't wander off on your own...

Doug "now I'm tempted to hitchhike to spring training" Goodman

What if the last 36 years were a hallucination and it's still 1985? Things that make you go "hmmmmm."

The last 378 days will have been a pretty boring hallucination though...

We have time, lets hear the long version.

I have a lot of stories from the Netherlands. I would have WAY more but I can't remember too much from then.:D

Ha! The long version involves monkeys, the car I woke up in being parked in the middle of the street with the engine running, a Dutch guy in his tighty whities, an empty school with a window that wasn't closed correctly, a crazed groupie, Beverly Hills Cop in Dutch, pinball, and the drummer touching my arm while saying "dude, we thought she killed you..."

According to the issue of Aardshock magazine that had a write up on the tour (and my picture) I was attempting to hitchhike to Los Angeles, but it's in Dutch so I can't actually read it, and I wasn't.