The Journey Home

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Ryan:

From Seattle we got a ride from a woman from Kenya, whose name I don't remember, if she gave it. She took us maybe ten or fifteen miles east (we finally had to make an "East" sign). We waited there for a little while and a guy drove by and stopped to tell us that he wasn't headed out east then, but in a few hours he was going to head out east quite a ways. We told him that if we were still there we'd take the ride. Turns out, first off, that we were still there, but he also came by a lot sooner than he had said he would. His name was Nate, and he took us roughly halfway across Washington to a town called George. Nate would be the second of two heavy metal guitar players to pick us up. He also owned a biker bar somewhere in northern Washington and a company called TicketTee, which sold concert tickets, much as Ticketmaster does, only instead of getting a ticket, you get a t-shirt, which you wear to the concert as your ticket. Seemed like a pretty cool idea to me. He had just put on a four day long music festival in Missoula a couple of weeks ago.

He had gone on a motorcycle trip with his dog around the entire perimeter of the country a couple years ago (the dog rode in a sidecar), so we spent some time talking about traveling, trips, etc. When he dropped us off in George, he told us that there was a bar there about a quarter mile up the road, the owners of which we knew. He said that if we needed a place to camp for the night we should just head in there and tell them that he had dropped us off in town, and they'd probably let us camp out behind the bar for the night. As he left he sort of re-introduced himself as Nate the Snake, rather than just Nate.

We were pretty sure that we would be stuck in George for the night, but decided to keep on trying to get a ride until ten, which is when the gas station closed. George was a pretty small town and, despite being right next to the interstate, didn't get a whole lot of traffic coming on and off of it. We waited for about two hours and had ten cars come past us. The sun had gone down and it was nearing our 10 o'clock give up mark when the eleventh car stopped and picked us up. The guy's name was Tony, and he was a computer programmer who worked a couple hours away from where he lived. He was heading back home (he lived at home with his girlfriend part of the week and at an empty apartment near his work for the other part) to Spokane, which is on the eastern edge of Washington.

Tony had done quite a bit of traveling and hitchhiking in his younger days. Apparently there's a hiking trail that goes all the way up the Appalachians, it's a 6 month hike the whole way, and he had done a good chunk of it at one point, and had always wanted to finish it. We spent some time talking about, as usual, trips, hitchhiking, and the sort. He has a theory that since most people in America spend most of their lives indoors, they don't really empathize with hitchhikers anymore, and don't really have a grasp of what it's like to have to stand outside in the sun until somebody gives you a ride. Consequently, fewer people are willing to pick you up than thirty or forty years ago, when a much larger chunk of the adult population grew up on farms or working outside. His theory may have some merit, given our experiences trying to hitch out of Spokane the next day.

As we were driving into Spokane, it was getting close to midnight, and the question came up, "so where do you guys sleep at night?" I told him that we usually just find a spot to sleep somewhere outside where nobody will bother us. He was evidently a little concerned because he offered to pay for a motel or campground stay, since he didn't think his girlfriend would be too keen on him showing up with hitchhikers at midnight. Turns out the campground outside of town was full, and the rates for motels were higher than he expected, but I said that we'd be willing to meet him partway. He dropped us off outside a Motel 6 and gave us 50 dollars for the motel, but it turns out that we weren't going to get a room anyway. The next day was Hoopfest, which is the largest basketball tournament in the world, with the city of Spokane hosting several thousand 3 on 3 basketball games in one day. So, of course, every room in town was booked. We wound up sleeping in a ditch between the back of a grocery store and some railroad tracks that night.

Andrew:

Regardless of the misfortune of our sleeping arrangements, we had managed to make it out of George, WA (read: George Washington 😊 and I was happy about that. During the morning, we took our time getting up (meaning I was up and about around 8 am), but when we did we had breakfast at a McDonald's and promptly headed out to the on ramp so that we could try to get a ride into Montana (we did not want to get stuck in Idaho again). Because we were out there so early, we thought it might be awhile before we got picked up (one of the many trends in hitching was that no one would pick us up before noon-ish). Turns out that we were right, and in addition to having to wait for hours on end, that day in eastern WA was in the low 100's for temperature. At about 1:30 pm we took a break and went in to a nearby Perkins, more for the AC than for the food, and rested up. We only managed to stay out in the heat after lunch for another couple of hours before we decided to hike up the nearby hill to take a siesta in the shade. The siesta ended up lasting until dusk or so, when it finally wasn't horribly hot anymore. When we headed back down, we decided that we would avoid Idaho being a pain in our necks again and just take a Greyhound across ID into Missoula, MT at around $55 for each of us. This involved us heading West into downtown Spokane.

We didn't have to wait quite more than an hour or so before a man pulled over and asked us where we were going. We told him about the Greyhound and how we had had to wait all day for a ride to no avail. He proceeded to introduce himself as Randy, and after we sufficiently explained our adventure to him he offered us a place to sleep for the night (on his lawn...by a lake) and to drive us to the ID/MT border the next morning (!!!!). Needless to say, we accepted his offer. Randy turned out to be one of the coolest guys we had met on the entire trip. We talked with him about our little adventure, and he told us about all of the adventures he had when he was young. Randy had bicycled across the US, hitched around Europe, flown out of Europe into India, hitched around India, flown from there to China, hitched around China, and then flown back to the US (or so that's the best I remember it). Regardless of the details, it was an astounding amount of traveling, pretty much all by hitching or bicycling. We talked about a number of other smaller things before arriving back at his home where he fed us spaghetti and showed us where we would sleep (on his dock...near his motorboat and jetski).

The next morning we woke up and were able to clean up a little bit while Randy made breakfast (eggs and pancakes). While we were eating, we were introduced to his third of three sons (we met the second the night before and the first was away). On our way out with Randy and his middle son, we also met his wife who wished us luck. Randy had a few errands to run including dropping his son off for basketball camp, going to court to handle a theft and vandalism proceeding of which he and some of his tenants had been victims, and garnering a VISA photo for his son so that they could go to the Olympic games in China this summer. Finally, we were dropped off on the ID/MT border. There were a lot of trees and foothills (it was beautiful country in Northern ID, as opposed to Southern), and we stood under a bridge to wait for our next ride to read our sign and stop.

This next ride happened to be a young woman named Michelle. Coincidently, she drove a '91 Nissan Sentra (almost the same car as me). Also, like my car, it was not in good shape. When she pulled up it smelled of smoke (as in engine smoke) and was actually smoking visibly as well. Apparently she didn't notice. I called shot-gun so that I could watch the temperature gage on her dashboard in case it was out of control. When we got in, it wasn't, so I didn't say anything. Michelle was a quirky girl who asked questions like, "What's your favorite food?", "What animal would you be?", and the like. She offered us some gummy worms and potato chips (and some "incredibly stale, disgusting crackers). Eventually, however, her car began to make horrible noises and I looked over to see the temperature gauge on the console shooting up. I told her she needed to pull over, so we did. She popped the hood and I had a look at the engine, which had a very heavy transmission leak and was smoking all over. We gave it some time to cool off and poured water all over it to help it do so. After a little waiting, some more transmission fluid, and a struggle with the shifter we got it going again and it stayed at normal temp for the rest of our ride into Missoula.

Ryan:

We got to Missoula and got dropped off on the eastern end of town. Fortunately, Montana is a pretty alright state and as long as you're not physically blocking traffic they don't really care what you do so far as hitching is concerned. As such, we got to hang out on the interstate by the on ramp. Unfortunately there was road construction where we were, so it took us a little while to get a ride. We did eventually get one from a guy named Jim who took us twenty miles or so past Missoula to a little area (not a town, it was an area) called Bearmouth. It was looking like we might get rained on and traffic was noticeably thinner, but there was no road construction, and plenty of space to pull over. Plus, at this point, we were out of the city a little ways, and getting rides seems to be much easier outside of major cities.

We were able to get a ride and avoid getting rained on. The guy who picked us up was named Sean, and he lived in Billings, which is about halfway across the state. He had been vacationing in Seattle with some friends and had left that morning. He had dropped his friends off in Missoula, and had seen us when he was on his way in, evidently. He had been getting tired and thought about staying with his friends for the night, but had really wanted to get home, so he decided he'd take off anyway (it's a four or five hour drive from Missoula to Billings). He was really glad when he saw us again because he quickly realized how tired he was once he left, so he needed the company. Fortunately, we were also more than happy to get all the way to Billings, as it had been the secret long shot probably not going to happen but it would be really cool if it did goal for the day's travel.

Sean worked as a case manager for a mental hospital taking care of people with Schizophrenia, which was apparently a pretty stressful job. He had also spent some time traveling in his younger days. I can't remember much else from the conversation, but when we got to Billings he offered to put us up for the night, and let us use his facilities. He dropped us off the next day at about noon on the east end of town, right before the road split off into 94 and 90. We got picked up an hour or so later by a guy in an old red truck whose name was either Keith or Ken or Kevin, didn't catch which, but he also went by Reverend K, which I did manage to catch.

Reverend K was one of the more interesting people we met on the trip. When he was younger he was a heavy drinker for a number of years until he got into a big argument with his girlfriend. While they were drunk the knives came out and they tried to kill each other. It took him a couple days to sober up and figure out what had happened, at which point he promptly quit drinking cold turkey and became a reverend, which he'd been doing ever since. He still had the tattoos, scars, and a plastic hand with the rock fist and fake blood sticking out of the dashboard, but he had turned himself around, it seemed. He dropped us off in a town called Forsyth, and gave us a list of a few people *not* to talk to, told us that most of the people were cracked out, the cops were sideways, and gave us his phone number in case something happened or we couldn't get out of town and needed a place to stay. Encouraging, to say the least. We bought some food at a gas station and headed out to the interstate.

Andrew:

Forsyth was very small, it was very hot outside, and there were no clouds. The only saving grace to this traffic-less town was that there was a slight breeze. To be honest, neither of us thought that we were going to get a ride anytime soon, or possibly not even that night. However, our pessimism was again dismissed when another person pulled over in another early 90's Nissan Sentra. He was a younger guy (29, as we would find out) but was shirtless with a scraggly beard, wire rimmed glasses, and curly, overgrown hair. We got into his car, which was about as well kept as himself (there were pine cones, pieces of bark, old books and newspapers, mysterious small black round things (either animal poop or dried berries was my conclusion)....the list went on. The man's name was Tim...and he turned out to be a very, very cool guy (he was also headed to Wisconsin through the cities, making him even cooler at that moment for saving our butts from hitching through North Dakota).

To define him in a word, Tim was a hippie. He spent his days with his girlfriend and some mutual friends living in the Sierra Nevada mountain range herding goats, living off of their milk, eating herbs, hunting, fishing, and trapping. Tim had also contracted Lyme's Disease a few months before, which he had cured with an herbal remedy concocted from the plants on the mountains amongst which he lived. While Tim talked to us about these things he drank a questionable looking brew out of a glass jar (later, it would turn out to be a sort of herbal tea, which looked like forest floor scrapings and gatherings thrown into water). He proceeded to relay to us some of the goings-on of hippies and life in the mountains. In turn, we explained to him our adventure and we became engaged in conversation about everything from people and their many natures, to politics, music, medicine, and family. Through our all night drive (he picked us up at ~5:00 pm, we drove all night through until we arrived in the cities at ~7:00 am the next day) and the sharing of sordid family affairs and opinions on how the world around us may or may not be falling apart, I dare to say that we came to know Tim much more than the average hitch hiker knows any person who picks them up. My only regret about the whole experience was that I never got contact information from him before he left us in the cities (he planned to continue driving on into Wisconsin....he had also been driving for 12 hours before he even picked us up the previous evening...).

Though, when the moment came that our last ride-giver had left, it was an odd feeling to realize that after 5 weeks of being voluntary vagrants we had arrived back home. Yes, the adventure was much shorter than intended, but it was every bit as full (and sometimes more so) of those events and people that make you want to do it over and over again. I know one day, probably sooner rather than later, I will go back.

Ryan:

Tim, I would have to say, was my favorite person that we met on the entire trip. Tim is pretty hard to convey in a couple of paragraphs, unlike most of the other people who picked us up. He's one of those people who you'd have to meet and spend some time with in order to understand. I can say this though, of all of the people I've met, probably over the course of my entire life, he knew more about being a human being than anyone else.

All in all, I had a great time on the trip. It had its ups and its downs, but it was well worth it. We made it out to the ocean, saw a lot of the country that I had never seen before and met a lot of really interesting people. Also, we figured out that hitching is still a perfectly viable method of transportation, if you're not on a schedule, and willing to travel on the cheap.

Andrew:

And if you're not in Idaho.

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