The Long Road

    It is hard to write everything that has happened even though it has just been 2 days. The days are so much more dense, and so packed full of different experiences on the road. But I will do my humble best to describe what happened since then, followed by some abstract thoughts that you can feel free to skip.
    After I left my motel room, some good sleep under my belt, I only had to hitch for a few minutes before a nice woman named Prissy, stopped in the middle of the road to pick me up. She drove me to the nearest interstate crossing which is exactly where I wanted to go. She must have also been a literalistic type because she dropped me off in the middle of the Interstate over pass.

                                              Fun Fact: It's illegal for me to be here.
    So after I broke the law a few more times to get to the other side of the big mess, I walked a ways and found myself in an intersection with some other nice wanderer types who where panhandling. We chatted for a while and they gave me the scoop on where to crash that night if I didn't pick up a ride, then left me to my own devices to try and snag one.
    It was probably about 2 hours before a nice guy picked me up, I say nice guy because I never learned his name, even after asking multiple times. We had what you would call a language barrier. He spoke a little English and I speak just above no Spanish, so we managed. He said he would take me as far west as "Marillo", so I hopped in. This guy was as nice as they come, all he had were nice things to say to me, he bought me lunch, and when we got to Amarillo, he thanked me for my company and gave me a 10 so I could by dinner. As nice as they come.
     And this is where limbo began, the spot I was in was pretty terrible for thumbing a ride, and it was getting to be mid afternoon. I decided to snag the last bus to the other side of town and try my luck there. Turns out it was also bad. After thumbing so long that I couldn't hold my arm up anymore, I decided to head to the Loves truck station that they told me was just down the road.
    Here I have to make a point, in my few days this has been a factor multiple times. I sometimes ask people how far something is, me, standing there with my giant backpack, covered in sweat. People like to tell me, "just 15 minutes", or "just a mile or so". It is interesting because there brains are so wired into "car" mode, that even with all the evidence in front of them that I am not in a car, they still give me car times and car estimations. And let me just say that something that you think is a mile away by car, can turn out to be 6 miles if you don't think about it.
    Here I find myself, walking the lone side roads of the interstate, maybe on car every 10 minutes. I mean I could walk in the middle of the road and bother nobody.  I tried hitching as the cars came by but I held no delusions of a ride. So on I walked, trudging to landmark after landmark. As the Loves sign came into sight as I crested a hill, the universe decide to reward me for my struggle with a sunset. The kind of sunset you can only experience when you are beat tired, sweating through your clothes on the side of the highway in hitch hiker limbo. For the shabby quality of these pictures, I am ashamed.

     I haven't figured out how to rotate the pictures yet, and if you don't like pictuers of sunsets then too bad, its my blog.
    So after my nice sunset, I made it to the Loves, where limbo continues, still couldn't get a ride. Fortunately, a guy who was staying in the rv park down the road offered me a ride, and told me about a nice grassy spot in the corner where nobody would notice me. So I snuck in and set up for the night. It was pretty nice on the manacured grass, away from the noise of the highway.
    I woke up to the sound of a sprinkler, it wasn't hitting my tent but I could hear it. My groggy sleepy self did a probability calculation to this being a problem, and I decided to get up and throw on my rain fly. Turned out to be a good decision because as soon as I got it on the water started hitting it. Also a good thing I had brought my bag and all my stuff in the tent as well, because after my first barrage, a head popped up right next to my tent and gave it a run for its money. In the end I endured the noise for an hour or so, then caught the rest of the Z's I could catch before I had to pack up and shove on in the morning.
    The morning was fine, woke up, packed up, used the bathrooms of the park to clean up, then went back to Loves. Didn't even take an hour for me to get offered a ride to Tucumcari from a nice guy named Michel and his cute Pomeranian CoCo. Michael was a pilot for a companys' private plane, and he told me how there was nothing else in this world like flying a plane. He was also a good guy.
     After about an hour and a half, he dropped me off and I was back on the road. It was a nice day out, nicer than I would expect from the forecast, and before long I had my next ride. This was my first ride with more than one person, David and his wife were driving to California for there sons wedding. They told me that their other son, who was about my age, was also about to leave on a trip, which is what made them pick me up. The offered to take me all the way to Kingman Arizona. It was a long trip, with not a lot of talking. I slept a bit more in the car, and they bought me lunch in Albuquerque, bringing up memories of Breaking Bad.
    A long ride through some amazing country was curtailed by some storms as we swung into Kingman, not even 2 hours out of Las Vegas, where I will be going next. Unfortunately the storms picked up, and we are all here in McDonalds waiting for it to pass. I will be talking to the other travelers to see if I can catch a ride tonight, if not I will find my own corner of the world to snuggle up in for the night.


    Abstract thoughts:
I have a lot of time to think these days, I think about death as I walk past a small wooden cross hammered into the grass just off the road. I think about human connections as another driver intentionally doesn't look at me, or as some teenager gives a random hitch hiker the finger. I think about my future as I am driven through the desert, staring at clouds that seem to imposable to exist. I think about how my plans have changed since faced with the realities of the roads. I think about the nature of religion, as my 6th ride in a row asks me if I am a christian. There is a whole lot of thinking going on. It is strange to be faced with so many new experiences, not entirely sure how to process them. Even in my short time, I have learned a lot about how to best flag down a ride, but Prissy picked me up in a spot that I would have never expected to get a ride, even if I had stood there all day. How valuable is my experience to someone who has never gotten a ride before? What do I have to offer to these people, who all ask the same questions, and turn on the music when they are answered? I have to ask myself what will I offer anybody once I get back, my future being so unclear. All I know is that I don't ever want to get stuck, not just in one place but with one experience. I remember this tattoo on my chest, and what it means to me, and I know I have to try to keep pushing on, even when I am stuck in a McDonalds in the rain in the middle of the dessert. I have to keep changing it up when I get back, I know I can never live a life waiting tables any more. So lets see if I can mix it up.