Arizona again

    After I left the restaurant in Provo I got a ride in about a minute, which was cool but not very long and only got me to Spanish Fork. The next few days I spent nickle and diming it out of Utah, with my last ride being with two girls who were going to Phoenix, and dropped me off in Flagstaff. The night in Flagstaff was BRUTALLY cold, the coldest night I have endured so far. I guess that is what I get for sleeping in a wash near the University of Arizona. The next morning I had some breakfast at Dennys, still trying to get over my cold, and got back on the road.

In some places they paint the cattle guards on the roads, I found this immensely funny

    An hour or so hitch hiking got me a direct ride to Limbo. The intersection I got dropped off at had no east flowing traffic, we are talking about 6 cars in 4 hours. The reason for this is that the highway the intersection was built for, goes to a small town and then connects back to the interstate further east, so nobody has any reason to drive west to go east. I unfortunatly accepted my lot and life and figured even 6 cars in 4 hours was some cars and eventually I had to get a ride. Luckily for me a nice police officer came up, started talking to me, checked my ID to make sure I wasn't a murderer, and then said that I had no chance of catching a ride here, and that he would let me walk down on the interstate a bit so I could try to catch a ride there. Awesome

My Limbo

    The interstate is no hitch hiking picnic either. The cars are going very fast, and have little incentive to be looking out for pedestrians, since it is illegal for pedestrians to be on the road. I also have to think there is a little bit of the bystander effect going on here. Just as it was getting late and I was getting desperate, I got a ride from a nice guy named Ted who took me all the way to Winslow. Ted bought me dinner, let me sleep in his auto shop, and bought me breakfast in the morning.
    The next morning I got a ride from Winslow to Gallop, unfortunately when I did, my small capsule with my SIM card and my memory card for my phone fell out of my pocket. The idea for this capsule was that if I was robbed, I could give the robber my phone, go buy a $10 go phone at the dollar store, put my SIM card and my memory card in it, and I would still have a phone. But silly me I forgot to think about just losing the capsule, leaving me with a non working phone. So anybody who I like to call, or who likes to call me, please resort to email.
    Later I got a ride from where I was further into Gallop, and then finally a ride into Albuquerque from a nice guy named Emo. Emo let me take a shower, helped me with some laundry, gave me dinner, and I was out like a light bulb. The next morning I walked across the street to the mall, where I now sit, writing this blog post.

Its the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque

    I don't really have any solid plans right now, other than that I am heading to Florida. I would like to also go to Los Alamos, to the museum there for the atomic bomb. Possibly Rock City, but I don't know how it has been effected by the recent shut down. I am not very familiar with the southern corridor beyond Texas, so let me know what the cool and fun stuff to do down there is, so that my rides to Florida aren't too boring.

Me and the big guy at Temple Square

Random Road thoughts
    I have had a rougher time hitch hiking lately than usual, my stops getting longer and longer, I hope this is just a hiccup, but in my frustration I have stopped thumbing when lone Mustangs drive by. Why is this? It is because I never have, and believe I never will, get a ride from a Mustang. I have noticed a trend in all the rides that I get, that nobody is rich. The people who take me and give me rides seem to range from having enough to get buy to comfortable. I have only ever been taken in for a night by one person who I would think had quite a lot of money to sling around, and that persons wife was the bread winner, not him.
    So why is it that nice cars and rich people don't give me rides? Are they worried that my big backpack my scratch their interior, or that I might stink up the leather? It is easy to say that rich people don't care about us vagrants, which might be part of it. But I have come to think that the most likely reason is that they have probably not been in my situation before. Many of the people who pick me up tell me about their adventures hitch hiking, or just say "I have been in your spot before". These people have an earned empathy that many others in society don't. I know that my experiences will lead me in the future to pick up hitch hikers, and help them in any way I can, and theirs did the same for them.
    I still will not thumb for individual Mustangs though. I recon those guys are just full of themselves.

A collage Natasha made of our time in Seattle