So my dear readers, my more academically minded friends are achieving there goals of getting really expensive pieces of paper soon so I plan to attend these ceremonies. Now for the game. My friends like to say they read my blog, but they always seem to have not gotten around to it in a while whenever I ask. So I will test the truth of this statement by measuring the surprise on their faces when I show up. If someone to who this paragraph is relevant reads this, please don't spoil the fun and don't tell the others.
A creek I found in Idaho
I have been traveling around through Montana, Idaho, a bit of Washington, back into Wyoming, then back to Montana, now I am in North Dakota in the Williston boom town. The weather in Wyoming was super terrible, its actually kind of nice here, never thought the weather in North Dakota would be better than Wyoming.
Right on the border of Idaho and Washington
I got a ride through the whole of Idaho with some guys who were Jugging. Jugging is the act of walking up to somebody pumping gas, open with a nice "hey man, were out of gas, any chance you can spare a splash", let them fill up your can a bit, use the gas to get to another gas station, do it again. The guys were a couple of crust punks, they pretty much asked for everything, food, gas, cigarets, everything. In the 2 days I traveled with them, they ran out of gas 3 times and we almost got arrested when a cop searched their car and found huge amounts of pot. Somehow we ended up not even getting a ticket.
You wouldn't think there was anything like this in the potato state
The reason I had to ride with those guys for the entire north-south length of the state is because it is illegal to hitchhike in Idaho. Hitchhiking is illegal in Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Delaware, but only enforced in Idaho. Just recently while passing through the pan handle, a cop told me from his megaphone as he drove by that it was illegal to hitchhike and that I would go to jail if he drove by again. First of all, I would like to clarify that hitchhiking laws are vagrancy laws, and the only reason Idaho still has them is because it hasn't had its ass handed to it in supreme court yet. Second, the problem with laws like this is that they don't leave you any other alternatives for people like me. "Hey you can't hitchhiker here", "ok, can you give me the classifieds because apparently I live here now." This is similar to when a cop in Louisiana told me I couldn't hitchhike there, and my only option was to walk 20 miles to the nearest town or go to jail.
This study published in 2006 showed that the part of peoples brains that activates when dealing with homeless people is the same part that we use for processing objects, not the part we use for processing people. I have to deal with police officers often, and it is often refreshing when they treat me with courtesy and respect, because that is not how most treat me. I am often on the receiving end of barked orders, or a quick ID check to make sure I am not Charles Manson and nothing else. My old travel partner Kyle can confirm that the hitchhiking tickets we got in Austin were mostly a result of the officer feeling like we wasted his time.
North Dakota, I have spared you from all the cloud pictures
This is a new slice of life for me. Many times I have to acknowledged that the treatment I am receiving from not only police, but from many regular people is because I am now perceived as the lowest part of society. Now maybe I have no room to complain, because my status is voluntary, and can be reversed at any moment due to my means and my friends and family. But I still think this says something about us. People who pass on the on ramps often don't even acknowledge my existence, they just glue their eyes forwards and pretend I don't exist until they are safely past the scary homeless guy. People cross streets and even change lanes to avoid being near me, as if my caste is going to rub off on them while they drive by at 60mph.
But readers please remember, that those scary bags of rags on the sides of roads and in street corners are still people. Sure some of them are drug addicts and alcoholics and will screw you over any chance they get, but lots of us have people like that in our own families. They are still people, and this doesn't mean that you have to serve them escargot on a silver platter, but you should at least acknowledge the fact that they are people. Look at them, and make sure you look at them like they are people, not like they are objects.
