The hitchhiker paradox
When I bought my first clunker four years ago, I was stoked to finally be able to pick up hitchhikers. Not just giving lifts to friends, but picking up random strangers sticking their thumbs out on the open road. After all, that was what all of my hitchhiking companions and myself promised we'd do when we'd become drivers ourselves. Four years and tens of thousands of kilometres in, I haven't picked up a single hitchhiker. Why you might be asking? Well, for one, I haven't come across any.
I thought I'd still see them. Uni students going back to their folks to do their laundry. Teenagers headed to a gig in another town. Globe-trotting Japanese hippies. Competitive hitchhikers (anything can be a sport if you want) in hi-vis vests. Anyone, really. But no. The roadsides these days are barren strips of tarmac.
How do people on a budget travel these days? Is it all Flix Bus and Facebook groups for finding a ride? Whatever they choose, I can't really blame them. There are way more reasons not to hitchhike than there are to hitchhike. Yes, it's free (chipping in for gas money is somehow against the whole ethos). It's sort of adventurous. And while there is a certain charm to it, the whole process can be rather daunting. You might stand there in the rain for hours, cussing every Mazda, BMW and Ford passing you by. If you're travelling from a larger city, it might take a few hours to actually get to a spot where you can start hitching. Also, while you can tell yourself the tall tale about how free you feel, you are actually super dependent on the goodwill of strangers.
And then there's the boredom. The absolute boredom of the road. To cheer yourself up, you'll start coming up with cheesy cardboard signs or juggling the three oranges that make up that day's lunch. You'll be surprised how many song lyrics you actually remember.
The drivers picking you up probably won't be the best conversationalists. Sometimes, you won't even share a common language apart the 20 phrases you memorised before the trip. The conversations are mostly formulaic, unless you get picked up by someone really chatty. But usually, the conversation dies down after 10 minutes or so. As most people hitchhike in pairs, it is customary for one person to be the driver whisperer.
You rarely have something in common with the drivers. In a way, you are inconveniencing them. For a brief moment in time, they take on responsibility for you. But at the same time, they are receiving a gift. A gift of doing a good deed. Just like the rich folk who save the protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke by applying a Heimlich maneuver. By giving you a lift, they're getting a bit of redemption. And now, in the driver's seat, I'm not really looking for an interesting conversation on the road. Nope. I'm looking for redemption.
What a fantastic ending.
This is so interesting. I wonder if hitchhiking is truly on the wane these days, as it seems to be? Are there any organised pockets of hitchhiking culture left flying the flag?
Have you read Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson, about him hitchhiking up Japan? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37438.Hokkaido_Highway_Blues That book very, very nearly turned me into a hitchhikers because as a young & ambitious travel writer I wanted to make a name for myself writing something *that* adventurous and *that* funny. (Tragically, my spineless cowardice ruined all my plans.)