June 1, 2018 After you spend enough hours on the roadside, you can start to feel a need to shake it up a little. You can start to get superstitious, like a gambler who fingers a button on his sports jacket or a ballplayer who circles the plate before stepping into the batter’s box. You start to glorify rituals. Posture. Positioning. The angle of the hat. Am I squinting? Why do they keep driving right past me? If I can just figure out what’s in the mind of each of those drivers passing by, maybe I can alter my routine and magically, the next car will stop. And if that…

May 18, 2018   A Little Help From My Friends   When you’re at the edge of Omaha watching the parade of cars go by or standing by the ramp in Peoria as a thunderstorm approaches, you realize something. You were dumped here by chance. In those towns where I had friends, I had an advantage. Not just a warm shower and a cold beer, but knowledge of the territory. In Buffalo, in Cleveland, Lexington, and now in Fort Collins, I’m able to rely on friends or family who can get me from the highway when I arrive and drop me off at a good hitching location when it’s time…

May 31, 2018 One way to look at this day is to say that I covered 41.7 miles from the time I woke up in Steamboat Springs at 4:30 AM until the time I gave up on the side of the road on Rt. 40 West, in Craig, CO, a coal and ranching community of about 8900 souls, and called it a night. I’m still 120 miles from Vernal, Utah, which is 172 miles east of Salt Lake City. Once I reach Salt Lake I’d kinda like to truck on to San Francisco, a mere 735 miles further along. And I’ve got a sunburn. And I ate potato chips and…

And that was my wife speaking! Thanks to Sean Martinelli of Channel 9for this recap of  #NobodyHitchHikesAnymore.com Channel 9 Story 061018

Whoever it was that called Colorado the easiest state for hitchhiking has never been to Craig. Craig, I was told by a fellow in Steamboat, is down on its luck. It’s coal country and proud of it. The local paper had a story this morning about a budget crisis in Moffat County. Craig is that county’s seat. Funding for the Museum of Northwest Colorado may be on the chopping block. The largest source of funding comes from the mineral leases that the Museum owns and sublets to what they refer to here as “extractive industries”. So if your Eastern ears reflexively shut down and dismiss concerns of people who make…

Rob, Kim, Mark, Rick, Steve, Dave, Rogo, Sean, John, Portia, Karl, Jim, Gordon, Lydia and the kids, Morgan, Mike and Nancy, Pat, Karin, John, Ricardo, Deb, TJ, James, Steve, Adam, Scott, Rob, Rick, Danica, Ron, Officer Mejias-Stevens, Naz, Jamie, Richard, Val, and Casey, Tom, Jeff, Will, Tara Lee and Jesse. Thank you. I didn’t set out for California. I didn’t set out to prove anything. I just set out to find you, and I did. So I thank you. And to my constant companion on the road, Caroline. I couldn’t have done it without you. I’m flying home today. I promised someone a new lawnmower. And I have to honor these people by telling their…