I have never hitch hiked. It always seemed a bit risky to me. Not only the uncertainty of not getting where you are going, but you have no idea who is picking you up. The inverse is also true; as a driver I never pick up hitch hikers because I don’t know them and am not prepared to take the risk – and it seems in this case, I would have been correct. However, apparently, this makes me an arsehole…
It is frustrating when people don’t stop. You learn the sign language, from the barely credible: “Look my car’s full otherwise I’d totes stop” to the sympathetic: “Poor you, but also screw you” and – most dispiriting – the not being acknowledged at all. But resentment isn’t going to help. So, turn it into a game. During long waits, I kept a friendly smile while running through the alphabet in my mind, awarding an insult to each arsehole, bastard and – well, you get the idea – who passed me.
Charmed, I’m sure. If that is your attitude – a freeloader who thinks they are entitled to a lift, then the only arsehole here is you. Those who do stop are offering a gift. Those who don’t are under no obligation to you. You chose to travel on the cheap at other people’s expense, so er, fuck off.
The only time I ever hitch hiked I didn’t request it. As teenagers a pair of us had booked in at a youth hotel for one night, ‘to see if we might like it’, (my friend’s parents being keen hostelers in their youth). The following morning we set off for the bus back and a passing army Land Rover stopped and offered us a lift into Worcester which we gladly accepted.
In recent years I have stopped for one hitch hiker, who then complained when I wouldn’t deviate from my route to suit him.
Stopping at a layby once I met a group of American tourists who had walked from Cirencester and didn’t fancy walking back. With five of them and only 3 spare seats it was suggested that if I could take the driver in their party to where they had booked a hire car it would be a great help. This ‘driver’ had yet to catch up with the advanced group so didn’t hear our talk. I took him into Cirencester (on my route) and deviated onto the industrial estate where the hire company was located (but where?). Well we tried the north end first, (it was in the south end). All the time the ‘driver’ acted as if I was a well-paid taxi driver that was ripping him off, rather than someone freely giving of 20 minutes of their time and petrol.
On the same route, at different times, I have offered a lifts to a young driver sitting at the roadside and a young motorcyclist pushing his bike. Both had run out of petrol. Both were very grateful. I would like to think that someone would do the same for me. I don’t feel any obligation to provide free travel to hitch hikers though.
Nothing wrong with hitchhiking if you are careful. I know lots of people who did it but there is a risk that you need to watch out for.
In saying that I’ll be going out for a drive to find my new girlfriend.
Rules of hitchhiking:
1. Pick a spot to stick your thumb out where you’re visible a long way off, and there’s time and space for a driver to pull in.
2. Don’t waste emotional energy on the drivers who can’t / won’t stop.
3. Be grateful.
They always used to work for me. Longest I ever had to work my thumb was twenty five minutes.
However if you’re a “Spoilt millennial” Who “Created a hell of a din. But all that time he was standing in the wrong place to hitchhike – a corner with poor visibility and nowhere for cars to easily pull over.” You have no-one to blame but yourself.
Yes, hitch-hiking is an exact science. I became an expert in the sixties when I used to hitch-hike everywhere. I hitch-hiked to India and back twice, and then again in ’71 to India, flew to Bangkok and hitched down through Thailand and Malaysia, got a flight from KL to Perth, WA, and then hitched across to Melbourne.
As you say, Bill, you need to pick your spot carefully so as to make it as easy as possible for someone to stop. It helps if you can get beyond any major route splits, too, so you know most people are actually going the way you want. You need to be clean and polite, and as you say, appropriately grateful.
You’re fortunate to have had a maximum wait of 25 minutes. I waited three days on two occasions – once on the border going from Turkey to Iran, and once, on the border again, between Iran and Afghanistan. And when you’re somewhere like the middle of the Great Salt Desert in Iran, and a vehicle passes only once every three hours or so, that can also entail quite a long wait.
Hitch-hiking brought me a huge range of experiences, and taught me much about my fellow man. I had a few not-so-good-bordering-on-dangerous experiences, but the vast majority were good, and some of the lifts I got the people showed extraordinary generosity and good will. I also had some incredible conversations. I met so many very different people, I could write a book, about them and about the roadside experiences I had while waiting.
I haven’t done any hitching for forty years or so, but I often pick up hitch-hikers. The memory of the generosity of all the people who gave me a lift is still fresh in my mind. And most of the people I pick up are both polite and grateful for the lift.
It’s a dying art these days, though. Forty or fifty years ago it was a popular way for broke young people to get around, particularly in UK and Europe, and I can remember occasionally turning up at a spot to put my thumb out, and having to go to the end of the queue, there being several hitchers who had got there before me. But they’re a rare sight now. Everyone’s paranoid about everyone else thanks to the predilection of the tabloid rags for lurid headlines and exaggerated storylines.
A great shame, really. Hitching provided a means for complete strangers to meet and exchange ideas. I loved it.
I never hitched outside of Europe, so I can’t tell you about anywhere else, but a three day wait? Must have been one empty road.
I used to hitchhike as a lowly paid soldier posted to the other end of the country from my home town. Long before special rail fares for the military and long, long, before I could afford a car, it was either using buses from one town to another, gradually making my way in the direction I wanted to go, or risk standing by the side of a road with my thumb out. This was before the IRA threats to kidnap a soldier off the streets of Britain and murder him/her, so I used to wear uniform, as many of us did then. The majority of people who stopped and offered lifts, were lorry drivers, who would often regale with stories of National Service horrors – the most memorable was a car transporter driver who went off his route and dropped me off at the end of my road, to the astonishment of the neighbours. Thanks to McGuinness and his mates, this all had to end.