Free Ballin’

Yes, Ingenious Hitchhiking Strategies 001.  I will undoubtedly provide you with at least 100 hitchhiking tips—one per ride—and as many as 999, over the course of this blog.  After that, you’re on your own.

I’m going with 001 instead of 0001, because I figure good luck is finite, and thumbing 9,999 rides is just begging for an encounter with a serial killer.  My logic?  Eh, I haven’t really thought it out, but I’ll go ahead and guess that the likelihood of running into a serial killer is less than 1 in 999.  But 1 in 9,999?  Mmm…pushing it.  On the other hand, it might take 9,999 rides to get a carload of Playboy Bunnies (or Clippers Spirit Dancers) who invite me for their Team Building roadtrip.  So it might be worth the risk.  Whatever the case, I hope to be able to buy a car before trip 1,000.  [And yes, I have a call into Playboy Enterprises to find out how many Playboy Bunnies there are.  I want to know my odds.]

Hitchhiking Tip:

001. Don’t Look Like the Bad Guy

I have included two pictures of myself, below, to illustrate.  The first is what I looked like the night before leaving Oregon.  Observe my dark and sexy appearance; the sleek navy shirt and quiet power suggest I might be special ops, a spy, or perhaps a guerrilla-fighter revolutionary.  The arched eyebrow is especially mysterious and seductive, but dangerous too.  That’s not the way to go, when hitchhiking.

Below that is how I looked the following morning, heading off to Milwaukee, WI.  My angelic and boyishly handsome countenance and the bright orange shirt are almost irresistible to drivers (well, to 1 in about 500 drivers).  The visual package just screams, pick me! in a non-scary way.  That gets the cars to slow down and take a look, but even more than my natural gifts, the I-Went-to-Salt-Lake-City-and-Realized-the-Truth expression on my face is what gets them to stop.  Actually, I think it’s more of an I-Put-Three-Pounds-of-Strawberry-Jello-in-My-Boxer-Briefs-and-Kind-of-Like-It look, but whatever.  A good number of people who pull over tell me I looked like a nice guy, so I must be doing something half-right.  And I don’t think smiling outright is appropriate; smiling for no reason (much less while stranded on the side of the road) can be creepy.  If I gave them my big toothy smile, they’d probably think, “What the f@ck is this guy smiling for?” and just drive faster.

The point is, you don’t need to look like me to hitchhike successfully.  In fact, if you look like half of me, you might even have better luck.  But it’s what I’ve got, and to quote a great man, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” Er, actually, that’s Donald Rumsfeld…  Anyway, I’ve done well enough to get from A to B, more often than not, so that’s something.