3 - Hitchhiking the Southwest

Pasadena, Calif., August 19, 1989

It's early Saturday morning. I'm nestled in my sleeping bag on Zack's front lawn after four long rides from Albuquerque. Never stood on the highway's shoulder for more than five minutes. I’m just that popular.

At one exit ramp, two college women drove by slowly in their car stuffed with luggage. They checked me out, pointed to the roof, then floored it down the on-ramp.

The first guy who picked me up was this outlaw. His vehicle was this piece of trash pickup. Abbey Road was blasting from a cassette player somewhere between the dashboard and a beer chest while the old goat divulged that he's being chased by his ex-wife's husband in a Trans-Am. He kept looking back. After a while I started seeing Trans-Ams too.

Ship wreck rock

New Mexico

The next driver assured me I would live to see another day. Nice guy of Mexican descent, a mobile-home mover. We drove through Taco Bell and ate 59-cent tacos. Real proud of his state's beauty. He took me through the rain. Never told me his name. Didn't expect anything in return.

The next guy had intentions. Dressed in fine fabrics and a silk scarf, the gray beard said he was a hippie who’d been living off his father's trust fund his whole life.

"You ever get high? I just smoked a bone before I picked you up. But I'm going to meet a fella on the other side of town. He's a good guy and gives head for 5 dollars - real cheap. Different strokes for different folks." He kept rambling as I plotted my escape.  

The final driver wanted to split expenses. He wore a samurai bandana and explained the whole Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung power struggle. A few hours later I was driving the beat-up Monte Carlo through the Mojave Desert as he slept in the back seat – grateful to be approaching the final destination.

Around 12:45 a.m. I was dropped at a gas station, just a mile's hike from Zack's home.

Some guy was spazzing because no gas was coming out of the nozzle. He yelled obscenities. "You gotta lift the lever." And real calmly the guy replied, "What?...Oh." Totally bipolar. We laughed and the sensei said, "This is L.A. This is why people get killed. They just freak out like that with a gun in their hand." His parting advice was, "Get out of L.A. as fast as you can."

But I just got here. And I must explore.