Theichigan Daily

-Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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A hitchhiker's guide to 1-94

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he inside of Chicago's Grey-
hound bus station is like Ellis
Island. The air is flush with
humanity grinding against itself
to get somewhere, anywhere. Pho-
tographs are taken. Tricolor beads
crackle from lush black braids.
Eastern European women dangle
on their lovers and Midwestern
girls chirp on cell phones.
But this story isn't about what I
found when I arrived at my Spring
Break destination. It's about how I
got there.
(I hitchhiked.)
If you too feel the American need
for blind freedom, a tattered leather
satchel and superstition, hitchhik-
ing is easy enough. It's a way to save
the environment, save money and
save your tired, yearning soul. The
ingredients are simple and few.
1) Road
2) Thumb
3) A map
4) A Sharpie and cardboard for
making signs
5) one of the 6 million cars that
are being driven with empty seats
in them this very moment.
I had a knife too. Just a little
one, just in case those urban myths
about hitchhiking were true. I only
used it to cut the blocks of cheese I

brought.
I'm a man of average height with
a skinny build, and I was safe the
whole time. I've talked to plenty of
seasoned hitchhikers and nobody
has ever had a problem. You don't
have to take any ride you're not
comfortable with. There are awk-
ward situations, sure, but I believe
the rhetoric you hear in liberal arts
classes that human nature is gen-
erally good. Hitchhiking is a good
way to put your money where your
heart is.
It's important to choose a start-
ing location where you will be vis-
ible and drivers will have a chance
to slow down and take a look at you.
It's dangerous to hitchhike on the
interstate and also illegal. The on-
ramp is less illegal. I stood, thumb
out, by the on-ramp to 194 on State
Street.
It took me about three hours
to get a ride. My sign initially said
"spring break Chicago," because
I thought it was cute. Nobody bit.
Hippies would honk and give the
thumbs up, kids waved and one
woman screamed through her
glass windows "Holy shit, a fucking
hitchhiker!"
Then a guy in a silver Taurus
stopped. I grabbed my bag.

"I'm.
down th
"No t
Whe
p
a snake
of the s
of you.7
er, but t
toward
ride lik'
or your
do acid.
Mor
luxury
as if to
I wond.
husban
nicolor
stop. I
"CHIC.

only going about 10 minutes up.
se road. You want a ride?" "We're not going to Chicago, but
hanks, homey." we can take you to Indiana, down
n a car stops it's like seeing '69," a burly man said across his
bored wife.
"Are you going through Kalama-
Being a zoo?"
It's seemingly innocent dialogue,
nodern-day but when there's an invitation on
the table to get into a steel box from
(erouac in a someone you never met, you're siz-
ing each other up a bit. It's a vile fact
ost-slasher- but every social prejudice imagin-
able is amplified while standing
flick world on the side of the road with your
thumb out.
"No sorry, not going through
Kalamazoo. Elaine, give him 20
in the forest. You're scared bucks."
nake, but she's more scared "Oh, I couldn't take that."
You may be scared of a driv- "Time's are hard everywhere and
he driver is just as hesitant we're not doing to well ourselves.
the "crazy" guy thumbing a You look like you could use it."
e Woody Guthrie, Tom Joad "You are gracious people, but
parents when they used to I have enough to get where I'm
going."
e cars passed. Blondes in More cars. One man held his
cars looked me in the eye fingers an inch apart to signal he
say, "Are you kidding me?" wasn't going far enough. Far too
ered if they still loved their many people talked on cell phones
ds. Raggedy kids with Tech- to decapitated. voices miles away
hair slowed down but didn't when they could have been telling
folded my sign to read just me their stories. I would have lis-
AGO" and a red truck pulled tened.

I started to think. What am I
doing out here? An hour passed and
the passing cars started to wear
down my excitement. Humanity
sucks. Screw you for not stopping.
Then I had to laugh at myself. Itwas
crazy. But it was the hopeful, beau-
tiful crazy that has always driven
men to see the world for what it is.
To see it without the intervening
cow-eyed glaze of a textbook, to see
it with their own eyes.
Those Technicolor-haired kids
drove by again, and this time they
stopped.
"We're going to Chicago, hop
in!"
Word.
Between that point and my
return to Ann Arbor, one black felt
coat was traded for a green cordu-
roy one, the guitarist for the nation-
ally touring punk band tried to
hold my hand and a woman named
Delores told me about the time her
boyfriend tried to murder her. But
I won't tell you about that. You'll
have to find out for yourself.
Oh, and don't forget your har-
monica.
-Drew Philp is a senior
in the College of Literature,
Science and the Arts

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