Entering a TV screen (being in the US is like)September 28th, 2006      from http://www.industree.org/guaka/blog/

Thelast week and a half Ive been staying in Quincy, in the mountains ofCalifornia. At a great place. Ive been doing a lot of wiki stuff.Then, like many people in the house here. I fell ill, some bacteriaprobably. So I did even more wiki stuff. Together with amylin Ihitchhiked from San Francisco to Quincy. SF is a nice place, but kindof cold for California. Cool people. Maybe a bit too cool though. Itwas hard to find a couch.

One week before SF I was still in NYC. A lot of Manhattan dumpsterdiving, resulting into amazing feasty fests. I had hitchhiked fromMontreal to NYC with amylin. Which was crazy. Quebec was nice forhitchhiking, but the border is only an hour driving away. We got a rideto the border, where we started walking. No problem with the Canadians.Then the Murkan customs: Hitchhiking is illegal in New York State!,You will get killed!. Funny people, those Americans. At last aslightly friendlier custom officer told to walk alongside theinterstate to some gas station. Oops. There went my plan: get a ridestraight to NYC at the border.

So we walked. And walked. Found the gas station. No truck driverswere willing to pick us up. Especially not the Canadians. Funny.Probably because we were two. More walking, another gas station.Waiting, waiting. Long time. Finally some friendly souls picked us up.And gave us a map! And told us to try the local routes. Some more ridesfrom really friendly people later it was already getting dark. So wedecided to get some sleep in the nice woods of the Adirondecks.

Next morning had some real American diner breakfast and startedwalking. And got picked up pretty easily. One ride. Another ride.  Onto the Interstate. Towards Albanysricher suburbs. Unfortunately the wife of the guy who gave us the liftwasnt very happy with the hitchhikers he picked up. Otherwise he wouldhave probably dropped us off in New York.

So, we had to hitch a ride into the city. We ended up in shittysuburbs. Waited hours. And hours. Some cop came over shouting Nohitchhiking in New York State!. So we started walking. Not reallyknowing where to go. 10 minutes later one cop car stopped. The secondcop car stopped. And #3. Three officers. Wow. We must be reallyimportant. We had some calls from people who were worried. Hmm, I wasthinking to myself, why didnt they pick us up instead” Or even juststop and ask, if they were so worried. We were asked for our IDs, andthen one officer said something like: Our chief thought that she was12″ and Yeah, its good if you look younger than your age. Funnyperverts, those men.

Finally we took the Greyhound bus to NY, which was really shitty andexpensive. And we went to Slaweks place. Where we had the CouchSurfingdumpster dive party. We spent one weekend in Philedelphia, in the 6thStreet ghetto at Khavimonsters place. Really interesting, US ghettos.One night, walking home, we saw a whole bunch of cop cars and anambulance. Some shooting had been going on just a while before that.Then on September 6th I missed an interview with the BBC, due tomiscommunication. And Amy, who was moving from Connecticut to SantaCruz, CA, came to pick us up in New York. That day we drove to Toledoin Ohio, where we stayed at Amys former house, which is amazing, andmet her great friends over there.

We left Toledo without any real destination apart from Santa Cruz.So we were driving and driving. Then at 23:00h or so I noticed thatthere was free wifi at the rest stops. We stopped and wrote some peoplein Salt Lake City, more than 1600 miles from where we had started. Idrove until the early morning, when Amy, who had slept a bit, took over.

At 20:00 in the evening we finally made it to SLC. In the meanwhileI had seen amazing places. At times, being in the US is like entering aTV screen. All these things Ive seen before, but only on TV screens.Or in movies. And then Im sitting there in some gas station slashdiner, in the middle of the night and of Nebraska (or was it stillIowa”) where employees are telling us were the coolest people theyhave ever met (which sounded very plausible).

From SLC we drove through Zion national park. Beautiful. Down to LasVegas. Yay. I gambled big time. 50 cents. From there through DeathValley, I was pulled over by a cop in the meanwhile (because of brokenheadlines, fortunately only a fix-it-ticket for Amy), slept close tosome hot springs. Too close. Another cop in the morning. Fortunatelyonly a warning.  From there we drove through Yosemite national parkstraight to San Francisco. Where there was no Collective going on.  Amycontinued to Santa Cruz and amylin and I stayed. But had to leave inthe morning. We were lucky to crash at Crashs place that night.

Now, still in Quincy. Feverish, sore throat. Next thing: hitchhikingto Portland! After that: hitchhike back south, and get on a plane toNew Zealand.

Posted in Hitchhiking, US, New York | No Comments

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Posted from UK:

posted Monday April 2007