WTG Devin

A few weeks ago, my good friend Danny the poet-farmer hitchhiked across the country from Boston to Salt Lake City with his recent acquaintance, Dave the sensitive minstrel. Their original goal was to hitchhike to California, hang out with friends, and then hitchhike south to Ecuador and then Chile, which is one of the most admirably foolhardy plans I’ve ever heard. It’s kind of like watching the charge of the Light Brigade in slow motion, only in Mexico. Fortunately, Danny and Dave were traumatized on their 11 ½ day journey through America’s heartland, and after getting stuck in the blazing desert of Moab, Utah for two days, they said f this noise and took a train to Sacramento. When I picked them up they were both sunburnt, and they kind of smelled like dead armadillos.

Danny wanted to go to Chile because he’s kind of from there (he’s actually from nowhere, which is what you’re supposed to say if a gang member asks you where you’re from), and, as he put it, “Things were too perfect back home, so I left.” Dave had to go to Ecuador to stop the marriage of his girlfriend to her Ecuadorian ex-boyfriend so he could get a green card. Because this situation wasn’t simple enough, the very first night I put the two up at the museum (my house), Dave gets an email from a girl saying that she has chlamydia, and hey, you should get yourself checked out. Cue a super frustrated and regretful Dave and planned parenthood the next morning.

Turns out Dave was fine, so we went camping in Big Sur well before the fires started (1 week), where we saw a bobcat, slept under the stars, got stung by my ancient enemies the mosquitoes, and almost got bitten by a rattlesnake (Danny – “Wow, they actually have rattles on their tales! I thought that was just a myth!). But after a week of tooling around the bay area, Dave flew to Ecuador, and Danny and I were a little restless, so we decided to hitchhike to Seattle. Why Seattle? I had promised some friends there that I would go visit them, and as for Danny, he was trying to catch up with a circus that was traveling back to Boston so he wouldn’t have to hitchhike back across the country. That’s right, a circus.

Circus Folk Unite!

Danny and I set out on Friday the 13^th with peanut butter, water, sleeping bags, and a tarp. We were originally taking I-5 north, but I-5 in the summer is really hot. So we cut west to the coast. Upon the telling of this story, some people stop me and say, “Wow, isn’t hitchhiking dangerous?” Well, yes. I felt like Danny and I were going to die a good 75% of the time, which was compounded by the fact that people kept telling use we were going to die. We were in Petaluma, and we asked this guy how to get to the road to Bodega Bay, to which he replied, “You guys are walking? You guys are going to die.” Then he turned to a young couple who were walking down the street and said, “Hey, these guys are walking to Bodega Bay,” and the young couple looked at us and said, “Oh, you guys are gonna die. You’re dead.” What the hell. Optimistic people in Petaluma. So we started walking to Bodega Bay, and around mile 2 a car drove by and a kid yelled out the window at us, “You’re going to die!” Only the car he was in was going really fast, so it was more like “YOU’RE . . . Going . . . to . . . die!” all echoey and whatnot. We kept walking. The sun was going down, and we began seeing the bodies of dead animals in various stages of decay on the side of the road – rat, crow, cat, and I joke not, sheep. We made it about 10 miles before we pitched tarp in a grass-filled ditch near the Coast Guard Training Academy and passed out until dawn.

We spent the next few days inching up the coast about 10 miles at a time. We slept in state parks, ate a burrito a day, and met lots of “street people”, as Danny calls them. One night we got driven to a state park by a burly police officer. “Yep, I’m about all the law there is between here and Crescent City,” she said. Side note – if you don’t want to be arrested for vagrancy, make sure you’ve got an ID and some cash on you.

We eventually got tired of moving 100 miles a day and the sun coming out at 5pm, so we cut back to I-5. On the way we camped in the coast range near the Trinity River. Because I’m addicted to rivers and waterfalls we went hiking, and as we were walking down the trail we ran into an earthquake fissure. Just imagine many enormous trees torn from the ground with their roots exposed and covered in mud, and a hillside split open into a cliff down to some rapids and you’ll get the picture. So we start down the earthquake fissure to get a better look at the river, which is about 150 ft below us. I jump into the middle of the fissure onto what appears to be solid ground, but no, quicksand. Surprise! My legs have disappeared up to my knees. I look up at Danny and say, “I really . . . shouldn’t . . . struggle.” So I get out of that stuff, and ask Danny if he thinks we should risk climbing down the rest of the way to the river. Danny looks down at the jagged rocks, and says completely straight-faced and bare-chested, “I feel no fear.” So we hike down to the river, which is beautiful and awesome, and even more so because we find a 5 year-old sealed bottle of St. Pauli Girl, which we drink riverside as the sun goes over the hills.

We get to Redding at noon the next day, where we have to hike from DTR (downtown Redding) to the I-5 onramp, which is about 3 miles away, up and down massive, sloping hills. It was the middle of a 100-degree day, and we had a fun time walking in the heat with our 25-pound packs. Danny and I were standing on the side of the onramp, sweating profusely and trying really hard to smile at the oncoming traffic, when Danny turns to me and says, “Hey, what does heat stroke feel like?” So I get Danny some water, he passes out in some gas station shade for a few hours, and we call Valería la más sería for some tech support, aka bus times from Redding to Portland.

While we’re waiting for the bus station to open we’re reading on some grass in DTR, when this bearded messiah-looking homeless guy walks up and proceeds to try and scam me out of my stuff in the most ridiculous way possible. He starts pounding the grass with his hand, talking about how the grass was the only true path, and how I should let Jesus into my heart, and then he says, “I want you to stand up, leave all your stuff here, and walk over to that wall. With each step, imagine the people you love and are thankful for in your heart, and when you turn around you will have the Lord with you.” I was having none of it. Then another homeless guy (he was a pretty big guy – picture a cross between Meat Loaf and the Big Lebowski) sits down on the other side of me and Danny, flanking us. The two homeless guys get into an argument, which results in the bearded guy laying his hands on the big guy’s head and baptizing him in the middle of the grassy area. Danny and I beat it mid-ceremony, and hole up in a Mexican restaurant until the bus station opens and we can play arcade games. Then we take the night bus to Portland for an actual place to stay, and some much needed showers.