Josh: Yes. Especially being young and looking even younger.

After one hundred and thirty-seven rides, I had learned to stop hoping for a lift when certain vehicles approached. Any of the cars above were out. Handicap stickers were a sure bet against me. And RVs—whether motorhomes, fifth wheelers, or any type of travel trailer—were just as hopeless.

*

We learn to extrapolate at an early age. Functionally, it’s a necessity. Run into a sliding glass door, touch a hot stove, and you figure out where bruises and burns come from. Even the basic concept of object permanence is an extrapolation. How many peekaboo games does it take to realize Mom will still be there when the blanket comes up? Yes, she could disappear, especially if she’s speedy and missing a maternal instinct, but with enough cycles of cry-laugh-cry-laugh, we realize she’s not going anywhere.

Once we learn to extrapolate, we extrapolate to learn. What spices work well together? What movie reviewers do you agree with? Where can you safely speed, and where will cops ticket you for going five over? Who can you trust?

*

I had arrived in Wenatchee a full day ahead of schedule, so I hitched an hour north to camp for the night in Pateros, a town I knew well from family vacations. The next morning, I looked for a ride back to Wenatchee—a ride to my friend’s wedding and the conclusion of the Traveling on Trust project. I gave cursory waves to the RV vacationers that approached, but my hope lay in the pickups and the SUVs.
Again and again, this trip has surprised me, and the thirty-seven foot motorhome that pulled over me surprised me yet again. I met Bob and Kat—about to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary next month—and their golden retriever, Abby.

Bob welcomed me inside and turned the foldout bed back into a couch. “We weren’t expecting to pick anyone up,” he apologized, then climbed back into the driver’s seat.

“We usually don’t pick up hitchhikers,” Kat said, “but you looked young and you smile with your eyes.”

A cane and a handicap sign lay on the floor.

In the hour’s drive between Pateros and Wenatchee, the couple told me about growing up in Aberdeen together, teaching in Kent after their wedding, and finally retiring to a little place in the Methow Valley. Bob doesn’t like traveling, so motorhome trips like today’s are rare, they explained. We stopped at a fruit stand at the drive’s halfway point, and while Bob took Abby for a walk, Kat bought me coffee and told me about her stroke four years ago. The handicapped sign was hers.

“You aren’t supposed to talk about religion or politics,” Kat said, back in the RV, “but I do anyway.” We discussed Christianity, divorce, and the state’s marijuana law all the way into Wenatchee.

*

After a certain point, extrapolation hinders learning. It doesn’t leave room for disasters, or for on-the-road dinners, or for strangers. New Orleans’s levees could handle expected weather without a hitch, but Hurricane Katrina defied precedent. So did Pompeii, and so did the Flood. On this trip, I would have starved had I followed culinary standards whenever I prepared a meal. But popcorn can serve as breakfast, and although it’s not the best method, you can cook a trout by boiling it in tomato soup. As for extrapolating about strangers, I found a ride in a motorhome. And another in a carpet cleaning truck.

*

When I graduated college, my friends and I agreed that more than anything else, our education had shown us how little we actually knew. My understanding of the world felt much more complete back in high school, when I was studying the surface of subjects and moving in the same familiar circles. College exposed me to depth, variety, conflict. Now, when I pick up a Shakespearean sonnet, I know that there are at least three different ways of reading it, each supported by scholars and academic articles. I know that even the punctuation is up for debate.

So it is with people.

After riding with a hundred and thirty-eight strangers—plus passengers and those I met in small towns—the extrapolated assumptions I make about people no longer fit. Most of the surprises I found during this trip were people who overthrew my stereotypes. A former bounty hunter now works in the ministry and hopes to plant a church in Africa or Southeast Asia. A grimy trucker helped found his college’s economics honor society. A “tough guy” with tattoo sleeves, sunglasses, and gangster goatee said “God bless” after driving me three miles through Taos. A couple in their fifties, financially successful and some of the most outdoorsy, active people I have met, believe in Atlantis, aliens, and astral planes.

This is not to say I now view people as blank slates. I don’t reject all my extrapolated knowledge about people, either, just as I don’t reject the high school explanation of “Sonnet 18.” And for the most part, I still learn by extrapolating. I’ve learned hitchhiking is not only safe, but rewarding and inspiring. I’ve learned most people want to be good, and they want to be trustworthy—it’s circumstance and social shoehorning that gets them in trouble.

But I try not to stop there. I take whatever extrapolated knowledge I’ve gained with a grain of salt, and I use it as a starting point. So when I meet a stranger, even if he is “your typical Vietnam vet” or she is “a total Colorado hippie,” I keep asking questions. What events in her backstory would she say most define her? Who does she love? What does she think makes a good person?

I took this trip to gain a practical education, to see how life unfolds outside of theories and textbooks. I learned much, certainly, and I know more about people and life and virtue than I did before I put my thumb out for the first time in Mount Vernon, Washington. But as with college, this trip taught me that I know very little. The world and its people are complex. Faith is complicated. Virtue is anything but simple.

I find this exhilarating, and also reassuring. Questioning is eternal, and answers are mutable—offering endless, fascinating discovery. And no one has a corner on understanding. You can figure out some people in a way that no one else can, just as certain people can figure out you better than anyone else. There is no static rulebook to personhood.

Question by question, person by person, I will continue to search for little answers. I won’t extrapolate those answers to explain every context, and I won’t expect to become a master of understanding. But with every bit I do learn, I will grow, and in the process, I will connect with a stranger, or learn more about a friend, or better love a relative. And in the process, I’ll find some damn good stories.

I knew I wouldn’t make it to my friend’s wedding. I had hoped to be in Oregon by now, but Thursday night found me in northern California, still fifty miles from the border—and five hundred and forty miles from Wenatchee, my end point. Nine and a half hours of drive time remained.

The optimistic part of me compared that to the whole day and a half left until the six-o’clock wedding on Saturday. But the rest of me knew better.

Viable hitchhiking time is not the same as viable driving time. Night hours are out. Early morning and late evening are long shots, too, since few drivers take to the roads then, and most that do avoid anyone hitchhiking at such a strange hour.

And I couldn’t expect to find ride after ride that would take me all the way to the wedding in one brisk procession. Hour-long waits would bloat my pace, and I knew I’d stumble into Wenatchee just in time to find an empty church and a long-completed ceremony.

I ate my sandwich inside my tent. Mosquitoes whined and perched on the mesh like vultures. Tomorrow, I would start hitchhiking at first light—even before sunrise—and I’d keep it up until total darkness. Then first light again, until Wenatchee or the six-o’clock cut-off. I don’t pray often, but I did that night.

*

Only half a dozen cars passed in the first half hour. Not because the road was never traveled, but because it was too damn early. I knew it, and I knew I didn’t have a way around it. Even if I gave up and bought a bus ticket—an idea that grew on me with each passing car—I’d still have to make it to a major city first. The only way to leave this highway junction in Remote, Northern California was by private vehicle. I smiled at an approaching minivan and knew my smile looked fake.

But the minivan pulled over.

A man a few years older than me rolled down the passenger window and waved me over. He was alone in the van, but the seats were filled with boxes, bins, and backpacks. He was moving.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m going north.” Even to myself, I sounded hopeless.

He paused. “How far north?”

“All the way to Wenatchee, Washington.”

“No shit.” A smile, wry and a little suspicious, started and kept growing. “That’s where I’m going. You can keep me awake.”

Half the vehicles that passed me were semi trucks or white work vehicles with emblems on their sides, driving thirty miles between mining facilities and ruled by their company’s no-rider policy. In no other area have I found such an even ratio of commercial to personal traffic. As for those few personal drivers, at least those from Nevada—they don’t like hitchhikers.

Bafflingly, Nevada, the state of legalized prostitution and rampant casinos, the state of radical libertarians and military-grade personal arsenals, outlaws hitchhiking. Nevada’s residents evidently support this law, based on their glares and “don’t expect me to trust you” shrugs. It was worse than when I thumbed without a sign.

One water bottle remained, and I knew I was already dehydrated. I had a can of tomato soup and two cups of ramen, but my larger problem was time. Time and distance. My friend would get married in three days in Wenatchee, Washington, nine hundred and fifty miles away. And three hundred of those miles stagnated in Nevada.

Eureka’s gas station gives out “I survived Highway 50” certificates. It should give a medal to anyone who thumbs it, but I’m afraid the locals would stone any hitchhiker who tried to claim the prize.

After five miserable hours, two Californians saw me: Steve, a middle-aged owner of an aviation software company, and Bill, his retired father.
Steve glimpsed the “Traveling” part of my sign and flew past. “No one’s going to pick that kid up out here,” he said to his father.

“We’d need to make some space.”

Camping gear filled their rented minivan, and the back seats were collapsed to leave enough room for sleeping. They drove a quarter mile more, and then Steve pulled over. The two of them rearranged food, clothes, and sleeping bags and made a U-turn.

“We cleared a seat for you,” Bill told me, after they pulled onto the shoulder. “Sorry about the mess.”

“After this wait, a mess doesn’t bother me at all.”

*

“The only parts we planned ahead of time were the train and the flight festival,” Steve said, describing their trip of the past three weeks. “We’re big aviation buffs, and we thought we might as well extend it into a full vacation. This is the first vacation I’ve been able to take in five years.”

The two rode a train from the Bay Area to Chicago, where they rented a van and headed to AirVenture Oshkosh, “The World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration.” After that, they improvised each day. A visit to Yellowstone, then the Tetons. Many small detours to local airports. They had spent the day before at Bonneville, watching homebuilt cars race in Utah’s salt flats. Salt still littered the floor and hung in clumps behind the wheels like snow.

All along the way, they stuck to three rules:

1. No interstates
2. No chain restaurants
3. No chain motels

Sometimes the rules put them into diners that were long on history and short on flavor, and in motels that were barely better than sleeping in the back of the van. But even the bad experiences, they said, added to the trip.
“It looks like the next excitement is the junction with 361,” Bill said, pointing to a road atlas.

He commented on significant landmarks as we went, which along Highway 50, include any and all junctions. He pointed out a handful of mining towns, a few brothels, and not much else. Steve spent more time remarking on the road’s straightness than he did describing the nonexistent sights.

Even the freeways avoid Nevada. I-15 dodges most of it, and I-70—which begins all the way on the East Coast—stops in Utah, as if some planner thought the country should end before Nevada begins. I had to agree with him.
But I will admit, Nevada has a certain barren beauty. Ridges of mountains run north to south, divided by swaths of wind-blasted sagebrush. Between ridges, the roads really do run straight, so much so as to make a Roman roadbuilder envious. The sheer emptiness was awe-inspiring.

“We going to stop in Fallon tonight,” Steve said, “and then head to the Bay Area tomorrow.”

“If you could let me off at the far edge of town, that would be great,” I said. “If I can’t catch another ride before dark, then I can just pitch my tent off the road.”

Steve glanced at his father. “We’re going to buy you dinner and put you up in a motel for the night.”

I’m used to people inviting me to dinner. I’m used to staying on a stranger’s couch or sleeping in an RV. But a motel offer was unprecedented.

“I’ll be fine in my tent—you don’t need to—”

“No, I want to. Just as long as you don’t mind a crappy, non-chain motel. Fallon isn’t exactly a tourist destination.”

*

We ate at Jerry’s Restaurant, and the food was one of those bad experiences that added to the trip.

“I’ll tell you why I’m buying you dinner and a motel room,” Steve said between bites. His roast beef looked more like a cow pie than a piece of meat. “I traveled a lot in my twenties, and I met a lot of good, generous people. I went to Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand—all over. But what really inspired me happened in New Zealand. Well, I guess it started in Hawaii.” He took another bite, grimaced, and thought of where to start.

“When I was in Hawaii, I ended up meeting this guy who was a housesitter, but he wanted to take off and keep traveling, so he offered to pay me to finish his job. I didn’t have a place to live, so I took him up on it and moved in. A while into it, the owners called.

“‘Who are you?’ they asked.

“When I explained how I was the housesitter’s housesitter, they were fine with it. They said they’d be home in three weeks, but I could keep staying there when they came back. I ended up doing that. I stayed in their home—with them there, too—for three more weeks, and at the end of it, they invited me to this big wedding party. That’s where I met this New Zealander who said I should come to his country and travel around there.

“I ended up doing it, and that guy—who I had just met randomly at a party—let me stay at his house with his family for the whole month I was in New Zealand. But it gets crazier. He let me use his car for two weeks to drive around the whole island and explore. That was his family’s only car. The guy was walking to work in the rain while I was off sightseeing.

“That’s why I don’t mind helping you out. I couldn’t reciprocate with him, because he got caught with marijuana and can’t come to the US, so now I’m paying it forward. There’s a good community of travelers out there, and I’m just putting my share back into the general fund.”

I nodded. “It’s a damn good community.”

“Just pay back into it when you can,” Steve said. “You’ll get opportunities.”

I nodded my agreement.

“So what’s your plan from here?” he asked.

“Get out of Nevada.” I laughed. “I’ll hitch in to Reno, and take 395 north all the way to Washington.”

“Reno’s not the best place.” Steve grimaced. “We can take you in to Carson City tomorrow. It’s smaller, and you can still get a ride on 395 from there. And we’ll buy you breakfast, too.”

“Deal.”

Back in my motel room that night, I showered, washed a change of clothes in the sink, and enjoyed air conditioning—all welcome luxuries in Nevada. What had began as one of my worst days—stuck on America’s loneliest and least friendly highway—ended up as one of my best. And I couldn’t help but appreciate that it had been Californians, not Nevadans, who had finally picked me up.