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Ran away with my gf from a boarding school back in '95 -- we stole two bicycles and ended up bicycling about 60 miles over the Louisiana/Texas border over the course of a few days. We stuck out like sore thumbs in Texas, and we got picked up by Texas state police. I -strongly- advise anyone thinking of doing this DO NOT DO THIS.
Our gym teacher when we got back looked at us in disbelief, "I can't even get you guys to throw a ball around, and here you two up and bike 60 miles...!"
Once when I was 15.
Used to hang out at a popular park near downtown Houston Texas.
We were a group of 5 girls, and the driver decided to venture to another part of Memorial park. no cell phones back then...
2 of us hitched a ride with a car of guys in their 2O's.
They had something else in mind. Needless to say one of us pulled a knife on the driver to stop..Didn't threaten to stab him but did threaten to rip up his upholstery in the backseat if he didn't stop and let us out.
It worked and I never did that again.
I hitch hiked from Bozeman to Glacier National Park but never jumped a train. I knew a lot of wannabe hobos back in the day though. That seemed to be a weird subculture thing for younger people in the 1990s.
My sister and I hitchhiked in rural France once in the 90s, because we wanted to watch the Tour de France. We spoke almost no French, and most the people who picked us up spoke almost no English. One guy was a little creepy, the same guy stopped for coffee while driving us, and we had to wait about 15 minutes while he drank it. To be honest, given that he was creepy, I don't know why we stayed through the coffee.
Anyway, we were in our early 20s at this point. I'd never hitchhiked in the US, but it worked great for us.
I think the French were pleased we wanted to see the race.
I've never hitchhiked again. As a single woman, I'd never feel safe picking someone up. I'm sure 99 times out of 100 it's fine, but that 1 out of 100. eek.
I think hitchhiking is better tolerated overseas than Stateside. Speaking of creepy guys though.... Back in the 1970's during the CB Radio craze, is wasn't uncommon for very young teenage girls to hook up with Semi-truck drivers for coffee.
I remember listening to one of those conversations actually take place. This 14-year-old girl was Breakin' for Truckers along I-494 through the city of Bloomington, MN. She went by the Handle (name) of Lemon Drop. I can't remember the trucker's Handle, but he started asking if she'd like to meet for coffee, and she did! She even had her mother's permission to do this.
I asked her later over the CB Radio, if she was scared to meet truck drivers over the radio, and she said she loved trucker's and said they were all a great bunch of guys.
Similar to the above: Once while thumbing around the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, I was picked up by a man who was soon on the turnpike driving at close to 100 MPH. Having buckled my seat belt the moment I sat down in the car, I could only hope nothing would happen. While flying along the guy kept clumsily sniffing a "white powdery substance" (wasn't necessarily cocaine, although since this was in the mid-80's it's likely.) At a graveled patch across the grassy median of the highway he suddenly decided to reverse course, and we were barreling off in the opposite direction. His sexual propositioning started around this time. Luckily this was all taking place on the turnpike - toll booths for which everyone has to stop eventually appeared. My driver/abductor rolled down his window, blurted out some excuse for not having a toll ticket with him (because of the U-turn), and for some reason was asked his name and address by the attendant. While he provided his driver's license and the info, I climbed out of the car. In those days a Howard Johnson's restaurant was reliably at nearly every interchange in New England, and one was at this one. Due to wanting to make a clean getaway I decided against going inside and speed-walked around back instead. As luck would have it, the property was fenced. So he was able to trail me and "innocently" yell out, "What's the problem?" I claimed a need to pee and said I could hold it for a while (the last thing I wanted to do was have this character follow me into the HoJo's men's room.)
Back onto the turnpike we went, headed in our original direction again. Into his nose went more powder, out of his mouth came more propositions. Then he started cursing that the car's tank was running low and he'd have to get back off the road for gas. I knew I'd have to make a clean break for it that time. When he rolled up to the pumps at a service station he was OK with my saying I had to "excuse myself." The place had rest rooms accessed from outside the building, but I waited 'til his attention was on fueling the vehicle and raced into the station's convenience store instead. Ducking down an aisle away from the doors, I motioned the clerk over and told him what was going on. He was cool with letting me stay hidden until the guy drove away. As coked up as my driver/abductor was, it didn't occur to him to check inside the store for me. (WHEW!!!) The clerk, from behind the counter, and I crouched in the aisle, watched him swiveling his head around outside before visibly shrugging and driving away.
Not a month after that, a man by the same name as that given by my driver/abductor made the local papers as the victim in a fatal car accident.
The above sounds like a lecture against hitchhiking, which is most unfortunate. For as a rule, that was a fun and convenient AND safe way to get from place to place back in the day. I lived in Massachusetts' Pioneer Valley (north of Springfield, east of the Berkshires) for two years, during which in the center of Amherst there was a "merging lane" from the main north-south street through town to the one running east-west. On the other side of the sidewalk there, a large shade tree stood. Everybody called that corner of that intersection the "hitching corner." Along the road between Amherst and Northampton, students and other mostly young adults looking to travel by thumb were an everyday sight. Since the '90s one never sees this any more. And the hitching corner has been obliterated by street widening and tree removal.
As a child of the '60s and '70s growing up in southwest Ohio, I glimpsed hitchers along the main drag through my native suburb all the time, to say nothing of along I-75 (the main route between Michigan and Florida.) Along the expressway, the thumb travelers would hold up handmade signs announcing their destinations and which sometimes carried clever messages. ("The Beach or Bust!") While I attended a college in eastern Indiana, I scored many a free ride locally and also went on a couple of adventures to more distant destinations - Fort Wayne, and a concert on the other side of Dayton. Nice and interesting people provided lifts. And the younger drivers freely shared smoking materials. Only once did something remotely shady occur. That was when a factory worker in his 20's on the way home from a shift abruptly turned off the road and started down a bumpy lane into the woods. Ready to bolt, I kept my voice calm and asked him where we were going. "I gotta take a p!$$!" LOL The guy just needed to find a tree, and quick.
On three occasions while thumbing in Massachusetts, I even had "six degrees of separation" moments where my ride providers and I both knew someone through having met them outside the state. This gets to the heart of what we've lost with the demise of hitchhiking. Random acts of kindness (I also gave many a lift when I was the one behind the wheel) were repaid by friendly conversation that would often lead to interesting stories and sometimes uncanny coincidences. Plus, not infrequently, there arose the opportunity for some quick partying. Now casual chats with strangers happen online and usually sight unseen - though of course there are still numerous ways of meeting others in "real time." The highways and byways of America are lonelier for hitchers' having vanished, even if you're the type to just keep going, and it's another symptom of a divided and untrusting society.
I think it was 9-11 that did Hitching and Freight-Hopping in. Now if you stand along the roadside with your thumb out, it's the cops that pick you up for questioning. "Are you a Terrorist?" Hitching is still going on, but it's mostly outside of large cities.
Riding the rails is a lot harder too since rail cars have mostly been redesigned with no places to ride them, and Yards have installed infrared sensors to find people hiding inside boxcars.
I hitchhike pretty often, but I have never hopped a freight train. Hitchhiking has always been pretty fun and rewarding. You meet the whole spectrum of people.
There is a technique involved with hopping trains. It can be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Another thing that killed train-hopping was the development of a Hobo Gang that went around killing the independent riders. I think the gang is gone now, but you heard a lot about them throughout the 1990's.
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Having buckled my seat belt the moment I sat down in the car, I could only hope nothing would happen. While flying along the guy kept clumsily sniffing a "white powdery substance" (wasn't necessarily cocaine, although since this was in the mid-80's it's likely.) At a graveled patch across the grassy median of the highway he suddenly decided to reverse course, and we were barreling off in the opposite direction. His sexual propositioning started around this time. 
Luckily this was all taking place on the turnpike - toll booths for which everyone has to stop eventually appeared. My driver/abductor rolled down his window, blurted out some excuse for not having a toll ticket with him (because of the U-turn), and for some reason was asked his name and address by the attendant. While he provided his driver's license and the info, I climbed out of the car. In those days a Howard Johnson's restaurant was reliably at nearly every interchange in New England, and one was at this one. Due to wanting to make a clean getaway I decided against going inside and speed-walked around back instead. As luck would have it, the property was fenced. 
So he was able to trail me and "innocently" yell out, "What's the problem?" I claimed a need to pee and said I could hold it for a while (the last thing I wanted to do was have this character follow me into the HoJo's men's room.)
Only once did something remotely shady occur. That was when a factory worker in his 20's on the way home from a shift abruptly turned off the road and started down a bumpy lane into the woods. Ready to bolt, I kept my voice calm and asked him where we were going. "I gotta take a p!$$!" LOL The guy just needed to find a tree, and quick.
