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Once when driving down desolate Baja to Cabo came upon an old man walking along side the road where there was NO visible signs of any homes. He was not hitch hiking but being a desolate area stopped and offered him a ride of which he excepted. My Spanish at that time was non existent except for a few words but I did go a short distance when he asked me to stop and pointed to the left distance where I saw NO dwellings....this was his destination.
Most of the time when I'm alone, I try to pick up hitchhikers. Never thought about safety issues, most of the time I see them in rural areas. Got high schoolers, men in their 30s, a couple Czech backpackers and an old guy once. Never picked up a woman, they don't seem to do it as much as men. The only bad experience I had was with a man who was looking ok from a distance but was a kind of a hobo. He stunk up the car. Fortunately, it was only for half a dozen kilometers. Most of the time when I don't stop, I'm either eating something or find it dangerous to stop where the hitchhiker stands. I've seen people begging for a ride at freeway entrances like this one: https://maps.google.fr/maps?q=paris&...29.02,,0,10.71
No way I'm stopping on the shoulder whith all the traffic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattywo85
I have never picked up a hitchhiker, but I have tried to hitchhike myself a few times. I remember one time a creepy looking guy in a red truck stopped with a big smile and told me to come in. Thank God I didn't!
I've n
Y seen one hitchhiker in my life. He had a guitar in a case and was balancing it and using it as a seat (kind of cool). Maybe its the area (Philadelphia) but there are no hitch hikers around here.
The closest thing to a hitcher I had seen was a guy who stopped and begged my high school boyfriend and I for some money. We were sitting out front of my house, talking, when he pulled up. He gave a sob story about losing his job, and how his car was on E and he needed to get back to West Chester which is about 15 miles away. He wouldn't leave us alone so we finally gave him $10 and figured that was the end of it. Fast forward a week. We stopped at Wawa (a convenience store from heaven) and my bf had run into the store to grab something. Lo and behold the same guy comes up to the car begging for money AGAIN! He didn't even remember me. Same sob story about how he lost his job and was stranded on E and needed gas money to get to West Chester. I said "funny, that's EXACTLY what you said last week!" And he stumbled, mumbled, and ran off. WTF?
I will stop and ask someone if they need a ride if they are elderly, walking with a limp or other disability or carrying lots of heavy grocery bags. The only time I actually stopped for a hitchhiker was for a woman I thought I recognized. When she got in the car, I realized I didn't know her and got a very bad vibe coming from her. When she looked at me, her eyes were really weird and it appeared she was on something. I was glad her drop off came up quickly. Never again.
That being said, I hitchhiked quite a bit in my teens and have come across some very nice people who gave me a ride. Times have changed and there's no way I would do that again.
I was stopped at a cross walk and a woman looked in and ask me for a ride. She looks decent and not weird or strange. I asked her where she wants to go, she said across town about 2 mi away to where the city's trains are. So I agreed, after a few minutes she started talking about relationship issue.
She asked me whether or not it's normal for a woman to pay for dinner on the 1st date. Strange question. I replied that "it depends.."
When I got into town she told me to stop over there and drop her off at the bar there. There was a man standing there waiting and once pulled over, she got out. The man quickly walked over and had a intense look on his face and then looked inside. Luckily nothing happened, since she sat in my back seat and not in the front so he didn't suspect anything.
I've hitchhiked thousands of miles, and carried hitchhikers thousands more and taken some home and put them to bed. Never a regrettable experience.
It is safer to pick up a hitchhiker, than to be one.
A car rental agent once asked me to pick up a van at an airport for him and return it to a city 200 miles away, and I picked up eleven hitchhikers along they way, then drove around town dropping them all off where they wanted to go. It was a cargo van, with no seats, I had them stacked like cordwood in the back.
I have one interesting story. I picked up a guy coming from New Hampshire, and he told me that along the way, he met two other hitchers who told him they were stealing stuff from cars they got lifts in. In Topeka, we passed two hitchers on the side of the road, and my guy says "Those are the same dudes!", and there was an abandoned car on the side of the road right where they were hitching. We got off at the next exit and called the police.
It gets very lonely out there on the road, especially at night, but on the other hand, you meet some memorably great people.
I did once. It was really cold outside in January. Pretty nice country type guy needed to get about 5 miles away. I was glad to help him out. Instead of having to walk five miles in the cold, he got a heated seat and got there about 2 hours faster. And it was kind of on my way home anyway. My car has a GPS and I knew the area pretty well. Plus it's a low crime area. It felt a bit weird at first, especially with me being just 21 years old, but was worth it.
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