Hitchhiker's guide to Southeastern North Carolina

This is the sixth part of my 323-part series.

Song: Sweet Hitchhiker
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival 

I always feel bad for hitchhikers. Not bad enough to actually stop the car and pick one up, but bad in the 'I hope I never have to hitchhike and someone like me drives by and ignores me.' kind of way. Seeing them standing along the side of the road, hoping some stranger on his way back home to Iowa after having taken a reclusive writer to a baseball game and seeing a mysterious message flash on the scoreboard stops to pick you up in his van to take you to his baseball field carved out of a corn field seems like a less than ideal way to travel.

So in the interests of anyone reading this who has considered trying to hitchhike their way across the country, I've come up with a few helpful hints to make your hitchhiking experience a sweet one.

1. Be an attractive female - Face it, if a guy's driving down the road, he's not stopping for another dude. Sure, it's sexist, but that's just reality. And a woman isn't going to stop for a guy for fear he's a serial ax murderer who has the entire cast of Criminal Minds searching for him based on information like 'most serial ax murderers are male' and 'hitchhikers with bloody axes are more often than not murderers on the run from the law.' As with most things in life, being an attractive female has its advantages, and among the most advantageous, is being able to be picked up when hitchhiking.

Probably not hitchhiking.

2. Don't be too attractive  - Guys can't pick up any girl who looks better than their significant other. It's true. One hundred percent of the women I asked said their significant other wasn't allowed to pick up a hitchhiker who looked better then they did. (Ok, it was Yes Dear, and she won't let me pick up any hitchhikers regardless of their appearance, but were I allowed to, the fact remains that I wouldn't be able to pick up Adriana Lima should her tour bus break down on the way to a Victoria's Secret fashion show. I'd never let her hear the end of it, but I'd keep driving. (I'd also spend the next six months writing about my brush with fame.)

3. Don't be weird  - Weird is an intentionally ambiguous term as each driver has his or her own definition of weird. If you're going to spend the three hour trip from Southport to somewhere three hours from Southport talking about your cats, odds are you're weird. Filing your toenails would also be considered odd by the overwhelming majority of the hitchhiker picking up public.
That’s pretty much what I’ve got for you. Granted, the sum total of my hitchhiking experience can be summed up in the word ‘nonexistent.’ But just because I’ve never done it, never really thought about it before now and never picked up a hitchhiker doesn’t indicate I don’t know what I’m talking about. The fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about should indicate that fact instead.


On Deck: If I finish the book I'm reading, I may write a post on that. If not, I'll be going with U2's One Step Closer.