The Adventures of Ben Taylor Part 2

My First Hitchhiking Experience

My very first hitchhiking trip out to Reno I got (reluctantly) dropped off by Danny Leifson at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. I was picked up quickly and made it all the way to I-80 in SLC where I was dropped off on the freeway and began walking toward the airport (still on the freeway). The sun was going down and I needed to be picked up to have any chance of making it to Reno by morning. After an hour of walking I was getting pretty desperate when a beat-up truck stopped way down the freeway. I wasn't sure if they were even stopped for me but I ran anyway incase they were. When I approached the car I noticed 2 grungy guys in their mid 30's in the 3 seater cab. They had two old rusted lawnmowers in the back and a weedwacker. I asked them for a ride and one mumbled yeah. I got in and told them I was headed as far west as they were going, assuming they weren't headed as far as Reno. They were headed to Tooele which was only 20-30 minutes from where I was. When they pulled over for gas in Tooele they asked where I was headed and I told them Reno. They said they'd take me to Wendover, another hour away. I was unsure why they would do this, but was grateful they were driving me farther. The guy riding was already totally stoned and kept introducing himself to me every 5 minutes and asking who I was. After 40 minutes of silent driving in the desert the driver began pulling over on a military offramp. There were no services at this exit and I was getting nervous trying to figure out what these guys were doing now, I asked why there were pulling over and the driver which seemed to be the only semi-sane one said "We're going to anal probe you". With a tight grip on my knife in my pocket, we all got out of the truck and I waited while the driver got something out of the back of the truck, I was worried it might be a gun or something but it was some ganja-banja. They both smoked some marijuana while I watched, the stars were amazing out in the middle of the desert, and then we got back in the truck and drove to Wendover. When we were getting close they both started asking if they could "crash at my place" and that they would sleep on the floor and that they wouldn't even eat out of the fridge. I had to keep reminding them that I was hitch hiking and that they were giving me a ride and the place I was staying was in Reno. We stopped in Wendover and I watched one of the guys loose some money playing 21 at the casino. Then I walked to the on-ramp for my next ride around midnight. I had no idea how I would hitch hike at night since there just was not enough traffic coming on the Wendover onramp. So I had the idea of standing on the side of the freeway and flashing my light at on coming vehicles that seemed to come at a rate of 1 car/minute. I was not having any luck for an hour or two, but was determined to keep trying since I wanted to see Shera so badly. Finally a guy in a truck slowed down to 5mPH, checked me out, and then pulled over. He was an older man with a dog, the conversation was not very good since he was hard of hearing, so I just road in the car. He drove to Winnemucca and we slept in the bed of his truck when it got too late. The next morning he gave me a ride to Fernley as soon as the sun started to come up over the desert. On the Fernley on-ramp I was able to get a quick ride into down town Reno with the morning commute. This guy was overly excited to have a hitchhiker in the car (thought I was some hippee of somethin). Told me that root canals disrupted the flow of your chi which I thought was dumb but validated his idea by agreeing. He dropped me off at Wendy's in Sparks where Shera picked me up on her way to work. I slept in the car while she worked her 4 hour shift. We hadn't seen each other for nearly 5 months so I was just really excited to finally be there with her.