Hitch-hiking

I never told you about hitch-hiking back from Barcelona, did I?  Well, now that I got my hands on a few of Katie's pictures, I will.

It wasn't my first time to stick my thumb out.  My debut was this summer in Alaska: a group of us, after walking to town, piled into someone's truck bed to save us the 6 miles back to camp...  But the real hitch-hiking experience was at the end of the summer, the final seal on the two most adventurous months of my life... Reid and I had four days before our planes left Alaska, so we stood with our backpacks by the highway (one of the most scenic routes in the world) to see where we'd end up.  In those four days we hiked, camped, slept near a glacier, got picked up by a dog-musher (not in her sled with the dogs--that would've been really cool-- it was just her occupation) and made it to Seward, a seaport town and the destination we were shootin' for.

Hitch-hiking from Barcelona was different: with Reid, it had been carefree-- not for a minute did I worry about my safety-- but this time, being two lone girls, caution (and a tinge of fear?) was thrown into the mix. And while Alaska in the summer is a hitch-hiker's paradise, it's not as common in Catalonia and southern France.  You have to be more strategic because any old road isn't going to hack it.

We tried hitching straight out of the center of Barcelona, but saw pretty quickly that it was futile.  I was embarrassed with all the Spaniards driving to work and gawking at us.  We weren't well-placed, so we switched to Plan B and took a train to the outskirts of the city.  From the train station, we had to get to a gas station on a near-by highway.  This mini trek included traversing the tracks, crawling under fences, and hiking through weeds...

At the gas station, a couple of construction workers laughed at our attempts from afar, making me smug when our first ride pulled over 10 minutes later:  an 18-wheeler driven by a Polish man.  It was our first time inside a semi-- pretty cool being up that high.  I didn't mind at all that we were in the slow lane, as long as we were moving! Homeward bound!  The Pollock knew no English or French so conversation was limited; we smiled and nodded a lot, until he came up with the words "telephone numero?" to which we said no.  He dropped us at a big junction just south of the border.

At the junction, we used the bathroom and were making ourselves some sandwiches when a trucker walked by, saw our "France" sign on the ground, and offered us a ride.  It was like negative waiting time!  He was a 30-year-old half-Portuguese/half-Italian guy, very talkative, dancing to music, giving us soda.  I'm surprised he didn't ask for our numbers.  But, he let us off with a smile in Narbonne, France.

We were making good time, flying high off our success, singing while we waited for one more ride.

This time it wasn't a semi.  It was a French businessman in a nice car-- man, how that thing flew after being in the slower trucks!  He said he picked up hitch-hikers whenever he could because he had hitch-hiked around Europe as a college student.  Katie, whose French is better than mine, sat up front, allowing me to sit taciturnly in the back, worn out.

We made it, quite successfully, in fact.  Maybe it quenched our need for adventure for a little while.




For kicks, here I am in Barcelona eating octopus: