hitchhiking the coast highway

The open road is a hitchhiker's best friend. A two-lane highway in a remote place is the best kind of road. You're going north or you're going south, that's all there is to it. Stop in at a town for a bite to eat, then stick out your thumb and get back on the road. Urban sprawl, on the other hand, is a trap for us, a slog through a hostile jungle. In cities the going is slow. Everyone going every which-way, thru-traffic is hard to find, and the good hitching spots are few. On the country road, just walk to the edge of town and now everyone is going your direction and happy to give you a ride.

As an infrequent hitchhiker, this trip started with that slightly sick, anxious feeling in the bottom of my stomach one feels when one gets close to the moment of truth in some questionable enterprise. I took the city bus to the outskirts of Santa Cruz. When the bus route crossed the highway, I knew it was time, time to put plans into action. The queasy feeling comes from knowning that a road that looks simple on a map is really a complex thing, with onramps and offramps and bubbles of urban sprawl. What if no one stops? What if I don't get to a good stopping place by sundown? What if the road turns into an unwelcoming high-speed, six-lane freeway? I pulled the cord and stepped out into an unknown place, on my own now. With that slightly queasy feeling I marched over the road and down onto the onramp, right by that pedestrians prohibited sign, set my bag down, put on a grin and stuck out my thumb.

And that queasy feeling instantly disappears when the feeling of the open road comes flooding in, when the third car to pass stops and offers a ride. Now you know it's all going to work out, that hitchhiking still works, the river is still flowing, the train is still moving, America is still yours to discover, and you can travel it with just a small knapsack and no fixed itinerary. You've injected yourself into the bloodstream of society, you're coursing along, mixing and mingling with the machinery of society. Along one of the most beautiful roads in California, too: Steinbeck Country, Monterey, Big Sur, Morro Bay.

Ten rides, Santa Cruz to San Luis Obispo

0. 09:19 am, Santa Cruz city bus #71, Santa Cruz towards Watsonville, $1.50. All of the crazy people I met on my trip were aboard this bus.

1. "Sorry I'm only going a couple miles, but you're welcome to a ride!"
   "A mile's a mile, thanks for picking me up!"
   After I got him started story-telling, he seemed genuinely disappointed he wasn't going further.
   "Too bad our ride's so short, there's so many stories we could share!"
   To Larkin Valley exit.

2. Waiting at an onramp, the first vehicle to pass picked me up, a small farm delivery truck taking oranges to market. Got to try out my tiny bit of spanish. Agricultural workers are a reliable source of rides, and riding in trucks is fun. Waiting at onramps, especially in the country, is very effective.

3. A pretty 35 year-old woman with an infant in the back seat picked me up from an on-ramp at the edge of Monterery and took me to the other side of town in a fancy new Honda.

Waiting for rides is really a visceral experience of a Poisson process; doesn't matter how long you've been waiting, the next ride could be yours. Standing along side the highway, the wait can seem an eternity. But then you check the time and see that it's only been ten minutes.

4. "Hey, I figured you look like a clean-cut kid, I figured, Hey why not?"
   Middle-aged Hispanic woman on her way home from work in Santa Cruz.

5. In a raised, black F350 truck with a painting-company logo on the side: "Hey, what's in the bag? No guns or nothing? 'cause I got a gun and I'll shoot you. [pause, grin] Well, you look pretty clean-cut. We're going to Carmell." The same driver handed me a bottle of wine when he dropped me off at the general store in Big Sur.

Here, amongst redwoods and mountain streams, I wished I were traveling with a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a tent. Hike, camp, hitch a ride, repeat.

6. My favorite ride of the trip, a short one from the general store to a scenic veiw stop a couple miles down the road, with Hal in his 1968 Toyota landcruiser.

The ocean view is beautiful, but I'm nervously measuring the diminishing distance between the sun and the sea.

7. Dan picked me up from the turnout where I was stationed, overlooking the ocean but generally being ignored by the tourists driving the highway. "You know, I had a feeling there'd be a hitchhiker," he said.

   Feathers, fossils, and dried flowers lined the dashboard of his Honda CRV. At first I feared he might be of the annoying overly-spiritual sort, but our conversation turned out to be quite enjoyable. He's a conservationist for the American Land Trust, out on a field trip to investigate a few sites. We discussed astronomy and geology and out of the corner of his eye he somehow spotted a huge bobcat stalking its prey in a field along side the road. Dropped me off at the Hearst Castle road in San Simeon.

I'm passing and being passed by many long-distance bikers, making their way up and down the Pacific Coast Bike Route.

8. A nice guy in a pickup took me twenty miles down the road on his way home from work. It occurs to me that no-one has asked me why I am hitching, as if it's assumed to be a completely normal activity.

9. Immediately I was picked up by an enthusiastic Peruvian and his young wife and stuffed myself into the back of their tiny Honda alongside their cute infant daughter named Adrianna. Dropped me off on Santa Rosa street in San Luis Obispo. Dinner, a hostel, a train station.

180 miles in about 7.5 hours, an average speed of 24 miles/hour. Probably with a sign I could have held out for a long distance ride and made the trip at full highway speed, but meeting so many people and traveling leisurely along the coast highway was kind of the point. Eating waffles at a cafe in San Luis Obispo, the slow travel, stopping at dusk to check into a hostel, seemed delightfully and refreshingly antiquarian in an age of red-eye flights, late-night arrivals, and rushed connections.

Beats taking the all-night greyhound, anyway.

Hal

My favorite ride on this trip was with Hal, a sprightly and kind gentleman driving this fine old contraption. I was thumbing just outside the Big Sur general store. Pulling out of a parking spot, he waved me over, and I climbed up into this interesting vehicle of his, which he eagerly explained to be a 1968 Toyota Landcruiser. He told me that he grew up in Big Sur and had lived most of his life there. When I asked him whether he'd taken any off-roading trips in his Landcruiser he told me about the time he lived in Darwin, a tiny little town just outside of Death Valley, and the backcountry trips to the Saline Valley hot springs. The funny thing about his landcruiser is that, despite being more than 40 years old, it has only 70,000 miles! His son had found it abandoned in a barn somewhere.



Hal was one of those people I really felt I'd like to keep in touch with. He seemed like such a nice person to join for one of these back-country off-road treks through the desert, exploring hidden canyons and camping by oases. If I had a card handy I'd have given him one and hoped to hear something, but asking for anything more than a ride just seems presumptuous. Though I'd love to have a photo-album of all the interesting people who've given me a lift, I rarely even try to take their picture, for the same reason. But I did ask Hal if I could take this photo, and he readily agreed, even driving up on an embankment (teetering on an escarpment to the pacific ocean!) for a good shot. It was a short ride, only five miles down the road, but a joyous one.

Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train #774

[ dawn over san luis obispo vineyards, as seen from the train ]

I was delighted to find the Obispo Hostel in San Luis Obispo, a reasonably cheap ($26) and very clean place to sleep just a block away from the train station. I've been in SLO a few times before, visiting shamster and bobolly back when they went to school there. It's a pleasant college town, full of enterprising students, and with a walkable downtown full of independent businesses (not to mention curiosities such as the Bubblegum Alley). But I think this was the first time the town really clicked for me, though, enjoying slices of pizza and, then, hunkered down at Linnea's cafe, enjoying coffee and waffles while peals of laughter from one joyous group intertwined with piano music being played by another guest.

The town is a stop for Amtrak's Coast Starlight train that runs from Seattle to Los Angeles daily, and for the more frequent Pacific Surfliner trains that originate in SLO and run to San Diego. I woke up early and made the easy stroll from the hostel over to the train station, catching the 6:45am Surfliner bound for Orange County. I was happy to find such a functional little train station at the outskirts of such a functional little town.

The train made for a pleasant ride. The train itself doesn't go very fast, never really exceeding 40 MPH while gliding between small coastal communities, often traveling right at the edge of the ocean and other times moving through agricultural areas. There's an AC electrical outlet in each row, so I didn't have to worry about battery power while I typed up that livejournal entry about my hitchhiking trip (though of course I'd have to wait till later to post it).

I have to say that the cafe car, though, was a disappointment, selling only nonperishable trail mix and shrink-wrapped danishes and that sort of thing, the fare of cheap motel breakfast buffets and less appealing even than airplane food. Scowling at the other options, I settled on a simple coffee for my breakfast. Notably, though, they do sell Arrogant Bastard beer, a delicious San Diego microbrew—but not what I had in mind for breakfast. With nearly a whole train car at their disposal, and traveling through the most productive agricultural land in the country, don't you think they could muster something a little more ... Californian?

At Oxnard the train begins to head inland and the terrain turns into an interesting rocky landscape near Chatsworth, traveling through a sequence of tunnels and passing the northbound Coast Starlight on its way to Seattle. At Los Angeles Union Station the train pauses for 15 minutes before resuming the second half of its journey.

The train ran precisely on time, which surprised me. At Union Station an Irish man took the seat next to me and we chatted about our various travels; I felt quite legitimate with a casual mention of being in Belgium last week. He marveled about Amtrak's promptness and affordability--a judgment error due to small statistics, I assured him.

The ride to Irvine took 6 ¾ hours and cost $38. It's about 230 miles, giving the train an average speed of 34 miles per hour and a cost of 16 cents per mile. The cost seemed reasonable, the pace a little slow, but, altogether, being on vacation after all, it was a satisfying experience.

At Irvine I caught a local Orange County bus #86 right to my parent's house. I don't think I've ever before taken an OCTA bus, but it turned out to be super convenient.

I'd love for Amtrak to resume the Sunset Limited Service from New Orleans east to Jacksonville, Florida and on to Miami (which ceased with hurricane Katrina). I'd take that trip.