Two of my first three rides were with women and when Jeanette King dropped me by the desolate, dusty roadside of Rte 60 in western Arizona her optimistic words rung tantalizingly in my ears, "There are tons of beautiful women in Volvos out there just waiting to pick you up."
It was six weeks and 2000 miles before another one did.
OK, not exactly. Lita Byersly gave me a ride from Mexican Hat, AZ to Moab, UT but she actually drove by me first in Kayenta, AZ on the Navajo Reservation and stopped only after I then passed her in the back of a speeding pick up truck through beautiful Monument Valley. I guess she couldn't bring herself to drive by me again especially after I'd smiled and waved to her as we barreled past with a Navajo grandmother at the wheel.
Still its not every day that I have a chance to lobby a woman twice and by the time I reached Columbus, WI I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that solo women weren't going to stop. I don't blame you ladies. I know many of you wanted to. I could tell by the countless sympathetic smiles, helpless shrugs, and whispered apologies.
I became so accustomed to women passing me by and the little split-second ritual waves and commiserations that when Sonja Hughes actually pulled over I didn't quite know how to react. When I jogged up to her car I think I said, "Can I help you?" But she didn't seem nearly as surprised by the whole thing as I was... partly because I was holding up a sign with her hometown written on it and partly because she'd already passed one hitcher that day without stopping and couldn't bring herself to pass another. Sonja's also a nurse who's accustomed to helping others and I was the lucky recipient of her compassionate discretion.
What began as a simple 35 mile ride in a straight line from Columbus to Hartford ended as a bad blonde joke..."How long does it take two blondes to drive 35 miles in a straight line?" Let me just put it this way...the "straight line" ended up looking more like an outline of the state of Texas or Florida (see below) and the "35 mins" became 2 hours.
In our defense it all started with a downed bridge - a result of the catastrophic flooding in the Midwest earlier this year. Having not been to Wisconsin before I now understand how crippling these floods can be. Its not just a matter of waiting for the water to recede and getting to work repairing the businesses, homes and roads. Before you can even get to work you've got to begin reassembling the jigsaw puzzle of broken bridges over the rivers and lakes that are so plentiful here the land seems more like an archipelago of islands than the heart of a continent.
In the end, with the help of the GPS on my BlackBerry, Sonja and I eventually made it to Hartford and she kindly invited me to join her for dinner that night at her parents' house. I'm hoping this is because she was as sad I was to part company after our goofy two hour adventure together, but I'm guessing it's because her dad wanted to meet, "that hitchhiker" she picked up on her way home from Madison.
The direct route between Columbus and Hartford
The "blonde" route
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