Getting Out

Living in one place does offer certain conveniences I have come to enjoy. Example: I totally dig having a bed, regular income, and more than one set of clothes. But, I'm a vagabond at heart, and I recently realized that it has been several months since I have left the Vail Valley.

I'm going stir crazy and my roommate Tod is feeling the same way.

“Tod, should we hitch to Denver where we have plenty of friends to stay with?” I ask.

We look at each other.

“Nah, let's just go west,” he says.

In an act of desperate wanderlust, we head out the door, intending to go wherever the first car that stops is headed.

As I walk outside I realize I am a little chilly. I'm wearing my spring hiking jacket, and leggings, which  do match my frog hat and mittens...but don't really provide any real warmth. This is fine, I figure, since I am certain we will be offered a stay in some fabulous mansion by some stranger we meet before the night arrives.

The second car we hop into is a minivan, driven by a gregarious Asian lady named Jenni headed to Glenwood Springs.

Ten minutes into the ride and she's already offered me a job (teaching her and her daughter how to bake), and a place to stay for the night. These things happen when you hitch-hike.

“I give you the key,” she says, “And you sleep there tonight. I just check with my roommate. She's a teacher. Very nice.”

I have half a mind to refuse. This is just too easy. We can't find a place to stay already, we've only been on the road an hour.

Turns out it doesn't matter since she can't get a hold of her roommate anyway. Instead, she drops us by the Glenwood Springs hostel, “You can stay here. Only 12 dollars a night!”

Yeah right lady, I don't even have to look at Tod to know he's thinking, we don't pay for accommodations when we travel!

It takes us an entire hour to hitch out of Glenwood and during the wait I realize that I am legitimately cold. And the sun is still out. “I think maybe I should have worn more clothes,” I mention to Tod.

He just shakes his head.

A truck finally pulls over, and the driver is headed to Carbondale. After some conversation in the car, the man decides to drive us out to some hot springs south of the town. It's lovely...complete with naked hippies and everything.

We soak for a half hour and then decide to make it our goal to get to Silverton, where we have contacts. It's a little ambitious, but we've had such good luck catching lifts up to this point that we believe it's a possibility.

In the meantime, the sun starts hiding behind the mountain tops, and I start jumping up and down and running paces along the side of the road to keep warm.

Cars pass. They do not stop.

Ah...the emotional roller coaster that is hitch-hiking.

Fortunately, someone always stops. Eventually.

Unfortunately, sometimes they do not stop fast enough for you to get where you want to go before night fall, when hitching is basically impossible.

This is how we end up in Montrose, about an hour short of Silverton.

“I once CouchSurfed here with an older couple that used to hitch hike. Let's go to their house and see if they are home,” Tod suggests.

Good plan.

We walk, basically forever, across the entire town, which stretches a length of some miles.

As the outside temperature falls, we consider our options if the couple is not home. They are:

1.                  Get drunk at the local brewery and have a competition to see who can get invited home first (Fact: I would have won, hands down)

2.                  Visit a local liquor store and walk around town for a few hours with a solid buzz, and then eat it off by eating pancakes and drinking bottomless coffee at Denny's

3.                  Visit a local liquor store and then break into an ancient popcorn wagon parked in an alley off the main drag and spend the night huddled on the floor

I pray the couple is home.

Finally, we reach the house. Not a single soul in sight.

At this point, I imagine the conversation I am going to have with my co-workers when I get back, “So, let me get this straight: you took your weekend off and decided to hitch hike, an activity that involves the possibility of rape and death, in order to get to a humdrum town in the middle of no where, to spend the night nearly freezing to death, just to turn around the next day, again with the possibility of rapage and death, and head back to Vail where you have food, shelter and skiing and hiking out your back door?”

Um, yes.

But...I have this new high-tech device called a smart phone!

 Which means we have one more option: to send out some last minute CouchSurfing requests to every single person that lives in Montrose. We drop into the Target, and as soon as my fingers start working again, Tod and I take turns sending out messages.

We haven't even left the parking lot when my phone rings.

“Hi!” the voice says, “You just sent me a couch request. Do you need me to pick you up?”

“Yes! Yes!” I say, and tell the voice where we are.

“Whohoo!” I holler when I hang up.

“Who was it?” Tod asks.

“I don't know!” I say, “But they have a blue truck!”

Thank god for CouchSurfing.

Our CS saviors are Lindee and Jeff, who make a delicious cup of tea and offer us a marvelously warm bed. The next day we have breakfast with Lindee and then she drops us off at the edge of town.

We hitch straight back to Vail.

When we make it back, I jump in the shower. Hot water has rarely felt so good.

Ok Ok...so it wasn't our most successful trip ever...and you're probably thinking this hitch-hiking thing is a waste of time, but that's the thing: 

“It's a dangerous thing, stepping out your door...You step into a road and if you don't keep your feet there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

                                                                                                                                             -Bilbo Baggins

Sometimes, you just have to play the Odds.