when last we left off i was setting off to hitch from the last truck stop in wyoming…
The sun continued to climb and i stood by the on ramp with my thumb out. I started off playing guitar and moved on to singing along with Billy Joel songs. The on ramp was next door to a group of cows who were a nice audience to my performance. E came by and stood up on the interstate but i stayed down at the beginning of the on ramp where it was quieter.
At around 11 a pickup stopped and i hopped in. The driver was a nice guy heading back home in Tennessee who goes by the name Ewok. That put me absolutely at ease since i could introduce myself with my trail name.
He’s a wilderness firefighter, so he spent the past few months in California battling the natural progression of forests. He even worked on the Redding fire that plagued my views and lungs for weeks.
I don’t remember how it came up but we started talking about moonshine after a while and boyo does Ewok know his stuff. Being a good boy from Tennessee he’s got that thick accent so you know he knew what he was talking about. Stuff like proper flavored moonshine etiquette, the silly laws involving the creation of moonshine, and how it was traditionally made. Turns out he also was featured in and narrated moonshine documentaries, Living Proof. He said his accent was a big part of him landing that narration gig and he’s not wrong.
We drove clear across Nebraska, he dropped me off in Lincoln as he turned south to Tennessee. I arrived just in time to hop on a bus to get to the east side of town. The sun was too low for me to try to hitch so i sat in a Wendy’s and had a lot of 50 cent frostys and waited for darkness to fall. I slept that night in a field underneath a large King Kong statue that loomed over a diner. I forgot to take a picture the next morning because my allergies decided to show up again and i stumbled into a gas station for some medicine.
An unfortunate part of hitchhiking is not knowing local geography. When i got picked up from Lincoln in a pickup the guy told me where his destination was, but since it was somewhere east i was okay with it. It was a short 5 minutes down the interstate. I was kind of okay with that because i wasn’t sure how long i could sustain conversation with him.
I was a very sleepy boy after he dropped me off so i took a nap under the interstate for a couple hours before returning to the on ramp to hitch. After about half an hour a sheriff pulled up and told me that i couldn’t stand there. He said that someone called in to them concerned about my well being but i saw a lot of law cars drive by so i don’t exactly believe that. He was very pleasant, so i asked him where i could stand. He pointed me to about 10 yards away on the road leading up to the on ramp. I made a sassy joke about how silly of a rule that is that made me move such a short distance and he laughed at that, said that i looked like i was doing just fine, and went on his way.
Rush hour traffic started coming by which dampened my spirits as nobody stopped. Eventually at almost 7 an old guy listening to modern pop and dance music pulled up and drove me the short distance to Omaha. He dropped me downtown where i took a bus across the border to Council Bluffs in Iowa, so close to my destination. I found a place next to some corn, surprisingly, and crashed for the night.
It was Thursday morning, one day before my friends would be arriving in Iowa City. Instead of trying to hitch the rest of the way i threw in the towel and bought a megabus ticket. I was concerned about only getting a hitch part way and being stuck in a place with no bus service. I settled on that plan too late and had to get a ticket for Friday midday. That gave me a full day to burn in Council Bluffs.
I started off by heading to a Goodwill. Council Bluffs had a nice paved path that led from where i slept right to it and also a Mcdonald’s, so my plan was made. My first stop at Goodwill was to get some warmer clothes, some more comfortable jeans, and some nicer wedding appropriate clothes. My new jeans are very blue, like cartoon character blue and i love them.
From there i went to Mcdonald’s to drink my body weight in pop again. I hung out there and watched some SGDQ until i got antsy and wanted to sing. I returned to that path, sat under a bridge, and sang for a couple hours until my voice got hoarse and told me i had to stop. By then i returned to the spot i slept the night before to rest for my big day the next day.
Before getting on that bus i bought a copy of OG Tetris for the OG game boy because i had been thinking about it for a while, and that kept me occupied for the bus ride to Iowa City. The bus got into the city at close to 5 and i got to the air bnb around 6. I dug in on the stoop and waited for my friends to show up that night, but that wouldn’t happen until almost 11pm.
All my efforts paid off in spades when i saw them hesitate as they drove up, confused about the dirty vagrant in front of their air bnb until they recognized it was me and we hugged and it was great.
The next day was the wedding and good times with a group of humans who i’ve known for a very long time. Also i got to meet the bride for the first time turns out she’s cool which isn’t really a surprise. The best man was my friend’s younger brother who recently went to Isle Royale which planted that idea in my mind. Unfortunately the boats have mostly stopped running, and will be all done running by next week so i can’t do that this year.
On Sunday we road tripped to Chicago, doing some good sing alongs which is another thing i miss about driving when i go a while without doing it. The highway with windows down and the good music on makes my soul feel good. Getting a cold doesn’t make my soul feel good which is what happened next.
My married friends in Chicago are huge into board games and boy am i not into learning new board games. So while they played Scythe i fought my nose cold and read about the cool world building they did for that board game. The next day i hopped a megabus back to Ann Arbor and now i’m back to being a barista, at least for a short time.
and here we are. i could write about the past few days, walking through what happened but a lot of it is either ‘i’m at work’ or ‘i played some cool video games.’ like i said last post i’m definitely writing bout them next, i’ve wanted to say things about them for a while, since some dramatic moments i had with pokemon gold on trail.
oof this piddled out at the end huh
shortly after he would bicycle to pittsburgh, return to michigan for the holidays and cold, then set off full time in the cruiser once more, all the while posting more on instagram than on here.
for the best tho, i’m less fond of the day to day blog style these days. broad, sweeping, iterative. no thank you, let me distill, refine, purify first.
i’ma keep this one piddled lol. read another story on here it’ll end better or better yet: you tell me one that ends better than this one
man i dunno 