A few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend of mine (lets call him Jimmy) who needed a ride back into town. He was in Sutton (a tiny town about 60 miles north of Anchorage). I got confused at first because when my friend (Maria) and I had left him, he was 20 miles south of Anchorage, camping in a parking lot. I realize that camping in parking lots on the side of the highway isn't considered normal in the rest of the world but it's probably the most normal part of this story.
When I asked him why he was in Sutton, he nonchalantly answered "oh! we hitchhiked! Met a really nice guy." Apparently he and his good friend (Johnny) got bored, so they grabbed two bottles and set off walking down the road with no particular destination in mind. Both of them were completely trashed by the time some young personal trainer picked them up. They quickly got to talking and it was concluded that they all would head to the strip club just outside Sutton. The caravan didn't make it that far. 20 miles from Sutton, Jimmy threw up all over the side door of the good samaritan's car. Johnny swiftly payed for the ride, grabbed Jimmy and they jumped out (though I'm told the man driving just laughed all of it off).
From there they needed to find a place to sleep. What they found was a mattress truck pulled over on the side of the road with no apparent inhabitants and clean mattresses. Obviously they took this opportunity and crashed in the back of the truck. But a few hours later, the driver of the truck came and woke them up and kindly asked them the get out. Nothing mean, the guy just needed to get his shipment to Anchorage on time. This is about the point in time when I received a call. The rest of the story isn't important. They made it back home in one piece.
The reason I'm sharing this is to point out that this shit could only happen in Alaska. The rest of the United States stopped giving rides to hitchhikers in the '60s after the beat generation turned into the 60s counterculture movement and hippies invaded the US. In a way, I guess that makes Alaskans lucky. We can pickup hitchhikers and hitchhike without the major fear that whoever you're sharing a ride with might be a serial killer or rapist. Now, I don't think I'd hitchhike alone but still if I ever need to, the opportunity is there.
I just think it's a shame no one in my generation will ever be able to experience the feeling Kerouac wrote about in his road novels. The spontaneity of just packing up and traveling across the country, and the experiences from doing so were all lost a long time ago. But at least there some opportunity to do so here, even if it is a trip across the isolated, mostly unpopulated state of Alaska.
