Just outside Chch (aka Hitchhiker's Hell) I was standing beside the road waiting for my mate (male) to buy us some pies for lunch. A biiig truck pulled over, and I was sooo excited, and ran after it, calling my friend on his mobile to tell him. I asked the driver where he was going. "Up the road," he said.
"No really, where?"
"Just get in."
Something didn't seem right.
"I just have to wait for my friend, *he*'s getting us lunch."
At which point the driver muttered something about being in a hurry and started moving, leaving me to leap off the cab and wait forlornly as my friend ran towards me, pies in hand, wondering why the truck was pulling away.

Hmmmm where to start.

* I picked up Jesus on Rangitata Island. He was a psychiatric nurse from Portugal (not sure why, but I've picked up a few psych nurses in my time, but guess better than their patients). He bought me a Jimmy's Pie in Oamaru, and has a special place in my heart as a result. People who supply koha (esp. food) are the best.

* Was in the far north and got picked up by a 40-something couple in a Kingswood Ute. Actually, I didn't so much as get picked up, as they pulled over kinda near me to smoke up, and when they were done, I was still waiting, so they figured they may as well give me a lift just down the road, where they reckoned i'd get more traffic. There was something concealed in the tray, and they wouldn't let me put my pack in there, so it was a bit of a squeeze across the front seat. They'd just had a couple of joints, but got to pouring the bourbon and cokes on the dashboard once we were on the road. The classiest bit was when we over took a school bus and they were waving at their daughter. heh. My next lift was with a business-type guy. He didn't seem to smell the liquor on my breath. Quite a fast driver, but not too freaky. They left me kinda on the main road near pahia (and some random pie place: Pie Here?). My next lift was with a Horsetrekking outfit. So I was squeezed into the back of the van with a lot of very hot, but horse-smelling, chicks.

*After getting stranded at waitati (friendly hippies who give you a lift over the hill and then you're stuck in waitati), got picked up by this muso from christchuch who'd been shearing in southland. So apart from his guitar and the four other people he's already picked up, it turned out the huge newspaper package my feet were resting on was full of lamb's tales. Apparently you throw them in the fire, pull em out, pull off the charred wool, and chew the meat off the bone. Or something. He stopped to get a mutton pie (actually 2) in palmerston. I think I was going to a funeral actually. And then I couldn't get a lift from Maheno to Kakanui, so I had to walk the whole 6 odd km in the blazing sun.

* Return journey of the previous trip. Got a lift out to the main road at Maheno, and got a ride almost instantly. Freaky guy. Fast driver, no following distance, and a real thing for Yello (Ferris Bueller theme anyone?). As well as being an insane driver, he's also an insane truck driver, and had gone up to Timaru to watch truck racing. He had a CB in his car, and insisted on trying to talk to every truck going past (which didn't help his already poor driving). Then we had to pull over while he rang his mum/gf to explain why he was late for tea.

Oddly enough, no pies in that last story.

once a dude made us listen to simply red and robbie williams and dropped us in the middle of nowhere.

once i drunk most of a bottle of missisipi moonshine and slept next to the railway tracks near picton. got picked up the next day by a kingswood and threw up all over the side in blenheim.

once i got picked up by two maori dudes in a beat up van with a box of beers between them in the front. i sat in the back with a lot of assorted loaves of bread.

once i got picked up by a dude in a van who told me "a man needs some rope in his toolkit" among other gems of knowledge. he stopped in temuka and made to get out to pick up a "flying saucer" (hub cap thing).

once the dude who i was with's brother drove past with his whole family packed into a hatch back. he gave us both a ride. i had some kid on my knee explaining some thing that the kids were into back then.

once there were two other people and we all got picked up by this disabled dude and i was in the back and the other person in the back said something funny or something so i lauged, and the disabled dude thought i was laughing at him and he got real fired up at me.

other times the people were boring.

I've only hitchhiked once, and it was when I was 14. Me and my badass friend were sneaking out of her house to go nightclubbing. The trouble was that she lived on Yokota Airforce Base, which has a great big air strip right down the middle of it, which you're not allowed to walk over, which is why we had to hitchhike. We got picked up by these two black women who seemed like they were straight off Rikki Lake with their sass. I don't think they believed whatever story it was that we told them, but at least they took us where we needed to go (which was a train that broke down and we had to sleep on it and then spend $150 on a taxi to get home before we were caught out, but that is of course another story).

I guess I have been lucky - when I was a student, I frequently hitched from the far north to Dunedin and back again, and apart from the odd drunken driver, it was always great - people would want to buy me meals, give me places to stay, whatever. I think the worst experience hitching, and it was nothing at all, was the fellow who wanted me to buy him a tank of petrol.

I also spent three weeks hitching around Ireland - the only downside to that was that people would only ever be going about five miles. I spent a nice day with some sort of priest or reverend (I was terrified of getting it wrong so never asked!) doing his rounds.

Shamefully, I rarely pick people up. Mind you, Webster rarely has room for passengers, what with the junk he gets loaded up with.

*deep breath* - My friend had just arrived back from Germany and was keen to see her sister in Dunedin. She asked me if I wanted to come with her and at 9pm we started out from Levin to get to Wellington for the midnight ferry. We caught 3 rides with 3 different solo mums between Levin and Paraparaumu - all offering us a place to stay!!! What we learnt was solo mums are much more likely to pick you up than young guys driving alone ( pussies ). We got on the electric train and were relieved to be heading in the right direction with time to spare.. only to discover we didnt have any coins except Euros! Fighting broke out between us and the nazi-esq ticket taker, but we managed to evade capture by hiding in the toilet and thus made it to Wellington. Missed the ferry and waited 3 or so hours for the next one whilst occasionally dozing in the terminal. Onto the ferry for a midwinter deep freeze crossing, try unsuccesfully to sleep on the floor, then freeze to death in Picton at 5am. Try to catch a ride to Blenheim with various 4 by 4's to no avail - make too much noise on the road outside someones house, wake them up and they agree to give us a lift to Blenheim in their taxi. Thaw out a bit on the 30 minute trip, but then spend 4 hours standing by the side of the road with our thumbs out in bloody Blenheim!!! A good caking of black soot on our faces we were eventually picked up by some mongrel mob associates with a baby. The car was small and falling to pieces. I had to hold the door closed with one hand while the baby sat between us in the back seat, a bucket of ice full of beers between my friends legs. We were both exhausted and passed out in no time, waking up in Kaikoura. We were there 20 minutes, plenty of time for our driver to go to the pub and get chopped - thus putting the mum behind the wheel. She drove like a maniac but bought us each a fruju. Once again we passed out and woke up closer to Christchurch, where we went to a house in the suburbs for a drug deal. They then dropped us off close to the airport after inviting us up to their place for Christmas. After a pie and a good rest by the roadside, we endeavoured to get out Christchurch. Not until we split up and I hid in the bushes did we manage to scam a ride with a female forest worker. Despite various chainsaws and other nasty looking impliments in the back, we were happy to have the ride. She talked the talk and seemed to know exactly where she was going, so after another snooze, were a bit surprised to find ourselves rather close to the mountains. Indeed she had become lost, we pulled over to ask a woman mowing her lawns if we were on the right track to get to Oamaru and she literally fell over laughing. 2 hours of backtracking and showing some leniancy towards the intermitant random breaking ( apparently because she kept losing sight of the incredibly straight road in front of us ) and late into the 2nd day, we arrived in Oamaru. After a quick bite to eat, it was an incredibly long walk down the length of Oamaru with our packs and an even longer wait in the pitch black at the end of town. Before a lovely young otago student, who had seen us there an hour earlier when he was going the other way, decided to give us a lift. The first GUY who had given us a lift the entire way!!! He dropped us at the door of my friends sisters place and after hugs all round were hitting the piss at ReFuel on pint night just half an hour later.

When we left Dunedin a week later, it was snowing. We stood out in it for nearly two hours before we got a lift - this time with a millionaire businessman who had many stories about his time living in Hawaii and signing off multi million dollar navel frigates. He kindly gave us a lift to the door of a girl I met on the net a week earlier and her dad took us all off to the movies! Next morning we waited by the road out of Christchurch for 3 hours before being picked up by an eccentric german guy in a heavily painted 80s holden gemini. While there was barely room to breathe, and even though he was only going as far as Wellington - he took us all the way to Palmerston North, where we then had a beer, he and my friend made their merry way back to Levin.

I can't remember heaps of stuff that happened, shit was too crazy.

Check this out, quite a cool wee flash movie/thingy

[ external link ]

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