This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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I wake up at just after five, check the clock, prepare to go back to sleep then battle sheer horror as I realise that this is actually the best time to be up if I'm going to make an early start on my hitch-hiking toward San Francisco. Just shy of an hour later I'm showered, packed and on my way out of the hostel into the surprisingly cold morning air.
Once the initial trauma is over, I find the familiar buzz settling in at getting back on the road and I make my way to the onramp with high spirits and a cup of evil Starbucks coffee in my hand. I sip coffee, munch on the remaining third of my calzone and make myself a San Francisco sign on the back of a good durable cardboard tray. Then there's nothing to do but wait.
And wait. And wait. It's over three hours before I get my first ride, which gets me exactly 10 minutes down the road. I'm grateful to get moving at all though, and the new spot looks better - out of the centre of town, slow moving traffic, great visibility...I reckon I shouldn't have any trouble getting moving.
After two and a half hours I take a break to get lunch at a nearby In 'n Out Burger - and it's the best burger I've had in a fast food joint. In 'n Out have the admirable policy of keeping pretty much the menu they opened with as the first drivethrough in California - hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger and fries. That's basically it. They don't do much, but what they do they do really well. The patty is really good beef, goodsized and perfectly cooked, on a freshly-baked bun, and the fries are crunchy and flavoursome.
With renewed energy I get back out on the road, find a slightly different spot further down...
And stand there for another three hours before getting a ride 20 minutes further out. This time I'm dropped on the side of a major highway, again near an onramp but here the traffic is moving at breakneck speed and the location doesn't look at all promising. I drop my bags and raise my sign. By now I've been standing holding the thing for almost ten hours and I'm exhausted, but I don't have another option - I'm miles from anywhere, certainly nowhere near a place to stay, and there's no cover out here to sleep in.
I keep the sign up as long as my arms can hold it, and then I switch to the thumb - a last ditch attempt as the road here can go either way and I really need to be able to indicate which direction I need a lift in. Just when I think I'm really going to have to give up and start walking down the highway back into town, a car pulls over. But it's no good - he's going back into San Diego. I give up - it may be possible to hitch out of southern California, but I don't have the time it's clearly going to take.
I gratefully accept the ride back into San Diego, and decide I need to make at least some progress north today or I'm going to be in trouble tomorrow. The new plan: I'll get the train and bus north to Santa Barbara, about half of my journey time, stay there overnight then try and pick up the hitching again from there. I'm determined I'm not going to let this state beat me.
I'm on the train with Russ from San Diego, another of America's ubiquitous sweet-natured chunky rock dudes. He actually works in a club in San Diego and knows a whole bunch of places I should go if and when I do return...including the brewpub home of the awesome Arrogant Bastard ale I enjoyed in Seattle. It's well-known around here - in fact, once we're settled on the train he disappears to the bar car and comes back with a bottle for each of us. It's a very civilised journey to L.A. after that, drinking ale, chatting and watching the little towns flash by outside the windows.
Russ hops off a couple of stops before Union Station with promises to keep in touch, and I ride on to the central terminus, arriving with about twenty minutes to spare before my coach to Santa Barbara. The Amtrak Thruway coach is comfortable, a little more luxurious than the Greyhound equivalent, and I'm feeling my lack of sleep over the past week and a half not to mention my severely early morning, so I doze part of the way.
Arriving in Santa Barbara bus station it's almost midnight, I'm thoroughly exhausted and there are wide, smooth wooden benches which look very inviting - someone's already sleeping on one of them. I spread my sleeping bag on the next and settle in. Another fellow-traveller is preparing to settle down for the night, but he's arrived in only his t-shirt and the air is really cold. At his request, with some misgivings, I lend him my fleece. When I wake at 5am he's still sleeping under it, but after I sleep again from 5 to 6 he's gone, taking my fleece with him.
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