Hitchhiking across Colorado is one thing. Hitchhiking across North America is entirely another. It’s a little over three thousand miles in a straight line from LA to New York and takes your average, sane, determined person five days to drive it. You might be able to hitchhike it even faster if you hook up with a hell bent trucker or two, but I wasn’t looking to set a speed record or make a gritty, sleep-deprived transit of superhighways and truck stops.
My strategy was to avoid urban corridors and major interstates at all costs - to follow scenic highways and county roads through small town America. I planned my route based on my hitchhiking experience in Colorado - through what I call National Park Country - a high, arcing line from southern California up through Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and finally down through Maine and Massachusetts to my childhood home in southern Connecticut - places where a person on the side of the road with a back pack isn’t considered out of the ordinary. There was only one problem… I was starting in Los Angeles.
Getting out of LA is difficult with a car. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten spun around on some swooping jug handle and ended up accidentally headed towards Pasadena or Long Beach or spit out into a neighborhood where I didn’t feel safe pumping gas. And East LA doesn’t really end, it just morphs into Covina, Ontario and San Bernadino… a congested, sprawling retail/industrial/residential grid. The challenge wasn’t catching a ride out of Santa Monica, it was catching a ride from Santa Monica all the way to the edge of the sprawl - over 100 miles to the east.
I figured the Pacific Coast Highway would be the best place to start because it has stop lights and cross walks and big brake down lanes to pull over into and it flows down the California coast right into Santa Monica where it hooks a left at the pier and turns into the Interstate 10 East - the main artery to Arizona. People road tripping down from Big Sur and Santa Barbara often continue on through Los Angeles to points further east like like the Grand Canyon. I was hoping to hook up with some of this National Park traffic.
The only other place I considered starting was Rancho Park Golf Course in the middle of the city because that was my home course and I wanted the golf courses to be representative of each of the places I visited. Nothing says LA more than Rancho Park. Originally a private course built during the real estate boom of the 1950’s, Rancho hosted the LA Open for sixteen years - Arnold Palmer won there three times.
Now it’s a municipal course and anyone with fifteen bucks to spare and the patience for a five hour round can tee it up on it’s sycamore lined fairways. My foursomes over the years have included actors, stunt men, models, musicians, artists, students, bodyguards, cops and businessmen of all stripes - Korean, Chinese, Indian, Philippine, Mexican, Armenian. Basically, anyone who loves golf and isn’t a member of one of the tony clubs in town.
But this was a coast to coast trip and I was determined to start at the beach - to hit a ceremonial parting shot into the Pacific and begin hitching right there on the Pacific Coast Highway. So I opted to play a ceremonial first round at a sun-kissed, oceanfront beauty down in Newport called Pelican Hill and then drive back up to Santa Monica. This turned out to be somewhat of a counterproductive choice because the last thing I wanted to do after playing beautiful Pelican Hill was hitchhike. This may explain why the first day turned out to be a false start.
I’d done all of the last minute checks, gone through my list item by item. Sleeping bag, air mattress, tent, camp chair, rain gear, golf clothes, warm clothes, towels, golf clubs, guitar (yes, guitar), tripod, video camera, still camera, computer, microphones, lights, headlamp, headphones, batteries, extension chords, connector cables, toiletries, first aid kit, tape, sunscreen, bug spray, sunglasses, shoelaces, patches, nylon chord… and I’d somehow packed and positioned them so they weren’t digging into my back or teetering like a crooked pyramid.
When I was ready I proudly presented my pack to my friends. We took turns trying it on and snapping photos. Then my oldest friend George, who’d also moved to LA from Connecticut, drove me down to the Pacific Coast Highway. Rush hour traffic was already beginning to pile up. We drove about a half mile down from the Santa Monica Pier and pulled into a random parking lot on the beach. I set up the video camera and we sat down on the curb to record a farewell.
My dad’s known George literally since the day he was born so George paid his respects and we laughed about some fond memories like the time George shot out our living room window with a hockey puck and my dad made him work for months to pay off the bill. It was nice to have somebody close to the family there at that moment. When we said our final goodbyes George gave me a big hug and drove away leaving me alone in the parking lot. I took a deep breath, shouldered my pack and walked over to the edge of the highway. I turned on the camera and raised a cardboard sign that said Phoenix, please.
The intimidation factor was pretty high in those first few minutes. I tried to smile, but the rush hour mob didn’t smile back. I quickly wilted under their collective glare. After about fifteen minutes, I shut off the camera, climbed the hill up to Pacific Avenue and hailed a cab back to my friend’s house.
“That was fast! How was Connecticut?”
“I’m starting tomorrow.”
The next day I started a little further north at Will Roger’s State Beach where the PCH is wider and sunnier and there’s a stop light and pedestrian crosswalk. I walked out onto the sand, set up the camera and recorded a parting shot into the Pacific. I took a final dip in the ocean, looked enviously at the surfers off the end of Sunset Blvd and headed up onto the highway. The menace of the previous afternoon was gone. The drivers looked much more relaxed in the light, late morning traffic.
I tried to make eye contact and win them over with a smile. Some smiled back. A few even waved. But from a hitchhiker’s perspective the LA driving demographic didn’t look promising - bleached blondes in black Mercedes, shaggy surfer dudes in retro-style vans, gangsta-looking Latinos in blinged-out, low rider Hondas, Hollywood slicks in white convertible Porches and yellow Lamborghinis. I calculated the odds of one of these people giving me a ride at somewhere between lightning striking and the LA Kings winning the Stanley Cup.
The only vehicle that stopped in the first hour was a delivery truck on its way to Long Beach.
“I can take you to the 405.”
I tried to imagine myself hopping out of a delivery truck on the side of the 405, sprinting across six lanes of traffic and pinning myself to the ten foot cement barrier on the side of the I-10 on ramp. I’d either end up dead or arrested… having only gone a measly ten miles.
“Thanks man, but I think I’ll take my chances here.”
Hours passed. My cell phone rang. It was my friend DeWitt. One of our surfing buddies had spotted me on his way up to Malibu.
“Word on the street is you’re still on the PCH.”
He called several more times that day to tell me I’d been spotted. I was becoming a spectacle. More people waved. A few gave me big exaggerated thumbs up. One even took my picture. I don’t think it occurred to anyone that I was seriously trying to get a ride. Like everything else in crazy Los Angeles, I was just an entertaining part of the scenery.
There was some kind of event going on at the beach - a crew was setting up tables and chairs under a tent. By noon the parking lot was full and a catering company called Van Go was serving a hundred people lunch while someone rambled over a PA system.
The second person to stop was a lady in a station wagon driving through the parking lot. She shook her head and smiled sympathetically.
“I can’t give you a ride honey, but how about some lunch?”
One of the caterers brought over a cheese burger, macaroni salad, sliced fruit and an ice cold Coca-Cola. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this simple act of kindness would come to define my trip much more than the endless line of cars blowing exhaust fumes in my face.
The last car to pull over was a hubcapless beater driven by an old man, so small and hunched he had to look through the steering wheel to see the road.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going home.” He said.
“Where’s home?”
“10th Street.”
“Well, I’m trying to get to Palm Springs.”
“Oh. I thought you needed money.”
Around three O’clock the traffic began to pile up again and the midday mirth turned back to rush hour menace. I’d had it with the PCH. I called my friend Linnea.
“Want to go to Palm Springs for the night?”
“Sure. I get off at five.”
I shouldered my pack, climbed over the cement barrier and crossed the parking lot to the beach. The crew was taking down the tent and removing the tables and chairs. I found a quiet section of beach, lay down in the sand and went to sleep.
Two and half hours later I felt a kick and looked up to see beautiful, blonde Linnea smiling down on me like an angel come to my rescue.
“Didn’t make it very far huh?”
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