Hitchhiking from Irvine to San Francisco

As you should know by now, I don't appreciate my life at all, and my friend Lluri doesn't value it much either, thus last Memorial Weekend we decided -as young crazy adventurers- to grab a bunch of cardboards (with a sign stating LOS ANGELES, NORTH/SF and PLEASE :-D on each of them) and hitchhike all the way up from sunny and fancy Orange County to the European and modern San Francisco, which is located around 470 miles north (750 kilometers for real people who know how to handle the decimal system).

SF here we go!

It all started on Saturday morning, when we left Irvine with a couple of friends who dropped us off at a gas station in Tustin, by the entrance to the I-5. People would stare at us with a "hey guys you are creepy" look on their faces, so we moved on and walked closer to the actual freeway, where classy Lexus cars and Mercedes SUVs would pass us by ignoring us with their condescendent smiles. We waived the LOS ANGELES and PLEASE signs for about twenty minutes, and finally a huge SUV with a man and his dog stopped by the sidewalk and picked us up. The aforementioned gentleman was in his late 30s - early 40s, and told us (as we had already guessed) that nobody was going to give us a ride in the area where we were trying to hitchhike: rich people do not trust hitchhikers (surprised?). He drove us about 12 miles north to Santa Ana, to a place where he thought it would be easier for us to be picked up. Theoretically, I should have written down the license plate and then send it to some friends in case we went missing, but the hurries and the excitement were high at that point and I definitely forgot to write anything down. The driver, wearing Carrera shades and a dandy hat, told us a few things about his surfer lifestyle and metioned that he had hitchhiked the whole west coast chasing a rock band when he was younger, and that's way he picked up hitchhikers once in while.

Fifteen minutes later we were standing on other sidewalk by the I-5, being yelled at by a Vietnam War veteran homeless ancient who was saying that our spot wasn't the best for hitchhiking. The man from the picture below is Lluri holding the LA sign, while I was in charge of holding the PLEASE sign with the smiling face, so that we looked friendly and harmless (this fact can actually make a huge difference).

Check out the bread we had in the bagpack. Food of Kings.

Ten minutes standing on hard concrete and hearing unintelligible advice coming from a disturbed homeless' mind paid off when a rickety cargo pick-up loaded with wooden boxed picked us up, and the driver turn out to be a nice Ecuadorian immigrant who was on his way to work in LA, so he took us there and told us a few facts about his life: he'd been living in California for 25 years, he told us not to go to the casino (I truly think he had a weird past related to bets, we should ask his bookie)...The haulier was reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and I should mention that it was the first time he picked up hitchhikers, so it was clear that we were trustworthy even for unknown, random people around SoCal.

Downtown LA

We went around Downtown Los Angeles and I was astonished by the ghostly appareance of the skyscrapers, as they looked consumed by the toxic smoke that fills the atmosphere from Long Beach to Hollywood. Finally, our Ecuadorian friend dropped us off at Los Feliz Blvd, close to the Hollywood area, the cosmopolitan neighborhood of northern LA. The X marks the spot:

Los Feliz Boulevard

At this spatiotemporal location, the sun extended its power up to a point which made it difficult to stand by the roadside. Random people would just laugh at us or encourage us, and even a wacky old lady (suffering from vitiligo) stopped by and gave me directions to get to the bus station so that we could make it to SF the old-fashioned way, but if I had even listened to her, where would the ADVENTURE be??!! That being said, we stoically stood there for half an hour, until one dude with a black and white striped pick-up pulled over and picked us up (this time I actually wrote down the license plate, but it was kind of unnecessary because our driver-friend-carrier turned out to be a really nice fellow). He wasn't going all the way up to the Bay Area but rather to Pismo Beach, a classic beach town around half an hour north of Santa Barbara by the Pacific Coast Highway. We jumped into the car and he told us that he recorded music for Disney and Nickelodeon for a living, and he was going to Pismo Beach in order to play some music with his old friends and ride his dirt-bike on the dunes by the seaside. It is for sure that the most interesting things about hitchhiking are the stories that people tell you, as they are open-minded and usually have lots of exciting experiences to share with others.

Making new friends all over the world

The first thing he said when we buckled up our seatbelts was that he was a martial arts expert, "but I can't dodge bullets"- he added. He told us that he had hitchhiked the whole country from San Francisco to Boston in just five freaking days (we are talking about at least 5000 km =3106.85596 miles) being helped out by truck drivers. He also explained to us that he picked up hitchhikers because several years ago he went on a trip with some friends to a canyon and the filter of his canteen broke and he didn't notice, so he caught a bacterial infection that summoned death, but luckily for him a lady carried him to the hospital and he was able to overcome his critical condition and survive to cry out the story.

A few hours later -traffic jams included- we pulled over in Santa Barbara to have lunch, and I really enjoyed the mountains surrounding the city and the friendly atmosphere that drew a smile on my face when I was walking along the main street.

Santa Bárbara

It is necessary to include that the road we covered during this part of the journey was just beautiful; the Pacific Ocean and its surfers ambushing the road from the west and steep mountains and golden hills kneeling upon the power of the salty, blue inmensity from the east. A baffling Mediterranean weather made me feel as if I was coming back home, to the good, old Málaga by the doors of Europe.

US-101

Close to Despeñaperros

Osborne's bull is missing

We made it to Pismo Beach around five o'clock in the afternoon, but we were convinced that from that point on being picked up  by random people would be way easier, influenced by the funny cliche that says:  NorCal citizens' hospitality >> SoCal citizens' hospitality. It didn't take us long to realize that this fact is just false. We were hitchhiking in the main street, being laughed at and yelled at, and at some point one f*cking retard with a brain whose size was inversely proportial to the dimensions of his truck (this rule is more universal than Newton's Gravitational Law) lowered his car window and said:"DO YOU NEED A RIDE??? GET A FUCKIN' JOB!!!". At least, this moron made us realize that it would be wiser to look for a ride in a residential street closer to the US-101, despite the fact that the car flow diminished and a warning sign threatened our presence in the area.

The oceanic wind shattered my face the whole time we waited in that serene nighborhood (some people even took pictures of us with their fancy iPads), until a weird young man with an entangled beard and lustrous, long hair whose final destination was San Luis Obispo. His name was Austin, from New York, and I didn't get his license plate but I should have. He started talking about his life with a picturesque New York accent, telling us that "people in the west coast are lame because when they say they're your friends they're lying, they are not your friends. In the east coast, when someone tells you he's your friend, then he's your  freind, you know?" and then I realized we had left the last exit to San Luis Obispo ten miles south (here you have a picture of good, old Austin).

Austin =  Texan City = The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and that's how my mind works)

We politely pointed out that he had skipped San Luis Obispo a while ago, and thank god he turned back south (he was quite disoriented and doing weird things). Once we were heading back south to San Luis Obispo, the sunrays started to spread towards the car, so Lluri pulled down the visor and a metallic object fell on his lap. We thought that it was some sort of electronic device such as a cellphone or a GPS, but it turned out to be a military blade with an eight inch long blade.

Multipurpose tool

An awkard, tense silence took over the car, and after that, Austin grabbed the knife and repeatedly stabbed Lluri in the jugular, sprinkling the whole vehicle with the deadly red rain Austin said that it was okay, because knives are really useful instruments that everyone should carry with them in their cars, thus my friend took the knife and placed it just where he had found it; at least we knew where it was in case we needed it for real (even though we never knew where the gun was). The rest of the trip with Austin was just grim and uncomfortable.

We finally made it to San Luis Obispo by 6pm (piece of knowledge: the journey took place last 25th May, internationally known as the Towel Day in memory of Douglas Admas, creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), returning to the funny hitchhiking routine, with crazy hobos pointing out better places to hitchhike and all sorts of angry faces coming from unshaken, merciless drivers. One hour later it was getting colder, but one car with some college kids stopped and one of them gave me his phone number and let us know that if we didn't get a ride that day, he'd be departing to San Francisco the next morning at 7am and we could definitely come along. Nevertheless, we didn't give up and stayed there for another hour. During this period, frat kids threw a box of Make Out Mints!® at us (it didn't hit us ;-D) and even a crazy old man pulled his car over, flipped a coin and said: heads I'll drive you to LA, and tails I'll drive you to SF. I told him not to worry because we didn't need his help at that point.

The X-guy does not belong to the X-Men (terrible joke, I know)

At 8pm, when the Sun was caressing us with its final sunrays before disappearing over the horizon and my numb hands made it difficult to hold the sign, Lluri told me to give up and go to a hostel close to the road. No! - I said - Let's hang on for another fifteen minutes!  And thanks god we stood there for a while longer, because five minutes later one of the unlikeliest events happened: two young beatiful women were mad enough to partake of our journey. They were going north without an actual destination, and I can assure you that they were the craziest girls I've ever met in my life (for those of you who truly know me, it was the same kind of craziness that characterizes my lifestyle, multiplied by 10). We immediately became friends and after a few hours (when they were tired) we parked the car and spent the night in a ramshackle road motel (imagine how these girls were in order to invite two weirdos they had just met to spend the night with them in such a grim place)

In the middle of nowhere

 The next morning we resumed the journey to San Francisco, passing close to Silicon Vally, Stanford, Google Headquarters and other crucial places for technology development and finally arriving to San Francisco at 2pm with a total cost of zero cents. An amazing one day and a half long journey, five cars and very different people who shared one virtue: all of them were nice, open-minded people. In a close future I truly hope that people will feel safer and thus everyone will be able to enjoy this great hitchhiking experience. I'm certainly going to do it again.

San Francisco

We made it!!