I blundered my way around the streets for a while longer, wondering to myself if I was going in the right direction. Finally I decided to stop and ask an elderly man for help outside City Hall. He pointed for me and I walked parallel to his finger all the way to the entrance ramp. I started walking hopelessly towards Kansas City as if I might be able to make it there on my own two feet if no one stopped. My hand felt awkward as I lazily waved my thumb in the air to passer-byes. Much to my surprise, and clearly defeating what I had been told about hitching rides in the past, a dark blue F-150 stopped within the first minute. I ran up to it and told the man I was going to Kansas City and got in, forgetting what I told myself earlier about memorizing the moment of seeing my first hitched ride stop twenty feet ahead of me.
A portion of the downtown Kansas City skyline
Downtown Kansas City
Incubus in Baltimore, 2007The driver was middle-aged and fat, with a strangely police looking mustache on his face. As we drove and drove he talked and talked, asking me question after question, when all I wanted to do was hang my head back into the thick air of the truck and sleep. We got into Johnson County and he dropped me off at a fork, wished me luck in my adventures and rejoined the traffic.
I went my direction while walking backwards, this time frantically flailing my thumb at the cars while they passed and left me in the dusty fumes of a highway. Once again someone stopped for me shortly after I got onto the road and I bolted over to the Cadillac and jumped in. She was a sexy Mexican with a big body and long brown...