# Tell me the worst/creepiest/awful rides you've gotten!



## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

A lot of us have been there before. A hundred or more cars cruise by with nary an acknowledgement. You watch them drive away without stopping and silently curse the driver but remain optimistic. Someone has got to stop at *some* point, right?
When they finally do, you run up to the passenger side door, positively stoked. "I'm outta here!" Who was waiting for you when there's a stranger behind the wheel? I've had friendly, kind rides that reaffirm my faith in the human race. It is definitely a two-way street... it takes a special kind of person to gather up the chutzpah to get out there with your thumb out, and it takes a special kind of person to stop the car and let a stranger in. 

This isn't meant to discourage anyone... it's very prudent to have your wits about you (don't they still teach young children to never get into the car with strangers?) even though most people stopping for a hitchhiker are a friendly, congenial sort just looking to help someone out... However, there are just weird, strange, and bizarre people who will stop too, and sometimes you don't find that out until you're already cruising down the interstate.

Tell me some of your hitchhiking horror stories! I want to hear your tales of the dangerous, the depraved, the disgusting, the dreadful, the downright disastrous rides you've gotten while out there on the road. Did you think that ride was going to be your last? Or was the driver just a little too eccentric for comfort?


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## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

I will start off with a few of my memorable ones.

*1. Weird Church Guy*

Once, back in 2011 we ended up in a small WV town through a series of unfortunate events (but with the optimism that we'd certainly be able to catch out). Long story short, this creepy-as-fuck man with strong ties to the local church informed us it was TEN YEARS IN STATE PRISON FOR HOPPING ON ONE OF THEM TRAINS (loool). The police were riding our asses pretty hard while we were there... before church had a talk with them, they didn't even seem to notice our presence and after that we were just relentlessly stopped, stared at, questioned, followed by the local PD. Who knows what he told them.
Church guy coaxed the local pastor into giving him some kind of cash allowance for gas money with the following explanation: "they have backpacks with camping supplies... let's send em to a campground!"

Well, it was our only way out of this town and it was through the local church, so that can't be all that bad, right?
Wrong!

My husband, me, and our two dogs piled into the car and the guy inexplicably went to pick up his weird son to ride with us... the guy was going on and on about how he drives clergymen to go fuck prostitutes and smoke crack before their sermons and how he has 16 kids by 7 different women and was just trying to make a living by driving people, no matter what they were going to do.
He kept pressuring really hard to get me to sit in the front seat but I kept saying "no, I need to stay back here with my dog". He explained he was taking us somewhere we could camp... I checked the map and realized he was driving us way out into backwoods fucking middle of nowhere Virginia, away from any highways and from the interstate.

I asked, pleaded, instead of taking us 40 miles in one direction, could he take us 40 miles in the other direction to get back to the interstate but he just explained he was a capitalist and that his pastor said specifically to take us to the campground and that, as a capitalist he needs to look out for himself too and what could I do for him?

All I had was a shitty digital camera and a nintendo DS, and I offered it to him but he wasn't interested. He then basically insinuated that he wasn't going to do shit for us unless I sucked his dick.

I didn't, and so we ended up in nowheresville (at a gas station off in the middle of nowhere) and the attendant finally took pity on us after sitting around for three days not getting a single ride.

At the subsequent truck stop, we ended up getting a ride from a woman who was driving solo. Originally, I had split up with my husband because the likelihood of the two of us with two dogs getting a ride from one person were pretty slim so I went out to the onramp and he stayed back at the truckstop.
An hour later, a car pulls up and my husband jumps out and ushers me and my dog in... a woman driving alone who he had met coming out of the truck stop agreed to give both of us a ride. She was just going to take us to the next town, but she later confessed that since we weren't really a bunch of axe-murdering creeps, we could ride all the way to Ohio with her.
I've always gotten more rides from women driving alone. It may be because I am always hitching with my husband and my dog. So it takes longer to get a ride, but sometimes we are perceived as "safer"; apparently crazy weirdos don't have girlfriends, wives, or dogs?


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## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

*2. The California tweaker*

Let me preface this by saying that the further into southern California that I went, the weirder the rides got. There isn't anything truly remarkable about this guy, I guess everyone gets a tweaker ride at some point. He was driving a small pickup truck and was on his way to pick up a friend whose car broke down. The guy put the pedal to the metal before I had finished climbing into the cab or shutting the door and off we went. He was driving awfully fast, even by interstate standards, and talking a MILE a MINUTE about drugs, parole, and a bunch of nonsense I couldn't even make out. Sure, whatever tweaker-guy! When we determined that he was going to drop us off on the interstate to pick up his friend, we opted to get off at some small little town, where we were able to get a second ride later that day. 



*3. "Uh, thanks for the warning, dude."*
Actually, this one was just funny. For the sake of making conversation I asked my driver, your standard issue California redneck:
"So, why do they call this place Prunedale?"
"Well, back in the day there used to be prune trees, as far as the eye can see!"
"Wow, that's very interesting."
This guy dropped us off deep in Salinas, California. We whizzed past gas stations, strip malls, _well-lit areas_ until we get to a shabby looking neighborhood with some warehouses, empty businesses, and used car lots. He pulls over and drops us off with the following warning: "Whatever you do, do not go across that underpass. See, there are rival gangs here, and the turf line is definitely that underpass. Oh, and this street corner you're on you need to be careful because there are lots of transvestites around here."
With that, he just drives off.
(We didn't see any gang shootouts OR transvestites... how disappointing).


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## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

*4. Whatever you do, don't tell them you know me*.

Our whole Virginia/West Virginia excursion was a crapshoot, in retrospect. This guy picked us up and offered to drive us up to the next exit. Since any progress is progress in my book, I accepted. I climbed into the cab and my husband rode in the back of the truck with the packs and the dog. He goes into the store, comes back out, and turns to me and says "I just got back from the dentist... I can't even feel my face!" He pauses, and punctuates this statement by cracking open a tallcan of beer. "Let's do this."
We made small-talk on the way to his destination. He wasn't really a bad guy... just a good ol' boy on the way back from the dentist. After a bit of chatting, he tells me he knows of a real great place we can camp, with a swimming hole and privacy and a campsite. "Sure, okay, that could be neat." It turns out this swimming hole belongs to some old hippie with dreadlocks and that under no circumstances was I ever to EVER mention how we found the place or how we got there because the hippie had it out for this guy for some reason. He narrates the local scenery and starts driving back towards the mountains.
I mean, REALLY driving back towards the mountains, farther and farther away from the tiny little town, to like throwing his truck into 4-wheel drive and navigating over creek beds and logs and stuff that a normal car can't cross.
"Uhhh, maybe we should just go back to the gas station.."
"Okay that's cool, I'll drop you off at the gas station,"
At the gas station: "So um... where are we?"
"You see that crease running through the blank spot on the map. You're right about where the crease is."

My husband later reported, "I had no idea what you guys were talking about up there, all I thought about as we were driving up that mountain was that movie Deliverance and how no one would ever find our bodies..."


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## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

*5. Yall picked the WRONG RIDE.*

A man and woman had just gotten finished spending a relaxing afternoon drinking and smoking by some river somewhere in Arizona. It only took me about 20 seconds after climbing into their car to determine that they were very intoxicated. It only took me 30 seconds to realize that getting into their car was a bad idea.
The woman was friendly enough... we did the usual "so where you from, where you heading" chat and I guess the guy wanted to have a little fun by freaking us out. He cranks up the music (Pearl Jam, I believe it was) and starts shouting a bunch of weird loud crap over the music like "YOU GUYS PICKED THE WROOOOONG RIDE TODAY" "THIS IS GONNA BE YOUR *LAST* RIDE YOU'LL EVER TAKE" and shouting the lord's prayer over Eddie Vedder. This guy... oh man. He was out for blood in terms of freaking us out. In retrospect I didn't want to give him any reaction to encourage him so I remained almost eerily calm throughout the situation. He was speeding and weaving all over the road (it was about 22 miles to the next town) up to and including an attempt at passing a semi by speeding up on the shoulder to the right of the semi. All I could think about was, if this schmuck gets pulled over, will the police send me back to where we started because that truck stop sucks.
The woman just laughed and slurred and said he was just a prankster out to have a little fun at our expense. The guy was driving like it was the Indy 500 or something, passing cars and hollering and repeatedly driving onto the shoulder.
We just asked to be dropped off at the very first truck stop. When I climbed out of the car, there were indentations in my cardboard sign and my knuckles were white from clutching the sign so tightly. That scared me a little bit.


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## skitter (Jun 17, 2013)

*6. The Angel from Atlantis*

I almost don't want to post this one because for some reason I don't want this guy tracking me down and finding me, I'm still exasperated/creeped out/amazed by this ride. But uh, here goes. My weirdest ride.

Picture us in the same situation... my husband, my dog, and I standing with thumb out (well, the dog doesn't have a thumb out) and waiting on a ride. A colorful van pulls up in front of us. That's a good sign usually.
The driver hops out and introduces himself, and then immediately spraypaints our names onto the side of this van. Okay... that's a new one but whatever, right?

He is, we are quickly informed, the reincarnation of the driver for the Merry Pranksters, and he had just gotten out of jail that day. He is also, I am told, very much like a young Albus Dumbledore, and also Copernicus, and also a mad genius full of ambition. The van is packed with stuff. Like, packed to the roof with random shit. His rat, who has reincarnated 14 times, lives somewhere in the chaos. Sure dude. That's pretty cool.

A glassblower by trade, his mentor was a skilled craftsman whose totally law-abiding but super cool mafia connects live on an island somewhere in the Pacific and have an army of like, a million lawyers so that they are essentially above the law and do whatever they want. He hands my husband a huge ornate knife and says "well, I hope you don't have to use this" and sort of pretends like he didn't just hand my husband a big fucking knife.

This guy has got plans. Big plans. You see, there are boats all up and down the Socal coast whose slips are worth more than the boat occupying them. This is something all people who have any interest in sailing are aware of.
What they don't know, I learned, is that you can tie three logs into a triangle and start throwing trash into the middle of the log repeatedly until the trash turns into dirt. With at least three sailboats towing the logs.
"First, you have a patch of land. You plant a tree. Then you plant another tree. Then you have a forest. Then you build a house. Then you build another house. We're going to build a floating ISLAND man, this is going to be huge, this is going to be the biggest thing, I will sail up and down the west coast meeting the faerie people up in Oregon and Washington... we're going to join the U.N.! We're going to change the world!"
Now I can appreciate manic ambition as much as the next person, and I too would like to take up sailing, but this guy was a little toooooo overzealous about his plan to build a portable floating island towed by sailboats tied together with ropes and trash and captained by only women.
"You can be my first captain, Skitter, come to the sea with me,"
"But I don't know how to sail."
"You don't HAVE to know. You don't have to do any work. Me and [skitterhusband] will do all the work, right [skitterhusband]?"
"Sure dude."

What would have been a 45 minute ride took several hours, and we were really trying to get south on a deadline so we tried to humor this guy just so we could get a good ride. We stopped at a farmers market so dude could barter odds and ends from his van, so my husband went to go walk the dog, and that's when the guy started laying shit on REALLY thick. Asking me if I would be his May Queen (?) and admitting to me that he was actually a 2000 year old angel who had in fact caused the sinking of Atlantis.
"I didn't stop the war, Skitter. I could have prevented it."
"Uhm."
"It weighs heavy on my conscience...but I'm back now, and I won't mess it up this time!"

I think the weirdest thing was that while we were driving away from the farmer's market I notice a spray of dark reddish brown all over the inside of the van. I'm no stranger to what dried blood looks like, StP, and this guy literally had sprayed/decorated/WTF'd blood ALL over the inside of his messy van. He tried to get me to give him my quail to start a breeding population of quails on his floating island but I told him I'd rather keep my pet.
When we told him we were on our way to the desert, he seemed disgusted, "um, you can SAIL to the desert from the ocean" and then went into office max for... something or another, babbling away.

I think he was maybe bipolar and in a very very VERY manic state of mind with his illusions of grandeur, self-importance, mad-ambition, and mile-a-minute speech. He has used our phone to call his dad, who told him to get home because he had to see his bail bondsman (gee, you didn't mention that in your haste to go get a boat fella). The dad called on the phone the following day asking if we had seen his son. My husband told him he was speaking/behaving very erratically and that we hadn't heard from or seen him since the previous evening.
"Oh." The dad sounded pretty forlorn. Sounded like maybe he knew his son was a wingnut.



It's funny, you know. Almost everyone in my family has said things like, OH GOSH FREIGHT TRAINS YOU BE CAREFUL ON THOSE FREIGHT TRAINS I HEARD ABOUT [some horrific story involving riders getting crushed/amputated/stabbed] YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL ON THOSE TRAINS
When I tell them I'm hitchhiking for a bit, it's always like, wow cool what an adventure that's so awesome.
A freight train has never tried to get me to suck a dick or tried to flip me on the interstate. I also don't have to watch 200 freight trains go by while I stand there hoping and praying for a ride like I do when I'm unsuccessfully hitchhiking.


Well, I've got plenty of stories but those are some of my weirder ones... fortunately I've had MANY more good rides with awesome people.
I'm sure there's some pretty gnarly, scary rides out there... probably worse than mine. Let's hear em! Tell me your most awful hitchhiking experiences.


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## Ekstasis (Jun 17, 2013)

My mom thinks she and her friend were picked up by the zodiac killer, way back when. They had to punch him repeatedly, do something with a screwdriver, and jump out of the moving car because he wouldn't let them go. 

My first ever hitch was with a guy who had several machetes in the back of his truck and a grape pickers knife up in the cab with us. Our friends in the truck bed were freaking out, over machetes in the back of the truck. 13 y/o girls shouldn't hitchhike.


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## vdem1 (Jun 18, 2013)

I've gotten a LOT of WEIRD rides haahahah and most were more humorous than anything. BUt I did get one guy proposition me (which no biggie, not the first time and I'm female traveling alone, we all know this shit happens) but he actually grabbed my hand and tried to force it onto his dick. It didn't end so well for either of us. This was the FIRST time i broke two of my fingers. 

I remember one time RIGHT as I was getting into the car I notice the dude had his dick in hand already FULLY jerking off-I moved right the fuck away from the car and started walking. Luckily he didn't get any MORE weird than that. In perspective I should have just popped him one in the face too JUST for being a fucking creep.

It's one thing to proposition me, it's another to either force me to see it or attempt to force me to touch it. NOT going to happen. 

I had one guy proposition me and I told him "naw, and if you are going to get weird you can just let me out now" and he just kind of laughed and said "naw I wont get weird"...the rest of the trip was cool. LOL


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## 3knd (Jun 26, 2013)

A few years back, I was In MA. a guy In a van with the Title, "Firefighter" cruised by me slowly. In my head, I thought the he was just trying to to get a good look at me to see if I looked like someone he could trust. he drove by again and asked whefre I was going, so I got in the car. eventually 15 minutes down the road he asked if he could See "Mine" and then touch on him for a total of a $100. 
....Yep, weird.


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## Charlie (Jul 5, 2013)

I got a ride and a job from a gay landscaper. The first day he seemed cool, he said he was short handed because he just fired two workers for drinking on the job that day and asked me if I want a job. I said yes because I kind of felt sorry for him. Turns out he lied about the firing, nobody drank ON the job, I didn't find this out until about a week in. I found out the first night that he was gay and assumed his roommate was his partner. Then his partner went on a trip and was gone, this is when bossco's true colors really began to show and he kept hitting on me and I would have to give him the evil eye and shrug it off. HA! He confessed he thought I hated him because he's gay, I told him I have friends who are gay, but they don't hit on me, so him being gay wasn't the problem. That was a weird situation, not anything too bad, but it made me feel awkward.


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## Johnny Lightspeed (Mar 14, 2014)

tweeker truck driver tried to snatch my girlfriend in mexico city. tweeker train crew tried to snatch her out of a gondola just north of mexico city a few weeks later. mexico is a lil sketch like that sometimes


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## JillyBoe (Mar 14, 2014)

My weirdest ride is actually sitting next to me right now. I met him at a rainbow gathering in Arizona and he agreed to take me and my girl with him out to the Grand Canyon and wherever. Well he's one of those crazy spirtual types and calls himself "Saint Germain." He's a really good dude to be honest, but the wingnutty shit isn't cool when going 80 through traffic. So we are going through LA during rush hour and he begins weaving "protective circles" around the vehicle (hands off the wheel.) He did however get us to our destination safely and has proved to be a good friend even. Wingnuts are people too. Lol


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## Odin (Mar 15, 2014)

Jillyboe said:


> Wingnuts are people too. Lol



Hahaha... I'm having sharp stomach pains just from laughing... Good one... Right on... Cherio...::drinkingbuddy::


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