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.