It was late October of 2006, and my road dog and I had just spent the last few weeks kicking it around Vancouver and the islands enjoying the many treats unavailable to us in the states, and cursing the ridiculosly high price of beer. Eventually the rain started and we grudingly decided that it was due time to head south back to the states. I had also just turned 21 and was looking forward to going back to where booze prices where actually within our means.
A friend of my road dog's gave us a ride to an on ramp he said would do us well and we started hitching south. Within about two hours we finally got a ride from a drunk contractor to an exit three miles from the border. Rather than wait for another ride in the middle of nowhere we decided to just haul ass down the interstate and hope we didn't see cop. This strategy worked well for us and about 20 minutes later we found ourselves at the border trying to explain how we got there without a car.
"Who dropped you boys here?"
"No one, we walked"
"You know its illegal to walk down the interstate?"
"Um, ya, but we're in AMERICA now, right?"
"Not yet your not."
Getting through the rest of customs went a lot easier than we expected. We had both been high on all types of mind altering substances for the past couple weeks and definitly looked it. Not to mention there was still a decent stench on marijuana smoke on every thing we had. Surprisingly though they just looked at our id's and our faxed copies of our birth certificates and waved us through, no search or anything. As we walked onto the American side a customs offical chased us down and told us that we had to walk off the I-5 and into this little bumfuck fishing town called Blaine WA. After stopping at the duty free for some two for a dollar whiskey nips, we obliged.
Once we walked into Blaine it was getting pretty dark, but we decided to get a 12 pack of Olympia ($3.99) and keep on hitching on the I-5 south ramp. After a few hours and most of the beers we where approached by a young native american kid who asked if he could hitch with us. Normally I would've told him to get lost, but being pretty drunk and devoid of any real hope of getting out of Blaine that night we said sure and passed him a beer.
This kid was definitly one of the most clueless people I had ever met on the road. He looked all of 17, told us he had hopped on an Amtrak hoping to get into Canada but was pulled off at the border. He was wearing a long sleeved flannel shirt and jeans and was carrying a small school style backpack. It was already down in the upper 30's and getting colder, so imagine my shock when he opened his pack, only to show us that the only two things he was carrying was a bong and a bag of weed. He had absolutely no gear!
Around this time we where approached by a very drunk fisherman who explained that he had just been kicked out of the bar for fighting with his wife. He invited us to come drink on his fishing boat for the evening, stating that there was no way we where making it out that night. We agreeded with him and followed him back to boat after picking up a fresh 12 rack. Normally I would've never gone back to some drunk guy's fishing boat, but my road dog at the time was a fairly large guy who I'd watched take down four marines just two weeks earlier and we felt pretty confident that we could handle any issues we might run into.
Immediately upon getting to the boat he offered to let us sleep below deck in the crew bunks for the night. The kid we had adopted took him up on the offer and went below while the rest of us stayed above deck to drink. As the night wore on the fisherman let on some pretty interesting details about himself. One: it wasn't his boat, two: the boat was undercrewed for the next trip, three: the boat was leaving at 5am (he let this slip at about 3am) and four: he was hopelessly addicted to meth and had recently sunk a boat because he was high.
At about 4am we decided it was about time to leave and find a place to crash. This is when it started to get really weird. He started accusing us of stealing all his smokes (neither of us smoked) and raw steak (we had no cooking gear). We went to get off the boat and he followed us above screaming about how we couldn't leave. What happened next is pretty blurry, but the last thing I remember is my road dog and I holding him upside down over the bow of the boat screaming about how if he didn't leave us alone we where gonna beat the shit outta him, toss him in the water to freeze and then rob the boat for real.
At about 6am we both woke up in some bushes about 500 yards from the harbor seriously drunk with a fresh layer of ice on our sleeping bags. Thats when it hit us... SHIT!!! We forgot the native kid!!! We decided to walk back to see if the boat was still there and sure enough, it was long gone. Guess he hadn't been joking about the boat leaving at 5am. We walked back to the I-5 on ramp and spent the next day and a half waiting to catch a ride and never saw the kid again. We felt bad about losing him to such a fucked up character, but at the same time he could've easily froze to death that night if he hadn't wound up on the boat. He was also a little chubby so we figured that he probably wasn't going to be sold into sexual slavery. More likely than not they forced him to work for free for a week and then ditched him in some random harbor town somewhere.
Moral of the story... don't pass out on fishing boats.
A friend of my road dog's gave us a ride to an on ramp he said would do us well and we started hitching south. Within about two hours we finally got a ride from a drunk contractor to an exit three miles from the border. Rather than wait for another ride in the middle of nowhere we decided to just haul ass down the interstate and hope we didn't see cop. This strategy worked well for us and about 20 minutes later we found ourselves at the border trying to explain how we got there without a car.
"Who dropped you boys here?"
"No one, we walked"
"You know its illegal to walk down the interstate?"
"Um, ya, but we're in AMERICA now, right?"
"Not yet your not."
Getting through the rest of customs went a lot easier than we expected. We had both been high on all types of mind altering substances for the past couple weeks and definitly looked it. Not to mention there was still a decent stench on marijuana smoke on every thing we had. Surprisingly though they just looked at our id's and our faxed copies of our birth certificates and waved us through, no search or anything. As we walked onto the American side a customs offical chased us down and told us that we had to walk off the I-5 and into this little bumfuck fishing town called Blaine WA. After stopping at the duty free for some two for a dollar whiskey nips, we obliged.
Once we walked into Blaine it was getting pretty dark, but we decided to get a 12 pack of Olympia ($3.99) and keep on hitching on the I-5 south ramp. After a few hours and most of the beers we where approached by a young native american kid who asked if he could hitch with us. Normally I would've told him to get lost, but being pretty drunk and devoid of any real hope of getting out of Blaine that night we said sure and passed him a beer.
This kid was definitly one of the most clueless people I had ever met on the road. He looked all of 17, told us he had hopped on an Amtrak hoping to get into Canada but was pulled off at the border. He was wearing a long sleeved flannel shirt and jeans and was carrying a small school style backpack. It was already down in the upper 30's and getting colder, so imagine my shock when he opened his pack, only to show us that the only two things he was carrying was a bong and a bag of weed. He had absolutely no gear!
Around this time we where approached by a very drunk fisherman who explained that he had just been kicked out of the bar for fighting with his wife. He invited us to come drink on his fishing boat for the evening, stating that there was no way we where making it out that night. We agreeded with him and followed him back to boat after picking up a fresh 12 rack. Normally I would've never gone back to some drunk guy's fishing boat, but my road dog at the time was a fairly large guy who I'd watched take down four marines just two weeks earlier and we felt pretty confident that we could handle any issues we might run into.
Immediately upon getting to the boat he offered to let us sleep below deck in the crew bunks for the night. The kid we had adopted took him up on the offer and went below while the rest of us stayed above deck to drink. As the night wore on the fisherman let on some pretty interesting details about himself. One: it wasn't his boat, two: the boat was undercrewed for the next trip, three: the boat was leaving at 5am (he let this slip at about 3am) and four: he was hopelessly addicted to meth and had recently sunk a boat because he was high.
At about 4am we decided it was about time to leave and find a place to crash. This is when it started to get really weird. He started accusing us of stealing all his smokes (neither of us smoked) and raw steak (we had no cooking gear). We went to get off the boat and he followed us above screaming about how we couldn't leave. What happened next is pretty blurry, but the last thing I remember is my road dog and I holding him upside down over the bow of the boat screaming about how if he didn't leave us alone we where gonna beat the shit outta him, toss him in the water to freeze and then rob the boat for real.
At about 6am we both woke up in some bushes about 500 yards from the harbor seriously drunk with a fresh layer of ice on our sleeping bags. Thats when it hit us... SHIT!!! We forgot the native kid!!! We decided to walk back to see if the boat was still there and sure enough, it was long gone. Guess he hadn't been joking about the boat leaving at 5am. We walked back to the I-5 on ramp and spent the next day and a half waiting to catch a ride and never saw the kid again. We felt bad about losing him to such a fucked up character, but at the same time he could've easily froze to death that night if he hadn't wound up on the boat. He was also a little chubby so we figured that he probably wasn't going to be sold into sexual slavery. More likely than not they forced him to work for free for a week and then ditched him in some random harbor town somewhere.
Moral of the story... don't pass out on fishing boats.
