Travel superstitions?

[WanderLost Radical]

Does anyone of you have any travel superstitions? For example:
I have the feeling that if I dont draw a smiley on my hitchhiking sign, I won't get a ride.

I know its dumb but I can't help it

 

[Deleted member 16034]

If I'm in a car and we run a yellow light I have to kiss my hand and hit the ceiling. I'm convinced that if I don't do it I'll have bad luck until I can right my wrong.

 

[Haystack]

Anything that has to do with the number 13. I know it's so generic but I avoid 13 like the plague.

 

[WanderLost Radical]

If I'm in a car and we run a yellow light I have to kiss my hand and hit the ceiling. I'm convinced that if I don't do it I'll have bad luck until I can right my wrong.

In Quebec, people usually say that if you dont tap the ceiling after running a yellow light, its 7 years of bad sex ahah

 

[TMG51]

Does anyone of you have any travel superstitions? For example:
I have the feeling that if I dont draw a smiley on my hitchhiking sign, I won't get a ride.

I know its dumb but I can't help it

I don't think that's dumb or even superstition. Showing a little personality goes a long way when asking a stranger to let you into their space.

In many parts of the country, a yellow light means speed up. I wasn't aware of this superstition surrounding it.

I'm not a superstitious person but I suppose the closest I come to the spirit of this thread is that I believe in helping out others I come across on the road. I have a basic rule that if someone is a) traveling or b) on the side of the road, and I can help without going too far out of my way, I will. I don't really believe I'll earn some sort of karmic demerit for not doing so, I just think that sort of behavior stands out these days and it should be made more commonplace.

 

[kokomojoe]

If I see the number 77 or anything dealing with two 7s then I take it as a good sign that I'll be alright. Like I'm on the right path

 

[Rob Nothing]

None. But I do find it somewhat fascinating how common it is among certain crowds to lean that way, to adopt some form of superstition, moreso than among others. Sometimes it seems we all have a hidden OCD trait still working on us from the dark ages.. but I think there are practical reasons too why it might be beneficial, to be superstitious or at least profess to be.. and knowing this I suppose I should be cultivating something of my own, because it would certainly help to blend in better. Guess I'm just boring that way.

 

[Desperado Deluxe]

One I can think of with train kids is that pennies are bad luck. Sometimes at the hop out you'll find a pile of pennies.

 

[Deleted member 16034]

In Quebec, people usually say that if you dont tap the ceiling after running a yellow light, its 7 years of bad sex ahah

Well great, that explains a lot.

 

[OstrichJockey]

Does anyone of you have any travel superstitions? For example:
I have the feeling that if I dont draw a smiley on my hitchhiking sign, I won't get a ride.

I know its dumb but I can't help it

I think that getting rides definitely has more to it than "If they would stop, they will stop." I've used shitty signs, just black sharpie and a destination written on it and stood there for hours; then changing it up to a niiiiice fuchsia with a black outline, big smug smiley face and a glowing peace sign: BOOM - first person stops.

 

[EphemeralStick]

Any time I go over a bridge I try to say a little prayer for my friends and family who've passed. I'm not religious or anything but it's something that my grandmother always did so I got in the habit of doing it to. Feels weird when I don't.

 

[Hylyx]

If I don't wear all black then the bull will see me. Worked out so far!
But travelling without my special cup has been deemed verboten. So I guess that counts.

 

[Itvo]

I am absolutely mortified I will experience something bad while traveling at any given moment over any given reason.

If I don't wear my magic mormon underwear.

 

[jaws]

If I'm in a car and we run a yellow light I have to kiss my hand and hit the ceiling. I'm convinced that if I don't do it I'll have bad luck until I can right my wrong.

This must be some kind of epidemic or something because my older brother started doing it in highschool and he still does it at 30.

 

[jaws]

If I masterbate, I get depressed and paranoid.

As a man, I only feel accomplished by cumming in the pussy of a woman that I love.

AND WHEN I MEET HER I AM GONNA FILL IT!

 

[Art101]

Tell ya what I see I pile of pennies they are in my pocket lol.Superstitions I have a few,I always carry a copy of the book Das Boot when I hop.I dont know why but its always something I either find or buy right before I catch out.My lucky hat hasnt steered me wrong yet either sooo.

 

[chet]

I dont think this counts as superstition, but when im hitching I look every person that drives by in the eye, and give em' a big dumb smile.

 

[iflewoverthecuckoosnest]

Don't know if anyone else does this, but my traveling mate and I would always draw a little on/off switch on the back of our hitching or panhandling signs. We'd turn the sign on to make it work.

It was really silly, but we did it religiously. I still draw that little switch on the back of my hitching signs to this day, and I repeat the whole pattern, complete with the little "boop" sound effect he always made when he pressed the on button.

I ALMOST FORGOT MY LUCKY RAIL SPIKE!!! It has nothing to do with hopping trains, since I don't hop. I was hiking around a trail in my hometown with a buddy of mine. This trail follows abandoned train tracks from the gold mining era. He picked an old, rusty spike and handed it to me. I put it in my pack when I left for my first hitching trip, and it came with me all the way across the country.


I think I'll continue to carry it until it gets lost somewhere. No use for it, just a superstition that it somehow carries positivity and good luck.

Then there's these protection beads that a forest service worker gave me in Pennsylvania. She told me that they were from a shaman, and gifted them to me on a whim when she picked me up. They are beautiful glass beads that now hang on the string that connects my pepper spray to my belt.

I guess I have quite a few superstations for someone who does not intellectually commit to these kinds of ideas.

These rituals and objects just bring me emotional comfort, even if I know, on a practical level, that it doesn't make any damn sense.

 

[Rob Nothing]

Previous post in this thread was an outright lie. You could call it one.. a superstition of mine, that to speak liberally about anything of use to me in that way will kill its power somehow.

Camus once said (paraphrasing here) there is nothing that cannot be overcome by scorn.

For a long time I wondered about that, thinking--given the source--surely Camus was being cute and there must have been a warmly humanistic-absurdist way in which Camus meant the statement to be interpreted.

No, he meant it to be taken at face value: in your interactions with others, if you scorn or despise them enough, then
communication--even face to face verbal communication--becomes easy.

Reserve secrets for those who have earned it, basically, how I've always operated.

 

[yellowbrickfreeway]

Someone handed me a stone with a viking rune symbolizing 'wealth' carved into it years ago, and later that day a van pulled over and just straight said sorry he wasn't gonna give us a ride, but "take this" -- handed us $300 and sped off. That's not the only time something totally random and similar to that has happened while holding the stone. I never fly a sign now without the stone in my hand.