When i first started really traveling i did it by myself. I got off of my train after 26 hours of miserable cold and i walked towards a flying J gas station where met this guy Brett. He was cool enough and he introduced me to his good 'Friend" Puke. This guy drove (may be still driving) a big blue van with Harley motorcycle stickers on the two back windows. Brett ended up leaving at the next stop while rubbertramping, but me in my naive beginner stage of traveling decided to coninue on with the journey. For some reason i though that New Orleans was a good place to go for the winter..don't know why i thought the same thing as like one half of every other traveler kid in the world...but anyways, we were rubber tramping: This guy refused to ask ANYBODY for extra gas. The whole three weeks i was with this guy he promised to get me to NOLA for halloween but refused to do any work himself. I had to force him to go to the highway and fly a sign, and when he did, he only did it for like a half an hour each time and quit complaining that he was too tired or that the state police had fucked with him. So i deal with this guy's shit for about two or three weeks and i ended up being less than a mile from Memphis. He REFUSED to drive me the twenty seconds across the bridge into town to drop me off because he 'hated driving in the city'. This guy made me do all of the sign flying, panhandling, whatever, while he sat back and beat his dog for eating the food he left in the van. The dog, by the way, was 'stolen' from an even more abusive situation. I couldn't imagine a more abusive situation for that pooor dog. In the end, this guy stole my atlas, my cell phone, my magic marker (credit card), my umbrella, and my dignity. This dude left me not even half a mile from downtown memphis. He refused to take me across the bridge to memphis because he hated driving in the city. It took me five days in the rain to hitch a ride a half a mile into memphis. So any time you meet a guy named Puke in a big blue van, dont take the ride. His real name is Dustin, from Arkansas, i think.