Picking up hitchhikers

[Mojave]

We did once when I was on leave from the military another guy whose truck broke down at the range.

I sat behind him in the truck and he was super shady, but I had my hand on my pistol and the old man had his. Not sure why he was so weird.

 

[Mojave]

I had forgot, a gal flagged me down one night in Vancouver, BC. Made a loop to go back and get her and someone already picked her up. Always wondered if she got abducted, or what happened to her.

Not sure I would do it again.

 

[KenLee]

I probably stop way more than I should, but I've never been very good with risk aversion. Sketchy looking dudes alone after dark are usually still a no.

 

[Szwampdonkey]

Never

1. My old man picked one up in the late 80s, sketchy and twitchy once he got in as the stories goes as told by him. Acted real nervous the whole time, kept rubbing his right jeans pocket. After awhile he refused to get out. My old man drove to the nearest store (for witnesses or assistance) and stopped abruptly and pulled the keys and hopped out. He had to drag the guy out who then fought back. My old man subdued him and held him down until cops got there. Guy had a knife in that right pocket he was fondling so much. My old man told me under no circumstances should i ever pick up hitchhikers when i grew up. This stuck with me.

2. It’s the age of cell phones. If you’re such a scoundrel that you either don’t own a cell phone or you don’t have a single soul to call to come assist you you clearly got a screw loose. In which case, refer to reason 1 for what happens in those types of cases.

If my wife is broke down she calls me and we go from there.

 

[Dos Perros]

If a hitchhiker I picked up is acting sketchy I have a button I can push to fire an airbag I have installed into the passenger seat. If I have enough time I can open the sun roof and they should eject cleanly.

 

[NRA4LIFE]

I hitch hiked a ton in college as my dad was working out of state quite a bit and my mom was too busy with all of my siblings. I went deer hunting once over 200 miles, the last 30 in the back of an open pickup in late November in Northern WI with a couple older gals. It was cold. I used to pick up people until this guy I picked up in Illinois read from the bible out loud and played Jesus music on his walkman or something the whole time. That was it. I'll stop to help people from time to time that look to be in duress.

 

[3forks]

I’ve picked up few guys who needed rides, but nothing too crazy.

I’ve been on the receiving end of the deal too. Once, I was hunting with a buddy about 45 minutes outside of the town my dad grew up in - in Colorado. My buddy and I had driven one truck from town to where we were hunting. I killed a buck early and packed it down to the highway. Our plan was that I’d hike back in to meet my buddy so he could finish his hunt.

The pack out didn’t take long, and I figured I’d see if I could hitch into to town to grab my truck so I could leave that night from where we were hunting.

I ditched my pack, rifle, and blaze orange at my buddy’s truck, walked up to the road and stuck out my thumb. The first car that came by pulled over, and I walked up to the car and the driver had rolled the window down. It was a nice car, and the guy was dressed pretty formally. I on the other hand, had some blood on my pants and shirt from field dressing the buck. I was half expecting the guy to peel out when he saw that I looked like an axe murderer, but when I told him I was hunting and that I’d wait for some ranch truck headed into town because I didn’t want to get his car’s leather dirty - he just laughed and told me to hop in.

The guy was a lawyer in town and was acquaintances with my dad and his family because he had grown up there, too. I found out the guy was an avid fisherman, and later, I sent him a lithograph of a trout with a note to say thanks for the ride.

Flash forward a few years and I was guiding some fisherman on a river where I lived in Montana. Somehow the discussion of hitch hiking came up, and I told this story to those guys. Turns out, one of the guys had heard about the story from the lawyer because he had a summer house in that same town the lawyer lived in, and the lawyer had done some work for the guy. The guy said that the lawyer told him the story about picking me up, because he had asked him about the fish lithograph framed and hanging on the wall in the lawyer’s office.

 

[Tick]

Depends if I can tell if someone needs help or just a bum. Stopped in a parking lot once to let an old woman cross. Instead, she just got into my truck and started pointing which way for me to go. Took her a couple of miles to a grocery store. She got out and never said a word.

 

[NRA4LIFE]

Another time back in the early 90's (pre-cell phone) my transmission decided to take a dump about half way between Meeteetse and Thermopolis in WY. Hitched a ride with a couple guys into Thermopolis, again in the back of a pickup alongside a couple deer and an elk carcass.

 

[LeftyWilbury]

always on an as-needed basis.

wife came out to visit me when i was working in hawaii. we spend a day being tourists driving all over the island. we keep seeing this dude hitching on the side of the road. scraggly beard. tall, frizzy hair. saw him easily five times. we'd stop and go stare at some beach, get back on the road and hour later, there's the guy. finally driving "home" at 9pm speeding along at highway speeds on dark unlit road, there's the guy again hitching back to wherever. unanimous decision, we had to turn around and go grab him. guy slides into our small little passenger car and praises jesus for making us stop and pick him up. his name of course was moses. drove him an hour home and was not disappointed.

cruising out of my neighborhood when i lived in oakland in my sweet (mostly sarcasm on that...) VW bug i pass a black woman frantically waving at me. mostly well dressed, holding some papers. sure, let's see what's going on. pull over. stop the car and try rolling down the window and she hops in (because there's no point locking a 1968 vw bug in oakland, or anywhere) and she tells me she needs to get to taco bell for an interview. well alrighty then, let's do this. had to have her tell me where this taco bell was, it's oakland and i only eat real mexican food. hope she got the job. lol

only sketchy hitchhiking story was breaking down outside of stoughton, WI back in college on a failed drive from chicago to the badlands. four college kids on a frosty friday night in february on a dark road in wisconsin. SUV pulls up. woman rolls down the window, asks us if we need help. "just trying to get to stoughton for the night" she says hop in. we all crowd into the back. husband is driving. map said it was only a few miles to stoughton. the road is empty. we're poking along at 20 mph. speed limit is 35. woman is telling us wisconsin people are the nicest people in the world and they're going to the bar if we want to join them.... got the feeling it wasn't the first bar of the night...

good times. dont pick up too many anymore, always too much crap in my truck

 

[MallardSX2]

I absolutely help people that are broke down. Have given a lot of people rides to the store and such.

I DONT pick up drifters. They are almost always trouble.

 

[hunt1up]

I've only picked up one person and it was while out hunting. My buddy and I were hunting a general elk unit in WY. On this hunt we were staying in town and driving out to the forest to hunt each morning. One morning we got up into the forest and came across a dude maybe in his mid 60s, wandering down the side of the road in the pre-dawn dark. He was soaking wet and it was well below freezing. He had on a headlamp and had trekking poles. He looked like a zombie. Apparently him and his wife drove out from Wisconsin to go hiking with no real experience. It had gotten dark the night before and they got turned around and didn't know where their vehicle was. So he left his wife out in the forest with a space blanket and some snickers bars and went walking for help. He'd been walking aimlessly through the mountains all night. We gave him a ride down to the hard road and left him at this little gas station store that was set to open in an hour. That night we talked to the bartender at the hotel restaurant and I guess search and rescue went out with a plane/helicopter and found his wife. What possessed him to leave her and start hiking is beyond me. He was pretty much delirious and hardly coherent when we found him. This particular area had some very good ups and downs and a ton of deadfall. It was hard enough navigating it during the day when you knew where you were going.

 

[Crowmangler]

Funny story...GF & I were waiting at bus stop in Jackson Hole to go to the mountain & this snow hippie in a VW microbus pulled up & yelled at us & asked if we were going skiing. I nodded & he asked if we wanted a ride so I said heck yeah! Before she could even say anything I opened the door & hopped in with our stuff. I looked over & she was like "WTF are we doing?!?!?" I said "relax babe, he's harmless". On the way he stopped to get a Red Bull & burrito & I told her "now's your chance to escape", LOL.
She took a few pics of him & the inside of the vehicle & sent them to her friend in case we got murdered.
She was NOT happy about it at the time but I thought it was hilarious & we both laugh about it now.

 

[Poser]

Back in the late 90s when we carried giant CD books in our vehicles, I picked up a hitchhiker in Valdosta, GA on my way to a wedding in Miami. Dude stole my 500 CD book when he got out of the truck. I was so pissed that I turned around and went back looking for him as I was going to beat him to a pulp and leave him for dead on the side of the road. I never found him. I still get angry when I think about that.

Hitchhiking is pretty common on the stretch of road between Silverton and Durango: Thru hikers, mtn bikers, skiers, and sometimes hunters. I'll often pick any combination of those and often hitchhike back to my vehicle after backcountry skiing, sometimes hunting.

One time, I was trying to hitchhike after hunting and came out on the highway a good ways down the mountain from my truck and the weather was rough: freezing rain/sleet coming in sideways. It was hunting season, I was obviously hunting and dudes who were also obviously hunters passed me up without even tapping the brakes. I stood out there thumb in the air for 45 minutes or so and finally a Sheriff deputy gave me a ride. Don't think I didn't count the Texas plates with orange hats on the dashboard who passed me up.

 

[dylanvb]

Only time I have ever picked someone up was in the mountains on my way to a job when I passed what looked to be a stuck truck (F150) down a pretty well known Forest road that was iced out and a woman walking towards town on the main road. Probably a good 45 minute drive to town and she waved me down as I was in my F350 and asked if I could help them get out. I didn’t want to risk getting my truck stuck down the road because it was a good decline to their truck. Her husband was down at the truck trying to dig it out but it was basically high centered. Drove the husband who I found out was a cop to his mom’s house which was at least a hour away then dropped him off thinking he would be fine. Took the same road back home which was roughly 3 hours or so after I dropped the husband off and the tow truck was just finishing up getting the truck of the forest road and back on the highway, passed the wife who asked what happened to her husband and I told her I dropped him off at the house and that’s when she told me she had the house keys…. Whoops. I assume he called the tow truck because the area they were stuck in had no service.

 

[KsRancher]

As mentioned above. I will stop most of the time for a person that looks to be broke down and needing help. I will only pick up a hitch hiker if on my way home see that they will be coming by my house. I will glady get them 10 miles farther on past my house. I have told my wife that under NO circumstances is she to pick up a person she doesn't know.

 

[tony]

No
And I don't stop at wrecks either unless they happen on front of me or block the road.

I just call 911 if it looks bad.

My old man, used to pick up college girls in distress. Of course this was in the 70's. Still makes me laugh and creeps me out the same.

 

[Milestone522]

What would Jesus do?

Probably be murdered,......again.

 

[KsRancher]

My wifes great grandpa picked up to 2 hitch hikers. They killed him and took his pickup. They were escapees from a prison. In Tennesee in 1984.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

This thread turned dark fast. So here's a joke.

A truck stops for a hitchhiker and he jumps right into the cab without saying a word. Driver says "aren't you worried I might be a serial killer?" Hitchhiker says "No, the chances of there being two serial killers in this truck are slim to none."