Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker's Journey

by Elijah Wald and Dashka Slater

Book Overview

This fascinating tale of the author's cross-country hitchhiking journey is a captivating look into the pleasures and challenges of the open road. As the miles roll by he meets businessmen,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556526059
• ISBN13: 9781556526053
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Hitchhiking 101

If you believe that hitchhiking is a quaint bit of our recent past now assigned to culture's dustbin, Elijah Wald is here to tell you that reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Past forty now, Wald still successfully surfs the highways with his thumb out and a guitar on his back, and claims to be able to hitchhike across the country faster than a Greyhound bus can make the trip. In `Riding With Strangers' he presents a smorgasbord of hitchhiking information and lore in between stories of one of his cross country hitchhiking treks. He presents the when, why, and how of hitchhiking - its history, philosophy, and operating manual on how to do it best, and illustrates a whole unsuspected world of the highway that few people other than truckers and cross country hitchhikers ever experience. Wald's book resonated true with me. I did a fair amount of hitchhiking in the early and mid `80s, a time when hitchhiking as an activity was already past its cultural prime, and much of what Wald describes is consistent with the experiences that I had. My experiences with it gave me many interesting stories and happy memories, and I was glad to read that there are those like Wald still continuing on in the great tradition of riding the thumb. If you fondly remember your own hitchhiking days, dream of hitchhiking yourself someday, or simply find the freedom and symbolism of the act fascinating, `Riding With Strangers' is just the read for you. Theo Logos

Great book

Great Book. Fun, quick read, that shows that hitchhiking is still possible and effective.

On the road ... again

Nobody has yet taken up Elijah Wald on his Phileas Fogg-shrouded wager: He bets the cost of a cross-country bus ticket that he can hitchhike across America faster than a bus can drive it. That means Wald, a wandering minstrel who's thumbed rides all over the world, is confident he can start in his hometown of Boston and arrive in San Francisco in less than three days, one hour and 55 minutes - the time it takes Greyhound. Think he's bluffing? Don't bet on it. Judging from "Riding With Strangers," he knows every trick in the road-dog book. And if you thought hitchhiking was just for drifters, rodeo cowboys and the occasional serial killer, you might be surprised to learn that hitchhiking's Hall of Fame - if it had one - would include Charles Dickens, Janis Joplin and Ronald Reagan. But more than knowing the tricks - like making eye contact with every driver who approaches - Wald embraces the history and the rhythms of this random, often serendipitous, form of travel. Wald began thumbing rides when he was 16, and never stopped. At a moment when most Americans are shriveling toward isolation from and suspicion of their fellow man, Wald still believes in the kindness of passing strangers. It's his religion. "Hitchhiking is an exercise of faith, and the more you trust it, the more it rewards you," Wald writes. "Faith is a beautiful thing, if it gives you strength to do what you know you should be doing anyway. The more certain I am that if I take the less secure and more adventurous course the rides will arrive, the better my experiences on the road." OK, but didn't Ted Bundy kill hitchhikers? Wasn't The Doors' "Riders on the Storm" about a hitchhiking killer? Yes, but Wald argues the dangers are exaggerated by urban mythology and the road is a relatively safe place. He believes neither drivers nor hitchhikers face exceptional risks, and America's new "culture of fear" has turned every potential adventure - not just hitchhiking - into a risk not worth taking. Danger is, after all, what defines adventure, isn't it? At its heart, "Riding With Strangers" is an easy-to-read travel story about one cross-country journey on which Wald meets a motley assortment of people who take him a little farther down the road. They are missionaries and merchants, musicians and conspiracy theorists, salesmen and truck drivers, and more truck drivers. None is painted in great detail, but more in the abbreviated, impressionistic brush strokes that relatively short rides require. The journey he describes couldn't easily be replicated by a pedal-pushing, impatient motorist hurtling down the highway, dependent only on conveniently spaced gas stations, AAA and a compliant bladder. Whether it's listening to popular Russian mafia rock with a Moldavian trucker, or sleeping in the garden of Mark Twain's house in Hannibal, Mo., or enjoying the special comforts of modern truck stops (a perk generally reserved for big-rig drivers) - Wald gives an extraordinary spin to or