Lost Theologian

Tuesday, May 20th was an awesome day of hitchhiking. The day started right off the bat with a ride back towards Iowa City. It turns out that the man I had met the night before in the laundry room of the campground  worked in construction, and was currently working in Iowa City. He was one of the most generous people I would meet on the road, I only wish I had caught his name. When he began his load of laundry the night before, I had noticed that he seemed a little wary of the weary little bum setting up camp in the laundry room, but later that night he came back to get his things. When he saw me on the floor, he told me that he had something for me and went out back to his truck. He returned with a pound of smoked deer sticks and some blankets. I accepted the deer sticks, not really knowing what they were and told him that I'd be alright with just my sleeping bag. I thanked him, and we spoke for a bit before he went back to his camp site. On his way out he offered to take me to ...

My day had begun with much more luck . I had woken up under the impression that I would have to postpone the whole idea of hitchhiking. My GPS tracker wasn't cooperating, and without that, my folks would be worried sick about me while I was out. But, to my surprise, when I had checked my phone, I had found a message from my father telling me to leave without the GPS, to have fun, and to check in regularly. My sister drove me to the intersection of US rt. 45 and I-80, as she questioned what exactly I was doing and why. " Where will you sleep? ", " What if you get hurt? ", " What if you don't come back? ". All questions I had asked myself several times in the week before. I told her I would camp outdoors, and that where there is a road, there is a hospital. As for the last question, I didn't really know what to say. What if  I didn't come back? What if I became a statistic? What if I became another story on the news? These were questi...

Stranded. I knew I shouldn't have taken that last ride from Iowa 80, the world's largest truck stop. I made the terrible mistake of getting too sick of standing on-ramp way too quickly. So when my fourth and final ride of the day came around, I was eager to go wherever it was that she was going. The woman I ended up taking a ride from was going some 60 miles to Iowa City, which I figured would be populated enough to keep me going on my merry way. But in hindsight, I know now that if I had waited outside Iowa 80 until I could catch that one golden ride, I probably could have been in Oregon by now... And well, now here I am in the middle of nowhere, Oxford Iowa. Although I had ought to count my blessings, traveling 221 miles in one day, all while only spending two bucks on lunch is not too shabby for a first-time hitchhiker. Her name was Jen. She was a nurse from Iowa who lived just outside of Iowa City who decided to give me a life because I looked like her son-in-law ...