Hitchhiking from Vegas to Arizona before Coachella

I woke up in a Vegas hotel room, four dollars remained from the beer and roulette filled trip. I used all four dollars to catch two buses towards the Railroad Pass Casino, a spot I've hitchhiked from several times when heading towards Arizona. I caught a wrong bus, I wound up far from Railroad Pass, but just a mile or so from a freeway.

I thumbed from this freeway for a while, heading up to the main flow of traffic until a cop stopped to give me the word to get off the road, down to the on ramp I went. I waited a while until an empty coal truck stopped for me, I hopped in the back of the big truck and rode it as far as Boulder City.

I got to walking from there, soon getting picked up by a photographer who worked at the Hoover Dam, that's where he dropped me off. There I got picked up from a boxer who was my age, he was headed to Kingman. He was the father of a little girl he absolutely loved, the mother was pregnant with another. Even though they were no longer together, he loved her still too and thought perhaps they'd get back together, but wasn't overly concerned about that part. He told me that when she got pregnant they didn't get along, mostly because they couldn't hang out and relax with a beer or anything they'd normally do.

He told me about his boxer and fighter days, he had a story about a guy named Tiny (who was a really big guy) that he beat up pretty good at a construction job. He said he used to do at least 800 push-ups a day, a car accident eventually slowed down his training and ambitions to do more pro fighting.

When we got to Kingman we stopped at a Subway sandwich shop, his buddy was working inside and got me  a free sandwich. He drove off while I munched away on the satisfying meal. From there I headed to the on ramp for I-40. After a few minutes of waiting another hitchhiker appeared at the bottom of the ramp, he noticed me and backed into the grass a bit to take a seat to wait for me to catch a ride.

My ride came in the form of a big rig truck, a happy man from Tanzania behind the wheel. He bragged on Tanzania and other parts of Africa, saying it was much more free than here in America, the people were happy there all the time is what he told me. He was heading to Michigan, but I only rode with him 20 miles or so to the turn off for the road towards Phoenix.

My next ride was in a pickup truck, a guy heading all the way to Phoenix. He told me about his kids, one of which was in prison for 10 years, no out, but he preferred not to associate with any longer. His other kid he once caught smoking pot, to teach him a lesson he decided to sit with him and smoke an entire big bag of weed in one sitting. He thought this would disgust his son, instead him himself got hooked on pot and had been smoking ever since, including the joint he smoked with me right after telling this story.

I told him stories of my travels, he told me some about his earlier days, we even talked about things like aliens and 2012 rumors. He dropped me off at a shopping center in Surprise, AZ where Molly was waiting for me. He shouted out the window to her, "What you guys are doing is awesome!", Molly smiled and said something like, "I know!", the next 100 hours would prove to be a great example.

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