A bright, green fluid that looked like Hi-C’s Ecto Cooler was running along the blacktop from my 1989 Honda Accord.  

 

“Max, we had better get going!!!”

 

My little brother and I had stopped to take photographs overlooking the beautiful Lake George, in upstate New York.

 

My car smelled a bit like burnt metal as we pulled off.  We were a little over an hour south of Burlington, Vermont, where we were planning to spend a few days.  Burlington has good restaurants, a laid back culture, and a jamming music scene. 

My brother and I were taking a week to vacation together and were driving wherever called us.  Burlington happened to be one of those places.

 

Three miles up the road, smoke billowed from both sides of my hood, and although I kept pushing the gas pedal down, we kept going slower and slower… until we stopped.

 

We were 8 miles south of Ticonderoga, New York and I was about to be forced into my second hitchhiking experience.

 

***

 

 

 

 

 

 The past two days I have been telling old hitchhiking stories:  Why Hitchhiking is Essential to Create Our World

 and My First Hitchhiking Experience. 

The point of telling these past hitchhiking stories is that our Fate is a combination of events, which happen to us and how we, in turn, respond to those events.

Well, after getting my car towed to Ticonderoga and figuring out that it would take at least two days to have my radiator fixed, my brother and I decided to hitchhike that the next morning to Burlington.

 

The next morning with our thumbs out, in less than an hour a large truck pulled to the side of the road.

Patrick, I think was his name, and although he wasn’t supposed to pick up hitchhikers on the job, he wanted some company on his ride to Burlington.

 

Patrick was a marine parts supplier so as we drove to Burlington, we would stop at marinas to pick up and drop off large metal parts. 

 

In less than 2 hours, my brother and I were taking a photograph of Patrick and exploring the street of Burlington.

 

Two days later, we were headed back to Ticonderoga.  We sped through the beautiful mountains of Vermont as the leaves changed colors with an older couple that liked to hike, Haley, a young college girl on her way to school, and a middle-aged couple on a weekend vacation to enjoy some solitude in the mountains.  The way back to Ticonderoga took a little longer, Haley took us about an hour past our turn.  But before night fall we were back and my car was back on the road.  

 

Fate had intervened again and I was hitchhiking 4 years after my experience near the Appalachian Trail.

Again, I had a great time and met some wonderful people!!!

Create Our World,

Ben.

 

I am running a Font Experiment.  Each entry will have a different font, until I find THE font for Create Our World.

Please tell me what you think.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.

“You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true.  You may have to work for it, however.” – Richard Bach

Tags: adventure travel blog, Benjamin Jenks, create our world, hitchhiking, roadtrip around the USA
Categories: About Me., Hitchin Stories.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under About Me., Hitchin Stories.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.