Carlos and I, in an Ohio Photobooth. (Copy)

Carlos is my new best friend.  

I met him at a truck stop right before the Delaware Water Gap.  He was driving to Grand Rapids, Michigan!!!

673 miles away according to my phone.

I was psyched! That was farther than I wanted to go!

I hopped in and we hit the road.

Carlos is talkative, animated, and his whole body vibrates when he laughs.  Born and raised in Honduras, he has lived in the USA for 15 years.  His English skills are very basic and my Spanish is “muy poquito,” so we communicate with basic words and body gestures.  He has a daughter, a 2 year old named Gabriella and he hopes to move back to Honduras in 2 years to be back with the rest of his family.

“I love my country. You know?”  He laughs and shrugs his shoulders.

The miles stretch on.  NavMan, Carlos’ GPS device updates us constantly on our progress.  ”Contine 300 miles.” Carlos and I look at each other and laugh.  

Carlos taught me about different semi-truck engines.  Catepillar is the truck engine of choice.  ”All day, 24 hours, it goes.” He makes a fist pumping gesture. But, it is expensive to fix.  Like a BMW, he explains.  

I shared my food with him as we drive.  Raw almonds, raisins, and a Clif Bar.  

“You like that???” He squishes his face up towards me and shaking his head, talking about the almonds.  He perked up, though, when I gave him a hunk of my Chocolate Brownie Clif Bar.  He studied the wrapper and then put it in a cup holder on the dashboard. It was a funny moment as we were driving through the cornfields of Ohio.  Two men of totally different cultures, bonding over a trip and some shared food.

As the trip wore on, our breaks at rest stops got longer.  In Ohio, Carlos challenged me to a pinball match.  ”Pirates of the Caribbean” pinball!  I am decent at pinball, thanks to alot of time in my basement and an old pinball machine.  I thought I could take him.  Well, Carlos must practice at these rest stops alot, because he demolished me by over 4 million points.  In my defense, I did catch a couple of bad bounces though.

About 10 miles south of Grand Rapids, Michigan, as the sun set over cornfields, we said goodbye and I grabbed his email address.  

“Adios, Papi!”  He wishes me well.

Happy to be back to my home state, I await meeting up with some old friends.

Create Our World,

Ben.

“Sir, I look upon everyday to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.” – Samuel Johnston

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Tags: adventure travel blog, Benjamin Jenks, create our world, hitchhiking
Categories: Hitchin Stories., People.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Hitchin Stories., People.. 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.