Tim and Ralph's Big Adventure

A year after graduation, Tim McLuckie and I hitchhiked to California and back. We originally set out to hitchhike to Colorado to go backpacking in the Rockies, but ran into some bad luck. I recently came upon some scraps of paper where I'd listed the people who gave us rides, so that helped us piece the story back together...

Ralph Gonzalez

2013-02-23

• [Tim's Mom to highway] (Tim) she took us to Baltimore and dropped s off at the first exit on the 495 Beltway.
• Good Humor Man
• van w 3 young people to Pitts
• orange pickup
• separated guy in little car
  • guy strung out on speed -> st louis (night in car) (Ralph) We drove through the night and took some of his "black beauties", like drinking 5 cups of coffee at once (plus we had several cups of coffee). Definitely overkill but it was the 70's...
• old man going to auction
• 2 chicks
• 2 assholes
  • spend night at Linda's in KC (Ralph) This was Tim's friend from school. First time I'd ever had bagels and lox
• fat broad in Opal
  • 3 weird bums and 2 weirdos (Ralph) this was 2 guys in a truck pulling a second truck with the 3 bums in it. We went with the bums into a convenience store and they came out with all kinds of food stuffed into their pants, which we all had for dinner. Later the truck broke down and the driver just switched them around and pulled the first truck with the second one.
  • bicycle freak in bulging VW (Tim) We told him we were spending the night at the Y. He later found us there and accused us of stealing his bike. I don't doubt his bike was stolen, but it wasn't us!
• spent night in Y
• VW bus, Jen to Vail
• VW bus- girl
• guy in new Audi to Dillon
  • [This is where we went camping in CO] (Tim) It was in the Gore Range north of Vail. This linkshows where we hiked -- directly north past Deluge Lake, up over the pass with snow, and down to the snow-rimmed and snow-fed pond/lake with trees on it's north side. (Ralph) Here's the backpacking story as I remember it...
    • First day of backpacking, we climbed a long boulder-strewn incline to the top of the pass. As we neared the top we could see a thunderstorm approaching and were worried about being so exposed.
    • Peering over the other side of the pass, it was a steep incline starting at about a 60 degree slope, all snow and ice. We first sent our packs down. Tim's was first, he lowered it on a rope and then when the rope ran out he let it go. It slid and started tumbling and broke in half, spewing his supplies across the snow face. I slide mine down next and fortunately it did not start tumbling. We then realized we had left our gloves/mittens in the packs -- it was July, after all. Climbing slowly down we had to dig our fingers into the snow to keep from falling. Our hands got so cold that we were forced to start sliding to reach the bottom more quickly -- fortunately without injury.
    • Tim collected his equipment (but couldn't find his ID) and lashed his backpack together as best he could -- the frame had snapped in half. I put on my mittens and we hiked about 1/2 mile down to the pond. My fingers were still freezing and when I took my mittens off I was shocked to see that my fingertips were dark blue! After they warmed up a little I realized it was just the dye from the now-wet mittens. Exhausted, we set up our tent near the pond.
    • It rained heavily and around midnight we awoke in pitch black, lying in several inches of ice water, which was still rising. We hurriedly wrung out our sleeping bags, broke camp, and headed off bushwacking several miles through rough terrain in the black, until we reached the highway.
    • We caught a ride to a nearby town, put our sleeping bags and clothes in a laundromat, and waited for dawn. Between Tim's broken pack and the cold, we decided on the spot to ditch the backpacking plan, and I think we made up a sign like "California or bust". Maybe it was in the laundromat that we met Travis, who would split driving with us all the way to LA and also return to CO with us the following week.
    • Later I remember phoning my mother and telling her that Tim had broken his pack. She nearly fainted because she heard it as "Tim broke his back". Tim reports that he eventually got his ID back from a backpacker who came upon it on the mountain.
    • At the bottom of this image is the snowy slope we climbed down and at the top is the pond in which we ended up sleeping. (Tim) The slope we came down is at the bottom middle. If you look to either end of the snow, there are higher peaks with steep drop offs. The snow slope is pretty steep too. BTW, there was a lot more snow when we went. Global warming...

• Travis to CA (Ralph) We took turns driving 90mph straight through the desert all the way to CA. He had 3 cassettes: Pat Benatar one, Alan Parsons "I Robot", [can't remember]. One of the songs on the Pat Benatar album was a cover of one of the Alan Parsons songs ("Don't Let it Show"?), so we heard that one twice as many times as the rest of the songs. We arranged to meet Travis a week later for the return trip.
• drug addict chicanos to Venice (Tim) Didn't we sleep in between the wall of a private Beverly Hills mansion and the bushes fronting the wall? Prior to that, we stopped inside a clothing store on Hollywood Blvd. One of the sales guys came dancing up to us as I was looking at a jacket and told us he could give it to us for free. We just needed to hang out with him later. He was gay. We didn't go for the free jacket. (Ralph) I remember you asked him if he was straight and he said "Straight as a winding arrow!"
• buses to YMCA, beaches
• old man, job offer
• dealers
  • british drug addicts (Ralph) anyone see a pattern here!?
• tour guide
• californian, in van/house
• out of oceanside 2 guys in Honda
• 2 drunk maniacs
  • (Tim) At some point we ended up in Blacks Beach, a nudist beach. Ralph took all his clothes off. I left my shorts on, not because I'm shy but because I was worried about a painful sunburn. That night we slept in Torrie Pines State Park. We were woken up in the morning by rangers who told us to move on. At some point in La Jolla we were looking for La Jolla Blvd. I remember asking folks where it was (and pronouncing Jolla with a "J" sound). Ralph told me he thought it was pronounced with an "H" sound. Ralph knew that it was pronounced with an "H" sound, he was just being nice. At that point I realized I'd just spent about half an hour sounding like a dumb-ass. The other memory I have of La Jolla is getting in an argument about what filled you up. We we low on funds and hungry. Ralph's claim was that we should maximize the calories per dollar. I wasn't convinced but didn't have a good counter. We finally ended up buying and splitting a box of Captain Crunch. (Ralph) At another point we split a half gallon of ice cream and a bottle of creme de mente, I think when we slept in Beverly Hills -- in someone's private garden. Also as our money was running out we resorted to swiping sugar packets and ketchup from restaurants.
• navy guy
• ex con
  • Travis to Boulder. (Ralph) Same 3 cassettes.
• bus
• black dude out of Denver
• Ken to Topeka
  • Bonnie and Clyde (Ralph) I don't remember this, were they criminals?
• hikers in van
• construction worker JD's[?]
• engineer
• PPG man -> St Louis
• trucker Texan
• Goodrich guy
• army guy
  • Mike the trucker to Knoxville (Tim) Mike told us about his Vietnam experiences, including fragging a sergeant that made them go out on dangerous tours.
  • [(Ralph) somewhere in here is the ride we turned down with the two beautiful girls to go camping because we *had* to get to Nashville to see Lise, didn't we!?]
• home restorer
  • Lise & Mom (Ralph) this was a girl I met in Myrtle Beach the previous summer (Dan, Steve, Tim, and Ralph's Big Adventure). We got to meet her fiancee, so that was totally worth detouring through Tennessee!?
• trucker to truck stop
  • two speeding drunks (Tim) I believe we sat in the back of a pickup drinking (their) beer.
  • GW Smith (Ralph) I think this was a business guy in a black mercedes who was "giving back" and bought us lunch
• ex-hippie
• cowboy hat
• biker in a hurry
• VW rabbit
• [Tim's mom again?]