If you’ve read the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, you’ll find a great deal of humor in it.  Sadly, you won’t find anything extremely useful on actual hitchhiking itself.  Because some of you may have spent over a week going through this masterpiece of fiction only to find your hopes of learning how to get around the country dashed on the rocks of satire and sarcasm, fear not.  I have some tips for you.   

Yesterday was my first day hitchhiking.  I had never hitched before and had no idea what to expect.  Because of this many of you may think “what the hell could he know after one day?”.  Plenty my friend, and to prove it I will give you a little pearl of wisdom on gaining leverage.  When heading down south it’s best to hitch with one of these  

There are few things that pull at a woman’s heart strings quite as much as a rose in a Coors Light bottle.  It’s the kind of thing that screams “pull over and pick me up so we can get married and share a deep fryer.”  

Now that I’ve proved my worth in this genre, I’ll continue.  Since February I have been without a job and traveling with dancers.  Now that Blues It Or Lose It was finished, it was the time to up the ante.  I’ve never hitched before and one thing I learned very quickly is that just like Pavlov’s dogs, the moment you mention it, thoughts turn immedietly to people being murdered and chopped into pieces with an axe and thrown into a Chucky Cheese ball pen. 

Why people continue to imagine an axe continues to amaze me because anyone who has actually hitched with a pack knows how large and inconvenient an axe would be.  I suggest you start turning your fear fantasies to small items like ice picks, fishing knifes, toe nail clippers, or snow globes. If you pick someone up on the highway who’s bringing home a sweet little present to their daughter, don’t be fooled!  The airports weren’t.

 Those were dark times during the reign of the Boston Snow Glober.  

I didn’t know what to expect when I started, but fortunately I had done a little research that helped me out.  Before beginning my journey I had two assumptions.  One, I figured I would be like Chris McCandless and just walk down the highway with my thumb upturned and simply wait for someone to pull over and grab me. 

Two, I thought I would just walk most of the way.  For anyone who has ever hitchhiked, let alone with a bag that weighs over 90 pounds, they will understand when I say this:  THANK FUCKING GOD I BAGGED THAT IDEA!  An adventure becomes much less exciting when your spine eventually collapses underneath you.  Since I don’t have a traveling chiropractor I had to make some adjustments.  

Along with that, I soon realized that anyone with the adventerous spirit to pull over and grab me, would also have to have Jedi instincts because pulling over quickly while doing 80 down a freeway takes a lelvel of intuition reserved for advanced bullet catchers.

I was pleased to find that it took me all of ten hours to hitch from St Louis, MO to Nashville, TN.  Having grabbed four rides, I learned a few things I will now share with you all.  Here are some tips to getting around the country by hitching that I have found quite useful.

1. Grab a sign.  Letting people know where you’re headed makes things much easier if they are going in the same direction

I chose a dry erase board because one, cardboard looks terrible and screams “I might beat you to death with your own glove compartment to get the rest of that sandwich you’re eating.”  With a D.E. board I can color it and make people feel like they’re helping a failed art student who never learned to color fonts properly.  Second, since I’m going from city to city, it saves me from having to find a new sign everywhere I go.

2.  Get off the highway! Get to a place where they are driving slowly, but in your same direction.  The best place I found was near or on the higway’s on ramp.  They’re going slow enough to stop, and they won’t be going down Billy’s Farm Road to a house out in the middle of nowhere

3.  Get a good “pick me up look”.

 Stop looking like Nick Nolte trying to blend in with the local Hawaiian tourists by sniffing too much glue.  Smile, look sexy, do a little dance, whatever it takes to make them think “this person looks like they’d be worth spending time with in the car.”     

Good Example:

Poor Example

If you look like this, you’re gonna have a hard time getting anyone but lonely truckers.

4.  Make sure they have room to pull over.   Don’t pick a tight place with a narrow corridor.  Find a place that’s easy for them to grab you if traffic is behind them

 5.  Don’t swear at your ride. 

I learned this from a metro station in St Louis.  Pearls of wisdom.  If you and your ride have a disagreement over what type of mineral water to bathe your puppy in, screaming “fuck you, you fuckin fuck!” as a rebuttal is not likely to get you any extra miles on your odometer.  Let grievances pass till you’re to a place where you can catch another ride. 

And there you have it.  Some helpful hints on hitchhiking.  Tune in tomorrow when I will tell the story of my journey from St Louis to Nashville and the wonderful souls who helped me get there.

After a fun time playing around St Louis, I had an epiphany:  I feel more people out there want to have fun like me but may not know how.  So I decided to give you all my step by step guide to picking up ladies at the bar so you too can enjoy yourself in whatever town you may find yourself in.

Step 1: Get yourself a drink.  Here we have the subcontinental with gin, cucumber juice and sex appeal, shaken and served in a glass with a little straw and a big fuckin piece of cucumber.  If there’s one thing I know it’s that chicks dig little straws and big cucumber slices.

Depending on your confidence level you may need two 

Step 2: Secretly photograph all potential candidates. 

If they get angry by you doing this quickly kick over a chair and say “no one questions the press!”  Such antics, though extreme do excite the hidden “tough camera man” fantasy girls seldom admit they have.  If they think you can make a living with a little phone, then it won’t matter what size your penis is. 

Step 3: Excuse yourself to the bathroom under the guise of having eaten bad guacamole and check over photos to see who looks like they’d be ok with you annoying them for a half hour.

***Important note: Practice your pout face.  You never know when you may need to pull out the “I just got a text that my goldfish who had been struggling with boredrom for the past month finally went belly up.”  Such stories can trigger sympathy and can be just as effective as drinks and truck loads of chocolate.

Step 4: Check your speech and literacy. 

Let’s be honest, you’ve been drinking so if you read “soul power” when you see this then you might as well save yourself the time and effort and go hit on a bar chair.  It will be far more receptive and supportive of your condition and you won’t even know the difference.

Step 5: Give each candidate the “oh yeah” stare.  Be careful you don’t mix this up with the “I’d like to eat your liver with fava beans and a nice chianti” stair.  

When one of them acknowledges your look and locks eyes with you, it’s time to break out the secret weapon.

Secret Weapon: The Trillion Dollar Smile! (do not attempt if you are English)

Now this may surprise some of you, but it truly works.  The sudden change in facial expression will be so powerful and shocking that it will temporarily put them into a state of subconcious diseray.  They won’t know how to think, swallow, or even sneeze.  In these precious few seconds it’s time for you to get up and go talk to them.  By the time they come to, you’ll be neck deep into talking about Power Rangers, they won’t know how to get you to leave.  

To Close: Repeat either step one or the pout face with the goldfish story.  Each are effective in their own right.  If you’re looking for a fail proof close to seal the deal you can always ask them to come home with you to see your mannequin leg lamp.  

Nothing says do me on the stove like a mannequin leg lamp.

And there you have it.  My 5 Steps To Picking Up Chicks At The Bar, along with the Secret Weapon and The Fail Proof Close.  Enjoy your great success!  

If you have any questions, please send a letter with $5 to “Feed A Traveling Otter Inc.”  All donations given are tax deductible and score major points when you tell a girl “that’s right babe.  I donate money to save otters.”  

*** Be sure to follow me as I walk and hitchhike my way across the country with nothing but my wits, my smile and a big fucking back pack***

After a late night of partying, I awoke to the peaceful sounds of my hosts in preparation for their move.  I swore by the calm feeling inside of me that it was at least 11:30.  Such dismay to find it was 9.  In a way, it was like when i called to cancel my atuo insurance and they told me I would receive $239 back.  Holla!  Then the woman I spoke to told me she miscalculated.  ”I’m sorry, that will be $99 back.”  There is a term used by master chess players when someone moves a piece and then attempts to change their move.  It’s called “tough titties, you fucking moved”.  A long term mind you, but one I find would have been quite appropriate in this instance.

Last night I was happy to receive an invite from a beautiful little lass to have dinner

with her and her family.  Having a home cooked meal on the road is like cat nip for gypsies.  While there, she decided to give me a lesson on how to play the oboe.  Mind you she’s a classically trained player who has a mini wood shop in her room for making reeds.  I felt if someone was going to teach me how to make the proper embouchure, the French term used to describe the mouth position used when either blowing an oboe or a man with a scarf smoking a cigarette, she was the one.

Note the deep concentration in the facial lines.  The powerful pressure on the diaphram.  After looking at how I played the oboe, I imagine every chinese man that 

went to an opium den should be a master.  

I laugh at my own joke.

Learning to play the oboe can build up a jonesing for sugar.  Fortunately the family knew this and didn’t want me pulling a Bruce Campbell by going after their daughter asking her to give me some sugar.  In a preemptive strike against my hormones, they took me to the Custard Station, conveniently located next to a train station.  Apparently, this is where trains that break an axle go to be put down, pureed and turned into edible goodness.  Much like how horses are turned to glue.  ”Mmmmmm…freight train.  Glaaaaauuuuugh.”

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As you can see by the undramatic picture above and to their great relief, it was open.  I found myself there with a frozen cup of peanut butter custard that was labeled a “mini” but was about as mini was the single scoop salted oreo ice cream my friend Gabri got me when I was in Denver

That delicious monstrosity was taken after I had already worked on it awhile and is one of the few things I know that could make Adam Richman from Man Vs Food do a double take.

“That’s enough ice cream to go onto each piece of pie.”

Yes it is Adam.  It was also enough ice cream to get me to yell “fuck it” in defeat as I chucked it into a bush, unfinished.  

Later that night, just to prove I was making my way closer to the south, I ran into a chick coup that flooded my memory with thoughts of deliverance. 

Perhaps if I learned dueling banjos on the oboe, I could avoid red neck gang rape. Then again, that instrument is awfully phallic.

We ended the night dancing blues to an awesome blues band whose name I never got.  I just enjoyed watching a group of black women staring at my friend and I with a smile as we strutted our moves.  In classic fashion, I took my shirt off while there.  There is no place too good that it can’t take in one shirtless waffle.

This is my last night in St Louis.  Tomorrow I start my hitchhiking journey towards Nashville.  I fit my life into a pack today and decided it was a good thing I have a lot of energy or else lugging that thing around might be disheartening.  I had to work on setting up my tent a few times so I didn’t get hit with a case of down syndrome while in the middle of nowhere.  Getting ready to leave, I do not feel a strong sense of any emotion.  Mostly just a feeling that it’s time to do this.  Like starting a new job, you just buckle down, focus and learn as best you can until you get the hang of it.  This will take some getting used to.  Either way, it’s time for me to do this.

Starting all of this, my emotions go to the girl I fell in love with and had to let go of to continue this journey.  I miss her.  I have an aptitude for being a lone wolf and going my own way, but some prices are steep and hard to pay.  I don’t know if I made the correct decision or not, or whether or not either exists in this case.  Merely a tough decision.  I  have had many mixed emotions about that and it’s difficult bringing that into the start of such a profound adventure for me.  We all carry baggage of some kind around.  For now, this will be part of mine.

So I bid adieu.  Be well St Louis and thank you for a weekend full of wonderful memories.  Till we meet again..

Wesley

Yesterday was commitment day.  Finances are being invested and unlike sex, there’s no pulling out now.  Time to purchase all the goods.  Got the last of my stuff together and had a fun time at REI trying to get my stuff to all fit into one bag. 

This is Sarah.  Sarah could be describe as helpful, industrious, and someone who was constantly giving me a smile that said “you really don’t know what you’re doing do you?”  My answer: no I do not.  I’m simply doing this.  I’ll figure it out as I go.  Ready, Fire, Aim as the saying goes.  

After finally spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get a Samoan sized sleeping bag onto my back pack MacGuyver style, we finally had a brilliant idea: longer straps.  Ta da!  I did get many a helpful tip from all the staff members and found out that my picture was posted on the REI screens upstairs where people were making jokes about my sleeping bag attempts.  Fame is fame I suppose.  If it scores me a deal at another store than hot damn.  All I want is to find a way to get past their 10% tax rate.  Paying with that kind of financial baggage is like passing a kidney stone.

After grabbing the essential stuff I went to Guitar Center and played a few POS baby guitars that could perhaps survive the trip.  It’s hard to imagine being away from my baby for that long, but my guitar is far too expensice to take on this trip.  Of course I did find this one.  I entertained the idea of rolling around in toxic waste for awhile and using the law of attraction to attract ten extra arms.  My playing could be absolute shit, but who wouldn’t donate food money to a hindu god with a back pack and a huge ass?

I ended my night at a birthday party with a my friend Andrea and her boyfriend Clayton.  Some of you may remember him from the movie Twilight:

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This man will be my one and only link to that series.  The previous night we showed our “gay pride” on the rainbow stairs of the Moonlight Hotel and I forever locked into other people’s memories that I would go gay for Twilight.  I laugh simply because I watched all of ten minutes of that show and promptly fell into a pleasant coma. Sometimes your brain just does small favors for you.

Let me now educate you all on the wonders of something called The Death Coaster.  A friend of mine treated me to a day at Six Flags Elich Gardens while I was in Denver.  Though magic Mountain has basically spoiled me to all amusement parks, I did walk away from this afternoon with a unique piece of knowledge.  A friend of hers was designing something called The Death Coaster.  Basically it is a roller coaster that is used for captial punishment.  Instead of someone getting the chair or the gas chamber, they get to ride this three looped metallic snake of death.  First loop knocks you out, second loops kills you, third loop makes sure your dead and attempts to blow up you head (that last part may or may not be my own creation).

This was what the birthday party talked about.  We went event furthur by deciding the best way to pay for death row victims was to make thier deaths a pay-per-view event.  ”One and four people who ride this ride will have their head explode. Who will it be?”  Personally, I think a ride like this would raise crime cause there are far too many people who would want to go out by Death Coaster.  Cake or Death Coaster?  Death Coaster.  

It is said that the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.  That may be, but the journey of 5000 miles begins with a blog entry.
Hey everyone!  It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged.  Most of you remember my articles about from my last blog as I expounded humorously on my sex history with gym ropes, stuffed pandas, lonely furniture and lots of women.  After I got about halfway through I decided to stop and do the rest on my own and form it into a book.   It is in the editing process so for those of you still chomping at the bit to read what I did with whom to make your work days more bearable, do not fret.  Salvation is close at hand.  
As many of you remember I decided to pull up stake and take my own journey around the country.  My own personal walkabout.  A chance for me to make my way around the country on nothing but faith, hospitality and the hopes that the occupants of the large vans stopping to pick me up aren’t huge fans of Silence of the Lambs.  
Though this blog begins now, my walkabout technically started in February.  I wasn’t feeling very fulfilled with my life and needed a change.  I needed to do something drastic.  I quit my job and decided to travel in a way that put me outside of my comfort zone.  I had a brief stay in Tulsa, where I had to make the difficult decision of whether or not to stay there for a girl I really liked or to continue on with my journey.  Making that decision was about as much fun as getting a root canal with a phillips head screw driver.  
Needless to stay after a month of going back and forth I decided to continue my journey which has not landed me here: in a Panera Bread in St Louis, stealing internet so I can entertain you all with my stories. 
Because of the present state of gas prices and my desire to push myself out there, I have decided to make my journey by foot and by hitchhiking.  I feel vastly unprepared for this journey and have done nothing like this before.  Much of my prep time was spent deciding whether or not to choose the journey or the girl (Tulsa unfortunately came with the girl), which has left me to basically start this trip on a wing and a prayer. 
Though not ideal, it is how I prefer it in many ways and I will tell you why.  When I was little I heard a man speak.  He was a traveling preacher who decided to live his life completely on faith that God would provide him everything he needed.  He had no job, though he had a family which he needed to provide for.  He simply trusted that God would give him what he needed as he spread his message of love.  The courage this man had along with the stories he told intrigued me.  What I didn’t know was that his story would continue to  resonate with me still to this day.
Now I am not a Christian, but that doesn’t take away my appreciation and respect for this man’s journey.  And so I have found in my life, I often like putting myself in situations where I have no idea what to expect and trusting for a great outcome.  And such is the nature of this trip.  I could relate it to a box of chocolates like Forrest Gump saying you don’t know what you’re going to get, but I’d say a box of Bert’s Every Flavor Beans would be more precise becuase in that you have the danger of getting a cod oil flavored bean.  Chocolate tends to avoid putting road kill in the middle of their treats.
I will be making my way south to Florida to dj a blues event in Pensacola and then make my way West and North for Emerald City Blues in Seattle.  If you are in the path I am going and want to house an otter for a night or two, please let me know.  In this journey I find I will be much like Blanche Dubois, continually relying on the kindness of strangers.  However, I am willing to go beyond that and rely on the kindness of friends as well.  
I will keep an ongoing journal about my travels and journeys so be sure to stick with me as I travel.  My desire is to do this for a year.  Though technically this all started in February, I am willing to make now the starting mark.  I look forward to seeing what each new day brings and to seeing who of you I meet along the way.
So here’s to happy trails and humorous blog entries.  
Warmest Thoughts,
The Otter Waffle
P.S.  I have found I am as much jungle cat as I am otter, so if any of you can give me a good amalgamation I will be happy to use it as a nickname.  

(Source: wacsonwacsoff)