So far so good! I rode from Forest Glen to Jessup, MD, and from there to a rest stop north of Baltimore. As I was making a sign when some folks from O’Shea Trucking Inc. asked where I was headed, and offered me a ride to the Bronx. They dropped me off before they got back to their office so I wouldn’t get too far off track, which was well-intentioned but turned out to be very difficult to get out of on foot.

I don’t particularly like Manhattan but I try to go to Bluestockings when I’m there. This was a good place to sit and read Crime and Punishment and use the wifi to plan a camping trip.

So far it has very consistently taken 45 minutes to get a ride if I stand out somewhere with a sign. It was difficult to find a good on-ramp in the Bronx to hitchhike from, but soon I was picked up by Mark, a mechanic and total hippie, who took me to a rest stop in upstate, “the only rest stop in New York with an escalator,” where I am now. Here I have been asked multiple times if I was hiking the Appalachian Trail and got lost, I have been offered trash bags to keep my stuff dry, and I have been asked by an employee if I could fix his phone (I could not).

Now I’m heading to the Slide Mountain wilderness, where I will spend a few rainy days.