The Great Hitchhiking Race

18/06/2020

For 10 different reasons I've decided that this year's July trip to the North Carolina waterfalls will be a camping trip and not a hitchhiking race. Thats ok. Its always been about the camping and I'll commit to hitch racing someone by the end of 2020 just for records sake.

Theres no better place to be than the mountains. Fresh air. Fresh water. No one else around. I've talked to people who were there last week and said literally there was no one else.

So for 10 other reasons, this may be the year you actually go!

I will be driving up July 5th arriving on the 6th. There are DIRECT flights to Asheville from Austin that cost $40 and only take 2 hours. (we'd spend more than that on gas station drinks/snacks if we hitched). You can search flights from your own airports and I can help. Or you can drive and meet us.

Our main group camping trip that will most resemble the hitchhiking race group will be July 6th - 12th (with some people leaving earlier)

And - big news - I've rented a big house just down the street from the falls by a lake on a few acres with hiking trails out the back door. My family will be out there til mid-August.

If you can't make the group camping dates but can come later in the summer, let's chat. Our guest house is a tent on top of the best waterfalls I've ever seen.

Let's chat right away if you're Intersted in joining this year.

22/07/2019

So what happened!? Let me tell ya. Here’s the long version. This year was the 14th annual hitchhiking race from Van, Texas to (near) Ashville, N.C. and the 16th straight year of camping out there for a week. (we drove the first two years). Last year my hitchhiking teammate Dan and I set the all time record so even though it was a small race last year, we beat the times of over 50 teams throughout the years. On good years people accuse us of cheating and say the race is rigged and all of that so this year just proves it’s not. People always only want to hear the bad stories of hitchhiking and really there still aren’t any, but this year’s race was pretty frustrating.

The night before the race, we had to cancel it. Darby was admitted to the hospital with some pregnancy related complications. She and the baby are good but the Doc’s said she was doing too much and needed to settle down. It took them a few days to decide to let her come home and then Darby and her mom were nice enough to make a plan that still allowed me to go on the trip. Once it was clear that Darby was fine, we decided to go last minute, but the trip would be shorter already.

This year, like last, was a small crew. I’m a full time tour guide now in Austin and I’m just over taking people who don’t pull their weight on a camping trip that’s my vacation so i prefer the small groups now. It means the hitchhiking part isn’t as fun or as easy but the camping, which is the main part of the trip, is much better. Less time wasted. Less logistics. Etc.

So we had me plus 3. Two teams of 2. We made it to Van around 10PM and played some traditional games at the tennis courts. Mom made breakfast. We took pics and hit the road. It was fun and what you all know and expect from the race.

Our first rides took awhile and I say that’s cause we got out to the street early. It’s good to go early but there’s such a thing as too early. Still a pretty normal day.

My partner Bob and I got a ride with a 17 year old kid who raced dirtbikes. He took us about an hour. I think he only picked us up cause our sign had a hashtag on it. LOL. It was a nice pickup and he was a cool dude.

We waited longer than usual and got a 2nd ride from a fun guy heading to Lafayette, Louisiana which basically meant he would take us as far as downtown Shreveport. That’s not the best place to be and good hitchhiking strategy would be to ask him to go a little out of his way to take us to the other side of Shreveport. (I’ve won the race at least 3 times by getting the driver to drop me just on the other side of Shreveport, btw. Shoutout to Ruston, LA) Our guy couldn’t take us so the next best strategy was to jump out of the ride early so as not to get trapped in the big city. Big cities are hard to hitchhike from because when you have 4+ lanes of traffic on the interstate the only cars that see you are the ones planning to take the next exit. More cops around to harass you, etc.

So we were planning to jump out early and still planned to go about 10 miles further when we ran into a completely stopped traffic jam. We spontaneously decided that the traffic would help and jumped out of our ride that would have still taken us 30 minutes further. The theory was the cars were basically already pulled over so it would be easier for them to pick us up.

Travis and Ben were ahead at one point then we were ahead of them by 40 miles and just as they were about to pass us on the map, they all of a sudden stopped too. Travis had the same exact planning as me and he decided to jump out of his ride to shreveport early as well and he also liked the traffic jam spot. He thought the traffic jam would be better to the first team spotted on the highway so he jumped out exactly .8 of a mile behind me. And we both sat there forever.

The video shows the traffic jam. We were .8 of a mile apart. We timed how long it took for a car to pass Travis and get to me and it was 29 minutes. (for less than a mile). For 7 hours we watched cars go by at less than 2 miles an hour and then the sun set.

I’ve hitchhiked easily over 200,000 miles and 30+ countries and thousands and thousands of rides all over the world and never had anything even close to that happen. (My previous longest wait was around 3 hours in the middle of the desert on some small road in backcountry Utah and even that ended with a good ride!)

Luckily we had a solid and mentally tough crew so we all just laughed. We did not have a support vehicle and we were already on a shorter than normal trip so at some point midday we made the decision that we would only take super long rides. Getting a 2 hour ride wasn’t going to help and would just put us that much further way from our cars parked at the starting line so we kept hitchhiking waiting on the Hail Mary ride. In all of my experiences, that ride always comes. But on that day it didn’t.

Here are some theories but still it just doesn’t make sense.

There was bad weather predicted on our route. “Hurricane Barry” was blasting through even though it was now a tropical storm.
The traffic jam was obviously the biggest factor. It lasted all day. I think the biggest influence it had was that people who were driving cross country were being told by their GPS to avoid the interstate. The risk takers are the people who pick up hitchhikers and we could see those people driving through the grass to cut over to different roads before they got to us. Hitchhiking is all about how many cars you see per minute and when you see half a car per minute the odds just aren’t great. Plus people were angry at the traffic jam and not in good moods to help out.
I have a new theory that after you’re sweaty and sun burt you’re damaged goods. The longer you’re out on the road the more homeless you look and the less likely you are to get a ride.

I could keep going. But if you’ve watched the video and read this far you get it. The only way i’ve ever known is to keep hitchhiking and “something crazy always happens” but this year we watched the sunset on us. It wasn’t so bad for me because travis was still there too and there wasn’t much we could do about it. Some people are reading this because they saw our sign, passed us, and then wanted to be friends. I guess we can still be friends, but I’ll let you know that the last guy who picked us up last year is a hero and has his initials tattooed on a competitors butt! You won’t ever get to be on that level since you left us out to dry! No free tours for you and your family in Austin, lol!

Because we had already missed a day, and we didn’t have the comfort of a support driver tailing us, we passed on some short rides and waited for the long ones that never came. It kept us closer to our cars and in the end we chose to catch a ride backwards to the starting line and grab our own car. It would give us so much more time at the falls and solve a few logistics problems on the other end too. We had already missed a day and didn’t want to sacrifice more just to save face. Camping and sliding off waterfalls was the main priority.

You can be a hater and say it didn’t work and that’s fine with me. You can have your moment now. I’ve hitchhiked for 18 years and I owe a lot of my success in life to the skills it taught me the connections it gave me. For the record, we ended up leaving Van at 4AM and we drove like normal human beings. We stopped for lunch and drove at a normal pace. We picked up groceries on the way but otherwise we were focused on the task of getting to the campsite. I always say we can hitchhike there faster than if you drove yourself and every other year that’s been true. So when we drove it took us 4.5 hours longer than it took dan and I to hitchhike last year. This year was a bit of perspective about how good we have been in the last 13 years. It makes the race more real.

So that’s the story of this year’s race. Nothing too exciting to talk about on the hitchhiking end except a big ole traffic jam but the camping out at the waterfalls with good friends and a few bears made it all worth it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat even if I knew it would go the same way. We were on the side of the road for awhile but that’s always better than being at work. I’m still proud of the race and the fact that I’ve helped hundreds of people who have never done it hitchhike across the country safely to my favorite spot in the world.

I’ll post the pics of all the fun we had later but for now enjoy the laugh at the video of the worst traffic jam i’ve ever been apart of and then laugh again knowing Travis was also in it just down the street.

Who knows how this year will go down in the history books, but to Trey i would say: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

20/07/2019

On our way home now. More updates tomorrow. For now - Bears! 3rd one was just a shadow, lol.

16/07/2019

I left my phone behind and this race is nothing to brag about. I’ll give you the full story one day next week when we get back from the falls but for now we’re safe and we’ll be at the falls soon. Gonna enjoy the camping for a few days with great friends. I don’t have a phone at the moment so when I don’t reply thats why.

15/07/2019

We have a race! Both teams are in cars headed east on today’s race year 14. But let me tell you a story about the last 2 years of the race.

My face is tattooed on my friends butt. It was a wild Wednesday night on 6th street and the tattoo was the result of a bet that was placed two years prior. The bet was on who would win last years hitchhiking race. We hitchhike from Van, Texas to some waterfalls in North Carolina. Click the link below to hear the whole story and see the tattoo! https://youtu.be/9C6oksMHbZQ Like and share this post and we’ll send you the temporary tattoo version! 😂

This video tells the story of the hitchhiking race bet placed in 2017 carried out in 2018 and ending with the butt tattoo in 2019.

15/07/2019

Year 14 of the hitchhiking race

We just started at 8:05 AM central time. The goal is to make it to sapphire, NC tonight.

Team #1 is Travis Donley & Ben Sprinkle

Team #2 is Aaron Bell and Bob Cook.

Follow along on the race by downloading the iPhone app “find my friends” and following
[email protected] and also [email protected] please only follow us and don’t share your location with us.

You can also check www.facebook.com/thegreathitchhikingrace for all the latest updates. We use as our hashtag.

Who do you think will win?

15/07/2019

8:05 am start

15/07/2019

The great hitchhiking race 14 will start tomorrow morning at 8am. You’ll want to follow this page starting at 7:30AM for all of the updates. Spread the word.

13/07/2019

We were all set to begin the race today but had to cancel last minute. Year 14 will be delayed. Stay tuned for new dates.

26/06/2019

It’s the best time of the year. The 14th(!) annual
Hitchhiking race is just weeks away, meet up July 13th and get home July 20th. While it’s called the hitchhiking race it’s really more about the camping and waterfalls than hitchhiking. The trip is super cheap as the hitchhiking is free and the camping is free so we just split the cost of food and supplies which is usually about $75 per person for a week of grand adventure. Let me know if you want more info.

29/07/2018

Truth is we’ve known we would win since 10AM. Here’s the moment we knew! My final post for the week will be our time stamp for the trailhead. It’s been a blast. Full confidence everyone will make it to the site by morning and we’ll enjoy the week with friends and waterfalls. Thanks for watching. I’ll post the time stamp when we have it if I have service.

26/07/2018

Race is over! We’re cooking hot dogs! No more posts til next week.

26/07/2018

23/07/2018

Trying a new route for the first time. Not going to have the epic highway 11 turn with the sun high in the sky but will help us arrive before 9pm central. Legend.

22/07/2018

Stopped at six flags over Georgia for a bit just cause we can.

22/07/2018

Darby and Ellis are currently in first place stopping for a snack at the ingles in Wahala, SC about 45 min from the falls. Their first ride with Delta helped a little.

Aaron and Dan are leading the hitchhikers crossing into Georgia at 5:30pm central time.

Trey, Aaron, and Bart are cruising in the back of a truck near Meridian, Mississippi.

Travis and his buddy have already arrived at the falls via dirtbike. Looking to be a great week.

You’ve been watching the easy part of the race, the real challenge comes in Atlanta and after dark so stay tuned!

22/07/2018

Both teams have been cruising comfortably

22/07/2018

Crushing it

22/07/2018

Fun fact: we’re already in Alabama and because we’ve only gotten picked up by cars with full tanks of gas we haven’t even stopped for gas once. That, and average speed of 80mph means we’re beating the GPS time by a whooping 40 minutes on a cross country hitchhike. Figure this math by telling the GPS we want to go back to the start line and using our 8:30AM start time.

22/07/2018

Sweet Home Alabama!

22/07/2018

Quick update before my nap

22/07/2018

You know what they say about Mississippi

22/07/2018

Ellis is only 8 months old so she’s not hitching yet but she was on the race last year and she’s on a flight to the falls now. We got to check in with her a little bit ago for her thoughts on this years race.

22/07/2018

The BMW was nice but I’m more of a Lexus guy. 12 min wait and because of speeding we are still ahead of GPS time.

22/07/2018

We’re 131 miles ahead ... which is about the same lead that treys team blew last year so let’s hope We don’t do that.

22/07/2018

Team crossing state lines. Currently beating GPS time.

22/07/2018

(Read this then scroll down to see how the race started this morning. This is a summary of last night.)

Year 13 of The Great Hitchhiking Race is underway. Let me catch you up on what went down over the last few days.

The hitchhiking race has its humble beginnings but dan flying in from Iceland to Austin to catch a ride in the limo to the starting line is pretty funny.

Scott Stephans drove down from Colorado to join the race since he’s been a lot of times but not since year 10. Unfortunately, he took on a big tree trimming job and overworked himself in 105 degree heat and had to cancel his plans to race.

Aaron, Dan and I drove up from Austin in the limo. The limo just makes everything more fun and I knew my niece and nephews would love riding in it. We we got to Van, the entire house of kids cleared out when they got a chance to ride in the limo. It was all loud and rowdy one minute, then the limo started and they all ran as fast as they could! Save that trick for when you might need it! The limo will be used in the morning to drop off all the hitchhikers at the same time. From riding in style to the side of the road!

While some years the race is over 25 people, this year is the smallest year since year 1 with only 5 hitchhikers now that Scott dropped.

It’s fun to brag about taking big groups hitchhiking it’s lame to camp for a week with people that don’t pull their weight and smaller groups ultimately have better camping experiences so I’m all about the small group. Plus, we have a lot of people meeting us there. Travis and his friend. Darby and Ellis are flying in. Mario and his friend are also flying in later in the week.

Trey flew in from NYC and visited his family in Tyler before meeting up at my moms house in van.

My brother in law Bart has watched the race the last few years but hasn’t been able to go. My nephew Brayden is heading into 6th grade and since the race is older than he is, he’s been at the start of the race every year for his whole life! Long story short, Bart is hitchhiking and my sister Stephanie is bringing their two sons Brayden and Gaige and driving their van a few hours behind the hitchhikers.

So like every other year the race starts from my hometown in Van, Texas and we hitchhike to Sapphire, NC. We meet up in Van the night before the race (last night) and order pizza and play games all night. We eventually pick teams and then play more games for starting positions.

We played all the classic games with hitchhikers and locals joining in. Ultimate frisbee went to Jason’s Gores team when he tricked kids into cheating not once but twice. Bobby won the game of who can best throw two footballs and a frisbee into a target. Me, mick, Bobby, and Dan were all able to “punt, pass, & kick” a football 120 yards by standing at the back of one end zone and punting the ball as far as possible, then throwing it as far as possible, then making a field goal.

We played a lot of spike ball. Long story short, just doing my job as official spike ball ambassador. Let me know if you need a cheap set, lol.

Played some tennis games in which the lindale eagles’ team lost every time and trey was on his team meaning we got to serve tennis balls at them while they had their butts in the air. Now I didn’t want to bruise treys butt (more on this in a min) but mick went on the attack and hit him pretty good. I missed the first time but got luke once in the end.

Scott dropping out threw a kink in the hitch team plans since it would have worked out as 3 teams of 2. I was pushing for hitching solo so we could keep 3 teams but we couldn’t agree so we just flipped a coin to determine If it would be 3 teams “2v2v1” or 2 teams “3V2” - I lost that toss so we settled on 2 teams but still we didn’t know who the teams would be.

The only thing we knew was that trey and I had to be on separate teams. That’s because this year has some really serious stakes.

THE BET:
If my team wins, each person on my team gets their faces tattooed on treys butt! (Trey got really lucky on it being a small race, the original bet was if any team beat him they would end up tattoed on his butt... imagine the odds with 5 teams like it normally is)

If Trey’s team wins, I owe him $500 cash.

So that’s why it has to be trey and I as team leaders. At some point in the night trey, realizing everyone wanted a chance to be tattooed on his butt, (and therefore didn’t want to be on his team) said “anyone on my team... if we win, I’ll get a victory tattoo and you’ll be on it.” (I have it on video)

We wanted to make the team selection random so we basically did it with a coin toss. Dan, Aaron winning, and Bart had to toss a coin. Heads and they were in my team, tails on Trey’s. Dan flipped and I got confused and thought he was on treys but really he was on my team. Winning flipped and ended up on Treys team. Bart flipped and I thought he was on my team but I also was confused on that. He ended up on treys team.

So there we have it. 2 teams only this year and with really high stakes.

To determine which team gets dropped off in what order to start the race we made up a game where your partner throws a hula hoop into the air and you have to throw a football through the hoop. 12 throws meant dan and I threw 6 while Bart, Aaron, and Trey threw four each. I went 1 for 6. Then of course Trey somehow gets super human athletic skills on sports night (like home run derby 2 years ago and football last year) and hits 2 out of 4. Long story short Dan saved the day and made enough to barely squeak our team by as you can see by the epic picture my sister took. My dad made the trip down to say hi, Mitch and Lainey swung by to catch up, the neighbors I’ve never met cooked bbq chicken and drove it over and my brother brought his friends over too so it was a great night. Mom is always the best host providing everything we need and more. The neighbor across from my mom has a house up for sale so it’s empty now but the AC and electricity still works so he’s letting us squat inside. Mick is in town and we stayed up til 3 chatting. We’re waking up to pigs in a blanket and cinnamon rolls.

It’s about race time.

You’ll want to follow www.facebook.com/thegreathitchikingrace for today’s updates as well as my personal FB page.

You can follow our race on the iPhone app “find my friends” by adding us by our emails.

Track dan and I with my email address: [email protected]

Track trey, Aaron W., and Bart with treys email address: [email protected]

Really important that you don’t share your location with us, just ask to track us.

Now you’re up to speed on how it all went down before the race.

Ladies and gentlemen... let’s get ready to rumble! It’s time to hitch to NC for the 13th year in a row.

Go ahead and post in the comments if you’re team trey or team Aaron and why! It’s definitely going to be an instant classic.

22/07/2018

I will be posting here and my personal page. Things are just happening too fast when you only wait 3 min and get picked up by a bmw