Hitch-hiking Adventures (Learning to Walk by Faith)

After I entrusted my life to God, I began to want to do some serious, academic, study of the Bible, but had no idea where to go. At this point I received a copy of a magazine that was sent to everyone free after this conference. In the magazine was a little advertisement for a Christian Graduate School in Vancouver, Canada, especially for people who were not planning to be professional ministers. That seemed to fit me, so I wrote away for more information. Interestingly, a few years earlier I had been on a canoe trip with my brother Ron in northern Ontario and had become very interested in the passenger train service through Canada – the trains that we saw as we were canoeing along through the wilderness – and I had even tried to plan out a vacation train trip across Canada some day. But nothing had seemed to be working out until one day, after receiving more information from this school in Vancouver and applying for admission, it struck me that Vancouver was at the end of the train tracks going across Canada. Could it be God’s will for me to take that train trip after all?

Though it seemed to me that this might be the thing to do, to quit my job and go to graduate school at Regent College in Vancouver, at the same time I had a hesitancy to do that because I felt like I wanted to be sure that it was God’s will for me to do so. While I was deliberating this move, and looking for some guidance from God about what to do, I went to visit my oldest brother Bob over Christmas vacation. One day I heard that they were planning a New Year’s Eve party at his church, and that, as part of that, they would be showing a short travel movie as a way to fill some time between two different parts of the program. These were travel movies about some part of the world that they would rent periodically to show at the nearby retirement home. I was curious to know what part of the world the film would be about but no one seemed to know, and as it came to that night and as the time came for that movie, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if that movie were about Canada – just perhaps as a way for the Lord to confirm that this was the right thing for me to do.”  Well, as the movie started, I learned that not only was it about Canada, but it was specifically about Vancouver, Canada! I’m sure that no one else in that little church really cared very much about this movie and about Vancouver, but I had a real sense that God had arranged it just for me, to show me that it was OK to do what I was planning to do.

So yes, I did quit my job, sold my car, took the train across Canada (the journey was as enjoyable as expected), and spent a year doing graduate-level studies of the Bible and the Christian faith. 

In May, at the end of that year of studies, I received a telephone call at the beginning of finals week from my father in Pennsylvania, saying that my mother’s mother had died, and asking if there was any chance that I could get back to central Pennsylvania in time for the funeral. I hoped that this would be possible, and in God’s precise timing, it was! After I had finished my final exams and the graduation ceremony, I took the first available flights from Vancouver to Seattle to Chicago to Pittsburgh and from there to what was then the Mid-State Airport near Black Moshannon State Park in the center of Pennsylvania. My relatives met me and took me to the funeral and I arrived at the church, the site of the funeral, a half hour before the funeral service would take place. Perfect timing!

During that summer I worked as a counselor at a Christian camp and planned to return to Vancouver in the fall to continue my studies for another year. Since I had no car and had already experienced the train, the thought came into my mind of hitchhiking across the United States on my way back to Vancouver. I had friends and relatives at different points along the way and so expected that by visiting them along the way I would be able to have a place to stay most of the nights as I traveled. 

Hitchhiking is a very cheap way to travel cross country, yet it can also be dangerous, and increasingly so in recent years. But I did some things to try to protect myself and tried to be wise in my planning. I carried an abundance of Traveler’s Checks so that at any moment if I wanted to I could just get on a bus and continue my journey by bus.  I also drew a fish on the side of my suitcase so that anybody who was a Christian and recognized that symbol of Christians might be interested in giving me a ride. 

So one Saturday in August I was ready to go. There was one problem, however. It was raining very, very heavily that morning and as it came closer to the time I was planning to leave, with a ride from my brother, Bob, to the local interstate highway exit to begin my journey, he asked me if I felt I really should be doing this in light of the weather and what I might encounter along the way. So I took some time to pray and to again wrestle through the decision before God, and concluded that if I would have a little rain stop me from even beginning, then perhaps I shouldn’t be considering even to go at all. But yet I felt that it was the right thing to at least start, and told my brother so. The interesting thing was that by the time we had loaded the car and were ready to leave it had stopped raining, and, except for one time when I was staying in someone’s house and it didn’t matter, I never encountered rain again during the entire trip across the United States!

I first hitchhiked from Erie to Pittsburgh, where I stayed with friends, and then continued from there to Columbus, Ohio, where my other brother, Ron, lived. The ride that I got to Columbus was with a businessman who actually took me to a point on the north side of the city that was within a mile of where Ron lived! He had worked the first shift, regular daylight, at his job that day, but yet the next day was going to be working an afternoon and evening shift, so it was ideal that he was home when I arrived and he was able to drive me back to the interstate highway the next morning before he went to work.

After leaving Columbus, I traveled through Indiana and Illinois. The next place where I knew I had someone to stay with was with a former secretary of mine and her husband who lived in Dodge City, Kansas, and that’s where I was headed. But I also knew I could not reach there in only one day and expected that I would have to sleep in my sleeping bag along the side of the road that night, unless the Lord provided some place for me to stay. As I was traveling through Indiana I was given a ride by a young man who was going to visit his grandparents near St. Louis, MO. This provided an exceptionally long ride for someone who’s hitchhiking- to go 10-12 hours in one ride was a wonderful blessing. As we rode along and got acquainted, I told him that when he got off the interstate highway he could just let me out by the side of the road, where I would sleep overnight. But as it got to that point he said, “Why don’t you just continue on with me to my grandparents’ house. They live near the interstate highway and you can stay there overnight. Tomorrow I can put you back on your way.” So that’s what we did! I had a wonderful time at his grandparents’ house, was given a wonderful breakfast the next morning, and was off again to Dodge City, Kansas. From Dodge City I called my cousin, Jack, who lived in the Rocky Mountain foothills of Evergreen, CO, about an hour’s drive outside of Denver. He worked in Denver, and as I talked to him on the phone, he asked what time I expected to arrive in Denver, and if I could possibly arrive there by 5 PM, when he would get off work, so that I could ride home with him. I told him I expected that I would be able to do that, and I would meet him at his office by 5:00 the next day.

The next day I started off and was able to get rides to Colorado Springs, CO, but there I was stuck. So far on the trip I had always been able to get a ride within 15-30 minutes, but this was taking longer. Now I was beginning to wonder if I could get to Denver by 5:00, since where I had stopped was roughly about an hour’s drive south of Denver, and the time was already 3:50. Just then a big Cadillac luxury car pulled up to give me a ride and I noticed a Christian sticker on the rear bumper. As I got in, I found that the driver was a teenage boy, and that he was simply going one or two more exits up the road to his parents’ home. (His father owned the construction company that had built the Air Force Academy stadium, and they were obviously very wealthy.) As he drove and we began talking, I soon realized that we had already passed a few exits.  He said, “Oh, I decided I would just take you up to Denver instead of going right home”! However, as we went along, suddenly he got a flat tire. He had never had the experience of changing a flat tire, while I had had a number of such experiences, so we pulled to the side of the road, I changed the tire for him, and we continued on to Denver, where he was able to drop me off at my cousin’s office building at five minutes before 5:00! Perfect timing!

From my cousin’s house in Colorado I was able to hitchhike through Utah and Idaho to the border between Idaho and Oregon. I arrived there at about 7:00 at night, just as it was beginning to get dark. I decided that I would try hitchhiking briefly, and if I didn’t find a ride quickly I would just camp at the roadside rest area there for the night. Surprisingly, I was immediately picked up, by the driver of a semi-tractor trailer truck, who not only picked me up but also picked up two other hitchhikers at the same time! The driver was someone who had taken a load to South Dakota and was returning to his home in Portland, Oregon. He was driving more hours than he was legally allowed to, and he was picking us up to give him some company to help keep him awake so that he could make it back to Portland that evening. (This was the only time I was given a ride by one of these truck drivers, and he was breaking his company regulations to do so.) As we rode along with him, the two other hitchhikers slept and I visited with the driver. As we rode along through Oregon, I thought of what was ahead and realized that one of the things I had looked forward to on this trip was the drive down the Columbia River Valley, separating Washington State from Oregon, which I had been told was very beautiful.  Now I realized that I was going to be going down that river valley at night and was going to miss this view.  So, as we got closer to the beginning of the river valley, I asked the driver to let me out when we got to that point so that I could sleep there, and then continue my trip in the morning when I could enjoy the beauty of the river valley. However, as we got closer to the point at which the highway entered the river valley, the driver concluded that he was just too tired to continue driving! So when we got to the river valley, he pulled over and slept in the cab of the truck, while the three of us slept out under the stars on a beautiful, full-moon, starry night in our sleeping bags. We had to wake the driver up in the morning. He was too hungry to go on without eating breakfast, so he treated us all to steak and eggs at the local truck stop and then we rode on a beautiful, sunny, morning down the Columbia River Valley with a gorgeous view from high up in his tractor trailer truck cab.

This was a Sunday, and I was a little disappointed that I would be missing church on Sunday. I had a friend in Portland, who had been a classmate at Regent the year before, and who had encouraged me to contact him if I ever came through Portland in my travels. Being Sunday morning, I assumed he was at church. When we came to the outskirts of Portland, the truck driver dropped us off and I got another ride right into the downtown area. I told the driver if he was continuing on north toward Washington State that I would just continue on as far as he was going, and if he was going only into the city of Portland or towards the south that I would just get out in the middle of the downtown, which is what happened. I arrived in downtown Portland at about 12:30 on Sunday and called my friend from Regent, who had just arrived home from church. He said, “I’ll come right over and get you”, so I went to his home and had dinner and met his family, and they invited me to stay over-night. In the middle of that dinner it started to rain, and it continued to pour rain all the rest of that day. That evening I went with them to their evening church service!  

The next morning the rain was gone and it was a beautiful sunny day again! My friend took me to the bridge on the Oregon side of the river where there were already a number of hitchhikers heading north. At this point I recalled that along the way I had been told that the one state you had to be careful hitchhiking in, where the police would make it difficult, was the state of Washington. So I was hesitant to hitchhike in the state of Washington, but thought that I would at least take the ride from the Oregon side of the border as far as it would go, and that I could then always take a bus the rest of the way to Vancouver. As I waited on the Oregon side of the bridge over the Columbia River, more and more hitchhikers came, so that before long there were eight or nine of us, all stretched out in a line, waiting for a ride heading north. I wondered how long I would have to wait before I would finally get a ride. However, at the same time there was a young man who was heading north from his grandparents’ in California to his home in Seattle, Washington, where his father was the pastor of a church. He had been praying, knowing that there would be people hitchhiking near the Columbia River bridge, that God would show him somebody that he could offer a ride. So it happened that he picked me up out of the nine people stretched out together and gave me the ride! His ride took me very close to the Seattle suburb of Belleview, where another cousin lived and with whom I was able to stay. It also happened, in God’s providence, that at that time my cousin’s family had another guest, a friend of their daughter, who was a student at a university in Bellingham, Washington, very close to the border with Canada. Yes, the next day she was going back to Bellingham, and of course I could have a ride with her. So the next day I rode with her to Bellingham, where I stayed with a friend who had commuted the hour’s drive from Bellingham to Vancouver to attend classes at Regent the previous year. As he was showing me around the city of Bellingham, he mentioned to me that, even though he wasn’t going back to Regent to take classes in the coming semester, he had heard that there were a couple of people from one particular church in town who were planning to go there as students, but he didn’t know their names.  As it happened, as we were driving around town, suddenly he pulled to the curb and said, “Oh, here is the church I mentioned. Let’s see if there’s anybody here.” As we walked up to the door of the church, the door opened, and a woman came out with the flowers that were left over from the Sunday service. Yes, she knew the guys who would be commuting to Regent, and found their names and phone numbers, so I was able to ride with them to Vancouver when they went to register for classes the next day! So in fact I never did need to hitchhike in the state of Washington!

The Next Chapter:
But that’s not all! (God Provides)

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