The Little Apple

A cop pulled over while we were hitching in Kansas. I was on the lookout, but he snuck up behind us.

"What are you guys doing out here, besides soliciting a ride illegally?"

"Well I don't like the sound of that," I said. "We got dropped off here from a ride in Missouri and weren't sure what the law was in Kansas yet." That wasn't even close to true. Unlike most of the state, I knew hitching was illegal in this particular county in Kansas, but that's where we got dropped off and you gotta do what can gotta do.

"You just can't have your thumb out," he said. "But you can make a sign."

That I didn't know. "What an ineffective pointless law," I thought. We walked to a gas station to find a marker and cardboard. We got back on the road with our pizza box sign with Denver written on one side and West on the other.

Thirty minutes later, we were back on the roadside when a federal firefighter for the Department of Defense and the Department of Emergency Services, named Ramon picked us up.

We liked Ramon immediately, but what set the ride apart from others was stopping for a wine tasting at a local winery and getting a tour of his town of Manhattan, Kansas. A small town dubbed, The Little Apple.

Ramon got us 115 miles farther and proved to us again that hitching is the best way to travel across the country.

He talked about us on his latest podcast you can listen to it here:
http://misadventuresoframon.libsyn.com