Day #13: Making progress

Rick and Ilona made me the most awesome eight course breakfast and drove me to the metro link station so I could ride the train to the other side of town. I won't lie, I was a little nervous heading into the heart of St. Louis. It's basically the same as Detroit on the falling apart scale, and East St. Louis is like the worst place on the planet. It was so great passing the Mississippi River. I had really been looking forward to this point. 

It was just as huge as everyone said. I made it to the outskirts of East St. Louis and set up outside this shopping mall. The first thing I noticed about Illinois was all the personalized license plates. It was like, one in every ten cars had one. I never found out why. The internet said Illinois is a hard place to hitchhike in, but I got two offers for short rides in half an hour. I wanted to make some distance though, and I had a good spot there. 

With all the traffic, you really get to interact with people for about two seconds. It's funny how much someone can get across in that time. One girl flipped me off, about a million mouthed "sorry", and a ton of people just generally stoked on what I was doing. 

After the first two hours I didn't get another offer for about three or four hours. With all the positive reinforcement from drivers it really seemed strange that no one wanted to give me a ride. It got me thinking, people aren't afraid of hitchhikers, they've just been told so long that they'll murder you that it's not even an option to pick one up. I personally believe it's all the fear mongering in the media. The world is full of nice people. I don't see how it's so easy to forget that. 

I ended up getting a ride down a few exits just to get a change of scenery, and it definitely worked out in my favor. About a half hour into my new spot and this truck rolls up, "Hop in the back!" So I got a ride all the way to Paducah, KY in the back of a truck. 

I was really hoping to get a ride in the back of a truck sometime. It wasn't as glamorous as I expected. Imagine getting sandblasted in the face for two hours. I saw a tornado and now I know what it's like to be in one (without that whole fearing for your life thing). 

The only bar at this exit in Paducah is Buffalo Wild Wings. Which is a weird place for a traveler, but I ended up meeting a guy from Arkansas who bought me a beer. It was nice having someone to chat with. I met a guy who worked there who said he'd give me a ride to Nashville in the morning, so I walked out to the on ramp to sleep in the grass there. I'm so close to Tennessee I can taste it.