Hitchhiking: The Greatest Game I've Ever Played

His name is Rusty. He hauls new cars. He was a carnival operator. He runs his own trucking company. He's been shot, he's been stabbed. He's shot people and he's stabbed people. He's also the most kind, generous man I've ever met. He informs us that he's taking this load of cars to a dealer near his home in Nebraska and he'd be glad to take us as far as we'd like. At this point we're in complete shock.

You haven't lived until you've done 90 in a semi while listening to Iron Maiden as loud as possible.

After about an hour, he informs us he has to take a dump and he's going to get some food while he's stopped at the resting place. We come in with him, he orders some food and we take a $5 out of our bag and order some cheese fries to split between the two of us. He also gives us the fries off his plate and tells us after we eat that he's going to pay for our food. We thank him and get back in the truck. We drive for another 4 or 5 hours and he declares that it's time for him to sleep. He informs us that all of the cars in his truck are unlocked and that we should pick one and crash there for the night. We pick a VERY roomy mini-van and we get about 7 or 8 hours of sleep before he bangs on the door to wake us up. We climb down and we're back on the road again. He lets us know that he's going to stop by and visit his cousin Monkey in Chicago and that we're coming with him. Monkey meets us in a parking lot and we get in his car and drive back to his house. He orders a pizza and throws me the tv remote and what's left of a bottle of long island iced tea. Bryan and I kill that off along with a few slices of pizza, while watching some movie with Bernie Mac and Aston Kutcher. Decent flick, better with alcohol. After a bit more conversation, we head back to the truck, Monkey wishes us luck and we're back on the road.

We decide that we're going to try to visit a friend we have up in St. Paul, MN so Rusty tells us it'd be best if he dropped us off in Des Moines and we can hitch north from there. We spend the next 9 hours discussing more trucker stories, fight stories, drug stories and circus stories. This man is to Hardcore as I am to killing_fields. I could write hundreds of threads on all of the outrageous stories he told us but that's for another post.

He drops us off at a truck stop and informs us that if we can sneak upstairs, there's a movie theatre we can get some sleep in. He throws us two packs of cigarettes and as we try to refuse them, he responds with "You'll need them." He's rugged as fuck. We manage to sneak upstairs and spend about 20 minutes watching Shawn of the Dead before we pass out from exhaustion.