Before Holyoke awoke, I make a break for McCook, Nebraska.

The previous eight or so hours have been sketchy for sleep. There had been a storm creeping along the horizon, spitting rain and smacking it’s lips. I kept expecting it to find me in the night for a kiss in the dark.

Then there were the late night and early morning tractor/trailers on the little highway, rumbling in the void.

Some strain was on my brain about the farmer in whose field I am camped; I am officially trespassing. I keep imagining that someone has seen me and tipped off the person whose land I am on. Lights flicker across the fabric of my bug hut; surely a group of angry farmers are on their way with torches and pitchforks to rid their town of that dirty vagabond who’s been sneakin’ around the edges of our society?

The air is like a moistened stamp. I press my ears back and they stick against my head. I miss the Early Morning Special: before the sun is even up, a car has passed me with its glowing eyes carving through the early mist. It slows to a crawl and has a look, but changes its mind and speeds away.

My eyes are still gummy and my hair a bit greasy. I look like a road rat for sure. Maybe I should’ve stayed close to town where the speed was 45 mph? The cars were zipping out there on the flats. Hell, maybe I should’ve taken the interstate when I had the chance in Sterling. Nebraska’s so big and the road so small…. I felt like I was running out of time. I had really wanted to get to Iowa by Friday and it is already Wednesday – and there are five hundred twenty miles yet to go.

This is when I decide to use the Orla Method, which dates back to my first successful long-distance hitching endeavor two years back. I’d been waiting for the first ride of my trip on the North edge of Pecos, Texas – a very nerve-wracking and exciting moment for me. There, I made my first cardboard road sign it had ORLA written on it with a black marker, using fat blocky sans-serif letters. Orla was the next burg up from Pecos. The psychology of using the next little town on a sign is simple: people will think that town is your destination and they might reason “If I pick him up, I’ll only have to take him thirty miles to Orla.” This is especially good, because they might also be think that you are from around there. Basically, locals driving on that road will be curious about you.

Before long, a rancher pulled over in his truck. The first thing he did was take a photo of me with his cellphone, through the passenger window. Then, after he let me in the truck, he turned to me and said (with a proper West-Texas accent) “I just had to meet someone who actually WANTED to go to Orla.”

Since, I have employed the Orla Method at various times to varying degrees of success. This time, the next town is Lamar. I don’t know how effective my sign is, because I end up riding in the back of a pickup with the safety helmets and tools of five Mexican laborers headed to Imperial.

The morning is chilly and the air makes swirling tugs at my clothing. I am underdressed for an early morning open-air ride and have made the mistake of packing my jacket (which doubles as a pillow at night) in the bottom of my big pack. My lesson is hard-learned as I hug myself tightly for the half-hour trip out of Colorado and into Nebraska. I can’t say this is a happy transition.

I have nothing against Nebraska or Nebraskans per se – it’s just that I’ve had tough times hitchhiking in the Cornhusker State and it seemed as though things are about to turn two shades of brown again. It starts with my poor dirt farmer’s hat, a little straw affair with one of those wire brims which allow you to shape the very mood and utility of your headwear. Well, this particular hat has been through lots of miles with me and decides to give up the ghost; after this last ride the wire has finally torn its way through the brim. That hat is now rotting away in a ditch on the edge of Imperial (you know, the town with the big grain elevator?.

On the edge of town I wait for a long time – probably six hours. There are low grey clouds ghosting out the sun. It remains cool but I feel naked without the hat; everyone in rural Nebraska has on a hat , mostly caps with feed company logos on them.

There happen to be a crappy discount made-in-China crap store across the road from where I stand, and so I go with my small backpack of important items, leaving the big pack along the road. This is clearly an act of desperation, as I would usually cut off my hands before going into such a place looking for a hat. What I find is a fairly despicable bucket-hat-for-the-indolent, Panama hats so misinformed I can’t help but wonder if they were made in a sweatshop in North Dakota, plasticky cowboy hats(the kind you wear to attract other people with plasticky cowboy hats).

From this array of heinous headgear, a Nebraska Cornhusker cap seems like the best option, but I just can’t bring myself to buy one. First, they cost thirteen dollars – far more than I am willing to spend on something so detestable. Second, wearing a Cornhusker cap anywhere other than Nebraska is an invitation to extreme ridicule.

Out on the highway again, I struggle to keep the plasticky, ill-fitting, quasi cowboy hat on my head. It doesn’t fit, it just kind of perches there, but it was the closest fit I could find. The hat is woven with what looks like straw, then dipped in a vat of polyethylene. I want to throw it on the ground and stomp it, but I know I’ll need sun protection eventually.

I finally get scooped up in a flatbed truck driven by a man who is a self-professed redneck anti-establishment country boy – and another non-believer in the global warming phenomenon. He’s a cattle rancher with grass-fed beef. We spoke about typical farmer topics like the weather, the land, the livestock, the police.

He haa seen exponential growth in the number of patrolmen in his area and doesn’t like it. That’s what I love about rednecks; they don’t want outsiders monitoring their people. “We can police our own damn community.”

Wauneta, Nebraska was going to be my second long wait. The camera battery died back in Imperial, my journal pen is running dry, the music device has been out of juice for days.

Time is beginning to drag.

Then Eunice comes out of her house with lemonade! She has been watching me and felt a pang of empathy. Years ago, when Eunice lived in Denver, she met a young man who had been on the road for a long time. She took him in like a stray dog. He was in pretty sad shape when she brought him home; drugs and alcohol were a big part of his life and he still took off on a regular basis to wander aimlessly, sleeping in ditches along the way.

Then one day he called Eunice on the phone and said “Can I come home, Mom?” Since then he’s been clean and plans to stay that way. He is now a stable kind of guy and drives trucks for a feed company.

Eunice decided (for my sake, I believe) that this was her day to go to McCook. McCook is a relatively large city forty miles down the road, where small-towners go to shop. “They have a Wal-Mart.”

Just before Eunice picked me up, though, a guy had driven up and was talking to me; I could tell he was making sure I was safe. I appreciate that sentiment.

It turns out another neighbor had called Eunice to warn her not to pick me up, but Eunice just laughed. She was a great lady, and probably 78 years old. We have a good talk on the way. Eunice is like my grandmother. She drops me off at the end of McCook and goes to WalMart.

I don’t wait long before being picked up by a state park road maintenance man who takes me to Bartley in his Super Duty.

While I wait for my next ride, Bbig trucks drive by, their drivers given me the hairy eyeball. The car that pulls over to rescue me is one of the rarest rides of all: two teenage girls smile from inside.

I almost scold them as we ride to the next town. I feel like an older brother. They are all smiles and questions, really curious and genuinely nice. They had picked up another hitchiker recently and seem to get a kick out of it; they say he wore glasses with shoestring covers on the wire temples. Both of them want to go to nursing school in McCook and saw me there earlier that day.

We cruise to Cambridge (a larger town with good vibes), where they drop me in a park where I can fill up my water bottles and if need be, camp for the night. As I take up my position on the road, a bar three blocks down invites me to stash my pack and relax with a beer for once, but I’m pretty diligent, and when I need to get somewhere and almost always vie for rides until sunset.

All the heavy duty trucks are driven by clean-cut American men on their cellphones. An RV goes rumbling by as they always do – but this one has”HITCHIKER” in vinyl letters over the cab. I laugh.

The second time in all my miles, I have the same person pick me up: one of the girls from the last ride, with her boyfriend.  They’re headed to Arapahoe, population 1028.

I walk out just beyond the edge of Arapahoe and try a few last chances, waiting for the light to fade so I can stealth a campsite in the adjacent field. Mosquitoes make their move, inspiring me to dance a bit. Finally, the day is dim and I charge into a spent wheatfield; I have to stomp down the dry grasses to make them less likely to pierce the floor of my hut and to make a flatter sleep spot. Then I have to put the poles together and run them through the narrow sleeves of the tent, and then, raise the thing up.

It’s a magical moment when the saggy, flat, plastic mass “pops” up into a living space. All of this took far too much time with those starving little vampires all over me they seemed anxious to get blood while they could, as if they knew I’d be locking them out soon. I have to pee, but it can wait until things cooled off out there. Once again, a storm lurks just to the south, and the possibility of angry farmers looms. Maybe I should start knocking on doors to ask for camping permission from now on? I’d surely sleep better.

As I looked at my situation, it seems that today I have ridden 142 miles in six vehicles and ended up in the same exact camp spot.