Try This at Home: Rideshare!

You know, after reading all that freegan stuff, and after my super awesome experiences with dumpster diving, I was all amped up to try hitchhiking.

 
That lasted about two hours, and then I remembered I’m too scared to hitchhike.

I know, they say it’s really not all that dangerous. Like, maybe only one in a hundred people who stop to pick up female hitchhikers is a convicted felon. Or maybe even less!

As for me, I’ve been known to make a couple highfalutin’ speeches about the culture of fear and how you have to take life by the horns, yada yada. But when the chips are down, I am NOT going to stand by the side of the road with blonde pigtails and pepper spray, thumb-out and hopin’ for the best.

So I decided on a safer alternative: ridesharing. I needed to get from Oakland to Los Angeles, but it didn’t much matter when. Cheap was my main objective (cheap and green, that is). I’d heard lots of stories from friends who’d found rides on Craigslist, and so I went straight to the Bay Area rideshare board.

Go look at it! That thing is teeming with offers of rides to LA, Portland, Tahoe, Santa Cruz, Michigan… All that remained, then, was to find the car & driver for me.

I started by posting my own “need a ride” ad, but I think maybe it sounded too much like a personal, because this guy (the one in the photo, eh) sent me a picture of himself and asked me to do the same. So I switched tactics and started responding to ride offers, which allowed me to filter out any potential wierdos.

Long story short: I found a great ride with three other people in a brand-new car. It was cheaper than the train and quicker too, and they dropped me off 15 minutes from my friend Jimi’s work. All the way to LA, we talked politics & culture, and I actually learned a few things.

So here I am in LA, Topanga Canyon actually. More on that later, but the point here is clear: next time you’ve got a long drive to make, do the environment (and some poor hippie) a favor and share the ride. I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not likely to suck, and it’ll definitely save you money & guilt.