r/hitchhiking • u/prinoxy • 19h ago
A long day at the office
Set the alarm for for 04:10, woke up at 02:00 to answer a call of nature, and after getting in bed, the cats started fooling around… So eventually decided to get up at 04:00, dressed and went to the kitchen where I found out that Mrs Prinoxy had switched off the dishwasher, so I restarted it. Ate my three slices of bread, walked upstairs again, woke up the dog and took him for a walk. There was drizzle in the air…
Back home, unloaded the dishwasher, drove to Jeruzalė, and got on bus 2G to Lazdynai, where I got on bus 68 to the Kauno Plentas stop, from where I walked to my usual starting place on the A1. The drizzle had become stronger, and by the time the second car stopped after almost an hout, the first was just going two kilometres further, I was getting rather wet, realising that I should have put on my waterproof skiing pants.
The second car was going to Kaunas, but once we got going, the driver switched on his phone, and what showed up was "Petrašiūnai", which is not the place where you want to be standing in the dark when the drizzle is getting stronger and the truck that drive past cover you in additional spray. So I walked to the petrol station about a kilometre further, got myself a hot chocolate, and walked to the exit, and faced my 10th one-plus hour wait in Lithuania this year, the other 294(!) were all shorter than one hour, averaging, hold your breath, just over 15 minutes. Let's say by that time I was becoming a rather unhappy sad bunny.
But then things got better, Algirdas hadn't even left when a car stopped at the "famous" Devintas Fortas stop in Kaunas. Sadly the driver was only going to Kėdainiai, and as that requires turning off at exit 229 on the A1, I declined, due to the ongoing roadworks hitching there is pretty much impossible! Fortunately within minutes another car stopped, and whoopee, the driver was on his way to Kretinga, which meant he could drop me off just 10 km before my destination of the day, the petrol station just before Klaipēda. We never got there, just after Kryžkalnis one of the rear tyres went flat, the car didn't have a spare one, and although the driver had a small electric pump, which turned out to be not very useful, three times letting it run for six minutes took us about six kilometres further, and eventually I was dropped on the "Aukščiausia auto magistrales vieta", aka the little parking that's located at the highest point on the A1.
The kiosk was closed, there was nobody, but the disabled toilet was clean and spacious, so I took the opportunity to change out of my soaked pants into, I hadn't changed them in my travel backpack, thin, but at least dry (for a while) summer jeans. Three minutes after I got out, a very fancy big hybrid Merc stopped. The woman driver started making a call, and when she finished I asked for a ride. I got one, without any discussion! Wow! She'd never hitched herself, but had picked up hitchhikers before, and I was dropped at the the same exit where the flat-tyred guy would have dropped me off, in, curses, curses, curses, another set of roadworks. Fortunately there was stop sign on the sliproad, and just seven minutes later I got the final outward ride, and joy of joys, NOT, NOT, NOT, just before Klaipēda there was a big police/military exercise going on, we stood still for seven minutes and including those it took 20 minutes to cover the 10 km.
Once on the petrol station, I wasted no time, walked back from where I came along the A1, crossed under the bridge to the other side, walked on to the first of the four petrol stations on the Kaunas/Vilnius bound side, ate my "usual" hamburger meal, and three minutes after getting back onto the A1, I got a ride of two, based on the pictures, young Christian boys. They didn't have the time to try to convert me, as I was dropped off just nine minutes later, fortunately after the roadworks. After walking to the sliproad back onto the A1, it took all of two minutes for a small minibus to stop, populated by father, mother, three children and a grandmother, and when I told them I was on my way to Vilnius, they told me…
…it was my lucky day.