Chicago Week 2b: Sunday afternoon hitchhiking

The morning after my terribly unlucky Saturday I had only one mission: retrieve my car from the tow company. The woman at the company had given me directions the night before, and I still had her number in my phone, so I laced on my running shoes (the feet were too blistered from the day before to wear flip flops again) and hit the door. She'd said it was just a mile or two, and while I was pretty sore from the previous day's 15ish miles, I figured I could handle a little walk.

It was another warm day, and I was walking on a highway without a sidewalk. After a mile or so, I began to doubt my directions, so I called the tow company to verify. "You've got a ways to go on Gary," they said. I asked how far. "Quite a while." I started to run through my options:
a) I could keep walking. Except that I was hot and didn't know how far I still had to go.
b) I could get a friend to drive me. Except that I don't know anyone in this town well enough to ask for a favor.
c) I could call a cab. Except that cabs don't just roam the streets in the suburbs and I don't have internet on my phone.
d) I could stick my thumb out and see what happened.

I went with option d. Time to see how friendly these Illinoisians are, I thought. (Note to any concerned readers: I'm not usually a hitch-hiker, but this was in a quiet suburban town right as church was getting out on Sunday afternoon. Pretty safe.) I waited through a few cycles of lights, and I felt pretty silly standing on the corner with my thumb out. Finally, though, a window rolled down and an sweet-looking elderly couple asked where I was going.

I climbed in the back seat. The old man driving the car told me to move his oxygen tank so that I'd have enough leg room. His wife offered me cotton candy and said she'd gotten it at church. They'd just gotten out of the Presbyterian service and we talked about that for a few minutes. I asked them if they could just take me as far as they were going, but they said they were in no rush and they'd take me as far as I needed to go. I said I thought it was just a few miles down Gary Ave.

We drove a few miles but we couldn't find the street. "We need to call for directions," said the woman, and her husband said just wait a little longer. Eventually he gave in and we called; they said we still had a ways to go. "You couldn't have walked all this way!" said the lady. And we kept driving.

We talked about how awful it is to have your car towed and where they were from and what a hot day it was. After six or seven miles we finally found our turn. I told them to drop me off there and they wouldn't hear of it. "There are dangerous people out," said the woman. A few more miles and we finally made it to the tow lot. The drive was nine miles in all, NOT one or two like the lady on the phone had said the night before. They wouldn't let me pay them for gas, so I just thanked them and said I didn't know how I would have made it walking on my own, and they said they were glad they'd seen me.

I'd called for directions so many times that they knew me at the tow lot. "Are you the Gary lady?" they asked when I walked in. I paid my bill and we joked around a little bit and told each other to have a good day. Because after you've accepted a nine-mile ride from kindhearted strangers it's pretty easy to be nice to even tow-company employees.