Organized Hitchhiking

Every day I get into a car with a complete stranger. I get into a car with two complete strangers actually. And I'm driven to work.

Casual carpool strikes me as a uniquely Bay Area phenomena.

I was in San Diego recently, my hometown, and I told an old friend about it.

"There are these pick up spots" I said. "Riders stand there waiting, a car pulls up, two riders get in and off you go to The City." I'm going native. I've started capitalize The City. Even in speech.

She was quiet for a minute, sipping at her diet coke. "You know the Zodiac killer is still out there, right?"

Which is why it took me a year to get up the nerve to get in a car with a stranger. You know, if we discount hitch hikers on the way to the Del Mar Fair when I was in high school or all those nights with strangers up and down the California coast. If we discount those.

It's a weird thing. Everything is all about not getting into cars with strangers. It's about being safe. Knowing who has what badge and what that means and not opening the door and caller id and screening and not giving out your real name on the Internet because, you know, there are stalkers. Especially, if you are a woman. And, dyke or not, I have breasts and my entire cultural standards of safety have to do with not even talking to strangers let alone climbing into a car and zooming off on the freeway with them.

Of course, this is San Francisco and casual carpool does happen during the commute hours. We aren't exactly zooming down the freeway.

"There's so much traffic," I tell my mom. "I could get out of the car and walk if I had to."

One day, I was the single passenger in a two-seater. Only two seats meant we had the benefit of the car pool lane and no toll at the Bay Bridge crossing even though we weren't at the regulation three passengers. The driver was from Southern California and he asked me, "Don't you think this is weird?"

"It's weird," I said.

"I think so too," he said. "But cool. Weird but cool."

Despite the years of cautions and movie horror scenes screaming in my head. I get into a car with a stranger. Two strangers. And it works. I get to work faster and cheaper than any other method. And it's working for lots of other people in the bay area and has been for the last twenty years.

I ride with my strangers to work over the Bay Bridge. We still have National Guard standing watch. Two at the entrance, at Treasure Island. There are other too but I can't always spot them. They stand there looking out at the passing traffic trying, I suppose, to spot terrorists. And I am supposed to be on a look out against anything suspicious. I'm supposed to be uncertain of strangers, now more than ever.

But here we are. A system that works to get people over a bridge and through a stall of cars. The riders go free and the driver avoids toll fees and the wait of lines. And this simple system makes me think that there is hope after all.