My hitch-hike, part two

Mr + dog dropped me off a couple of hundred metres away from the A34/M40 roundabout and wished me good day. I got my sketchpad from my bag, opened the next stage/page which said 'NEWBURY SWINDON' and held it behind me as I started walking toward the roundabout.

Within a minute, someone stopped for me. I kid you not - sixty seconds after I started walking, a huge Dodge pickup pulled over. I could see someone in the passenger seat hurriedly chucking stuff out of the way, making space for me to sit. I quickly realised that the truck was left-hand drive, and climbed (climbed!) into the... erm... passenger seat.

Man, that thing was cool! Yes, I know it was a gas-guzzling global warming-inducing verge-mashing monster truck, but those very things made it extremely appealing.

I guess it says something about human nature, and Americans in particular, when something so obviously wrong feels so right and attractive. I suppose the same thing applies to guns - they are very obviously designed to maim flesh, to very effectively kill animals (including humans), but my oh my, they are so fucking cool. They go BANG and make things explode and send shocks up your arms and make your ears hurt. And in any other situation those factors might really piss people off. But put a gun, or gas-guzzling monster truck, in their hands and people instantly transform into Action Man, or Bigfoot.

Enough with the generalised anthropological observations, and onto specifics.

The driver of the big Dodge pickup was an amiable man in his thirties, who had a heavy accent which I surmised was a mixture of somewhere African and full-on Aussie. I had clues - he told me he'd done a fair amount of hitching around Africa and Australia. He'd imported the truck from America, and it was chipped up to 450bhp, which any car nut will describe as 'pokey'.

Tootling along as a passenger, in what would normally be the driver's seat, is an odd experience. I felt distinctly detached from the road, like I was missing out on something. My hands wanting to steer, my feet to brake and accelerate, my mind straining to be involved in the driving process.

Our point of separation came upon us quickly - I was coming to realise that the scale on the map I was using was misleading, and my estimation of journey time was a reasonable amount over the reality.

So Mr Dodge dropped me at the M4 roundabout and continued his journey on to a meeting in Bath. I sat in the sunshine next to the carriageway and rolled a cigarette. After sparking up and checking the sky for signs of changing weather, I skipped over the entrances and exits to the slip road for the M4 West, held out my sign and started fishing for my next ride to Swindon.