{"id":1074,"date":"2013-12-09T00:42:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T00:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2013-12-11T00:53:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T00:53:45","slug":"hitchhiking-hudson-river-valley-to-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1074","title":{"rendered":"Viking Happiness: Hitchhiking Hudson River Valley to Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hitchhiking Happiness: Hudson River to Chicago\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q9QrfNknHCM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>&#8220;Learn a healing song while thou livest.&#8221;<\/em><br \/>\nHavamal, Poetic Edda, 13th Century Viking poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I wanted to scream, whoop, sing &#8220;Good morning America how are ya. Don&#8217;t you know me I&#8217;m your native son.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Light up the sky, kiss the girls and jig till I trip and laugh.<\/p>\n<p>All I did was take this video. The backstory is long but I&#8217;ll give you the short version.<\/p>\n<p>I quit a Hudson River Valley carnival that May morning on my way to Chicago for my daughter&#8217;s 8th birthday.<\/p>\n<p>The trip wasn&#8217;t planned. My daughter&#8217;s birthday was on the line. Only the Taconic State Parkway and local roads to hitch before the interstate. Not good. It was a snap judgment to quit and hit the road. <\/p>\n<p>Tuesday to Friday, 800 miles, it was a very ambitious hitchhike and at times that day I thought, &#8216;Shit, this time I&#8217;m really screwed.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>All day I&#8217;d be stopped by state and local cops. In one two hour span, six cops stopped me. When three cops in three squads pulled up, I was both afraid and amused.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What am I public enemy #1 guys?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The cops suggested I return to New York City or walk out of the state, to Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<p>When they left, I wrote on a cardboard sign &#8220;84 West,&#8221; put it on my back and kept walking west. No thumb out but drivers knew the score.<\/p>\n<p>I was in bad shape just moments before this video.<\/p>\n<p>Miles of walking and then up fast pulled a pick-up truck with a young father, his son and the family dog.<\/p>\n<p>Dad told me to hop in the flatbed. The son looked at me like a work of fiction, or history. About the same age as my daughter, he seemed more confused than the dog.<\/p>\n<p>I threw my packs in the back and that pick-up truck peeled away from the curb. Down the on-ramp for I-84, we sped past other cars. Making time. Free from the cops. Jig? Nooo!<\/p>\n<p>What the video won&#8217;t show is what happened before and after, that you&#8217;ll have to imagine.<\/p>\n<p>What it shows is 17 seconds of bumpy, windy ride. What you hear is a hitchhiker shouting coordinates. Watch it closely now and know the cargo is alive again and feels swear-at-the-sky joy.<\/p>\n<p>I learned recently that the word &#8220;happiness&#8221; comes from the Old Norse word &#8220;happ,&#8221; it literally is a Viking word for &#8220;good luck&#8221; or &#8220;change.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The Rune symbol is called a Fehu: <a href=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Fehu.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1089\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?attachment_id=1089\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Fehu.gif\" data-orig-size=\"34,34\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Fehu\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Fehu.gif\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Fehu.gif\" tabindex=\"0\" role=\"button\" src=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Fehu.gif\" alt=\"Fehu\" width=\"34\" height=\"34\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1089\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My change of luck happens off camera but it is felt as I speed into the coming nightfall.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I&#8217;ve long known happiness appears in moments, often short unexpected bursts, if only for 17 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\n<em>I&#8217;m in the tenth month of my year working in traveling carnivals and hitchhiking between jumps. I&#8217;ve worked with eight carnival companies and hitched 13,500 miles across 26 US states and western Canada. Including travel to Mexico and 36 states in all, I&#8217;ve logged more than 20,000 miles. I&#8217;m now writing book proposals and looking for agents. I may work more carnivals before I&#8217;m finished.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Learn a healing song while thou livest.&#8221; Havamal, Poetic Edda, 13th Century Viking poetry I wanted to scream, whoop, sing &#8220;Good morning America how are ya. Don&#8217;t you know me I&#8217;m your native son.&#8221; Light up the sky, kiss the girls and jig till I trip and laugh. All I did was take this video. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-hk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1095,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}