Dec. 19, 2012 – Las Vegas, Nev. to Barstow, Calif.

Most days I’m on the move, I’m up before the sun. Not so in Las Vegas.

The late-morning light streamed through the Flamingo hotel windows as Mareike, Juliane, and I lay wearily across the beds. Cham was gone – he had somehow left at dawn to catch a flight to Vancouver.

We had just spent a joyous afternoon, evening, and night laughing and singing, drinking and dancing, and – for at least a couple hours – making money. But now I could mostly only think of the cash I hadn’t held on to, my aching head, the fact that we were an hour past checkout, and the minute chances of catching a ride out of this concrete jungle.

The German girls and I were set for battle today, ready to begin a hitchhiking race to San Francisco. We decided to leave the Strip together, because I wanted to give the rookies a fair start.

After lumbering through the ungodly downtown core, we parted ways at a gas station, promising to meet in a few days time. I did have reservations about leaving them – they hadn’t yet hitchhiked and they were starting from an awful spot. But they’d already come almost all the way across a foreign country. And I wanted to win.

Three hours later, I was only six miles down I-15. I had found my first driver, Phil, by approaching his window at a red light – he had taken me to a deserted truck stop near the edge of town.

After watching hundreds of cars zoom past me, I decided to try the same low-brow, red-light technique, and got Mike to take my 50 miles to Primm, right at the California state line.

Primm was nothing more than monstrosity in the middle of the desert: two casinos, two gas stations, one McDonald’s, one Subway, and plenty of hungry faces en route to Vegas.

After getting booted from one gas station, I set up shop at the Chevron across the way. Jessie and Sydney soon approached me, asking me where I was heading.

“We’ll take you, man,” Jessie said, when I told him I was just trying to go west. “But you’ve got to help us gas-jug first.”

I had no idea what gas-jugging was. I soon found out it meant wandering around the gas station with a one-gallon jug, asking drivers if they can spare a squeeze.

It took some time to get enough fuel. But we were on the road after an hour with enough juice to get to Barstow, Calif. I settled in for the ride – I’d be spending the next couple days in the van with Jessie, Sydney, two dogs, and one cat.

We pulled into Barstow’s Walmart parking lot about two hours later, ready to settle in for the night. As we passed around some drinks, I got one long lesson on life as wandering street kids, a fascinating part of American sub-culture.

I soon left the van to look for a suitable tent site nearby. I felt far, far away from the bright lights of Vegas.