Biker Chick

I don’t remember her name, but in my mind she will always be “biker chick”.

I first saw her one dark night, standing with her thumb out on a street corner in San Francisco, and I stopped and offered her a ride. She was in her early twenties, attractive, with blond hair, wearing jeans, work-style shoes, and a denim jacket over a halter top. She sat behind me in my camper van on a little sofa-style seat that doubled as a bed. She was quiet. I stopped at a convenience store and bought a box of donuts. As I pointed my van back onto California route 1, I removed a donut for myself and passed the box to her. A few minutes later I looked behind me and saw her lying down, asleep. The box of donuts was empty. She must have been hungry and exhausted.

I was hoping to make it to Big Sur that night, but I was tired, too. The highway was dark, and I found a place where I could pull off the road. I quickly fell asleep.

The next day my hitch-hiking passenger was more talkative. She was a biker chick, the girlfriend of a biker. She had a four year old daughter in Florida that she missed and she was on her way there to see her.

It was late afternoon when we got to Los Angeles, and I pulled my van off the road next to a public beach. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next, and while I stood on the beach and pondered my next step, my passenger got out of the van, walked across the highway, and stuck out her thumb. When I looked across the road two minutes later, she was gone.

Florida was three thousand miles away, and I felt some regret that I let her slip away so quickly. I felt I should have taken her at least part way home. I’ll never know what happened to her, but I’ve always hoped she made it home, back to her little girl.