Being Steve, the gnome

After a great trip hiking up and down the Grand Canyon with my friend Stephanie from college, I had her drop me off at a Pilate truck stop ten miles outside of Flagstaff, AZ, so that I could hitch a ride out to LA. I was so tired I spent the first four hours getting breakfast and sitting reading in a comfy chair at a McDonald's. I finally got the guts to step outside the door and begin my routine. After several hours and no ride, I was feeling rather bummed. I kept on telling myself to be patient, but it wasn't working. So, to comfort myself, I started calling up a bunch of people in my cellphone. So some of them got to see an inside look at my hitchhiking style as I temporarily paused the conversation to ask someone coming out of the store "Excuse me sir, are you headed west?" The most common reply was a quick no, or a "yes, but I can't take a rider with me." Most major trucking companies have insurance policies with them so that they can't take riders with them. Finally, after four more hours of asking, and taking breaks in between, i finally got a ride at about 8 pm, just as it was getting dark. A guy named Josh told me he'd give me a ride, and I was so overjoyed I offered to buy him dinner, but he said he was cool. He was waiting around the stop for his other trucker buddies to catch up to him, but he finally decided to leave the stop because it was getting crowded. So I ran ahead and got my backpack and we were off. He is a hawler of livestock, and apparently livestock truckers are known as the "badasses" of the trucking world. But he is a friendly, kind of small guy about my height, who wears "preppy" clothes. On the CB he sounds like a man in his late forties, with his South Dakotan draw, although he is only 26. He was going to play a trick on his trucking buddies by tricking them into thinking I was his troll friend "Steve" on the CB radio. He plans to come back to LA to visit me with his girlfriend later on.