Burlington to Boston (inc. gold-dome, homebrew, puff of pipe, and biscuits). Free.

The day started off kind a slow, getting up off the couch of my new college-town friends wasn’t that easy. But by about 11.30am I was on the road standing on the on-ramp of the 89. It took a while to get a lift, and a guy took me just down the road to they tiny town of Richmond. I seemed to be at some kind of park-and –ride facility and the flashy cars were driving past eyeing me a bit strange. But luckily my saviour came, she was Kalita and picked me up and took me to Montpelier, specifically to her friends' house where the guys seemed to be celebrating the recent harvest. They were wonderful, and I got to try their home-brew (excellent) and enjoy some of their harvest. It was good stuff (and evidently the source of their wealth). Ah Vermont! When I got dropped off back in town, I was feeling a bit funny and decided that it was time for a tour of the gold-domed state house, where they let me be the embarassing Australian on tour (Executive Branch? Is that where rich guys do their banking?) By the time that was done, I realized it was late and I had to keep moving.
So I wandered down the road and got a lift half a mile with some guys in a hippified Volvo station wagon going in the wrong direction, but they took me to the intersection and saved me a 15 minute walk. I stood throwing rocks for quite some time before a guy took me down a couple of exits and dropped me off under a bridge where I could shelter from the rain which had just started to fall. Finally, a middle-classed woman picked me up. She drove well past, but as an after-though decided to pick me up. It turned out her daughter had gone hitchhiking earlier that day and despite me being a bloke and her a woman (a dangerous combo so I’m told) she very kindly took me 20 miles down the road and wished me luck. By then the sun was out again but getting low. I looked at the map and realized I was still a good 150 miles from Boston and no real hope of reaching my destination. I was pondering how it was that I had actually started to think in miles not kilometres, when...
A miracle! A Chinese-Malay businessman who owned a tech company had been visiting his client, IBM, and was now on his way back to Boston airport. We flew down the highway as darkness fell, and chatted about the economic crisis, I nibbled on his biscuits and before I knew it we were in Boston. He dropped me off just a few blocks walk from my friend's flat. I even made it in time for pizza. Beginning to feel lucky.