Providence RI to NYC with a piece of cardboard

My lovely couchsurfing host dropped me off at the highway, and I decided it was time to try an old hitchhiking trick, the sign. I had tried this one before going from Bristol with a sign that said simply “London” and the young removalist who picked me up, and indeed took me to London, told me it was a great sign. But I was a bit worried that writing New York would deter people who could at least get me on the way. Instead I tried one that gave the highway and the direction, “95s”. I had plenty of time to colour this in, because everybody was ignoring the sign. By the end it was a masterpiece but I’m still not sure of its success.
Eventually a guy heading just out of town did pick me up, a very nice carpenter who not only dropped me at the outskirts of Providence, but also offered me a place to stay if I got stuck. Where he dropped me, however, was a bit of an ordinary place: lots of traffic, but very little going down the ramp, and no safe place to stand on the ramp itself. I threw quite a lot of rocks. Finally a minister of some denomination unknown to me kindly stopped, gave me a lift, and told me my sign was no good. “You need one that says NYC. Its simple, just three letters.” But of course! And I was thinking of writing 7 letters with a space. Ridiculous.
So he dropped me off and I got to work. I was only a few minutes into perfecting my NYC sign when a college student stopped and picked me up. He couldn’t get me to New York but he did get me to the border of Connecticut and a lovely safe spot to continue on.
Here my NYC sign got me a great lift after 20 minutes or so, with a trucker. My first trucker! He turned out to be another minister in his spare time, and for the umpteenth time on my travels, I had to confess having heard of Hillsong but never having heard Hillsong. Well, they’re great apparently, maybe the most famous thing aussie there is. Note to self: listen to hillsong for making intelligent christian conversation. He was a nice fellah, divorced, estranged from wife and kids down in Lousiana, waiting for god to find a way for them to be together again. He was going through to New Jersey, and was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get off the highway anywhere, so he dropped me off at the last food and gas stop on the highway.
After filling myself up, I wandered casually towards the re-entry to the highway, where without even putting my thumb out, a couple of mexican guys heading back into NYC in a truck stopped. We flew through the last bit of Connecticut and then the Bronx began. They pointed out the left-hand-side where the poor blacks lived and the opposite side where the wealthy whites resided. They told me I didn’t need to worry about the Bronx, despite its reputation, but kindly showed me the drug-problem area that was permanently manned by police where I could safely whack out my laptop, get some wifi, make plans and begin to be amazed by the hispanic world that surrounded me.