UVA to VUT (in one fell swoop)

After my longest wait to date, I was picked up by a landscape-architect who took me all the way from Charlottesville (home of the Hoos) to another college town, Blacksburg. It was really quite lucky the way it happened.
The thing about hitchhiking is that you have to not only enjoy standing by the side of the road for extended periods of time, but also you have to enjoy sitting in cars for extended periods of time, next to strangers. My luck today was that the guy who picked me up seemed to enjoy sitting in cars himself, and had no particular destination in mind. He had finished his Sunday chores, and simply wanted to get out of the house. So he got in his car and took off.
Well, imagine his surprise when upon entering the highway he sees a guy standing with a backpack strumming a guitar. I cannot vouch for how silly I might have looked- bear in mind this was after a two hour wait. I was almost certainly being a little bit silly. But I caught his attention, and he decided to stop.

We struck up an easy conversation, smoked a few cigarettes and cruised passed signs that said "This is McCain country". These were the first real signs of republican support I'd seen since entering the country. Apparently I had entered the south. In the north-east I had started to think that the black-muslim-terrorist guy was the only candidate and his win an inevitability. But here, Virginia, tobaccolandia, is apparently 'maverick' terrain. Its a pretty green state, but apparently it might turn blue at the start of November. I'm a bit confused about it all, maybe it's global warming or something. Why would a land of frozen pizza turn blue?

It was nice to ponder this, next to a friendly guy who, like me, had nothing much to do. We talked about America, and other places he'd been, like Alaska, and places we'd both been, like Chile. We talked about Obama. There's a lot to like about that guy. The green hills rolled by and he decided to drive all the way to Blacksburg. We ran out of matches, got some more, smoked some more cigarettes and rolled into town. It was the long trip, but the time, like the miles, had slid by lazily and pleasantly. That's how Sundays should always be.