Washington DC to Charlottesville VA (with police escort)

Starting is always the hardest bit. I caught the metro from downtown DC out to the famous Route 66 at Falls Church Station. On google maps it looked like an ideal location to start, and indeed when I arrived the station was right in the middle of the highway. Unfortunately I was hedged in by a railway yard and a carpark, but after attempting to traverse a Virginian jungle, I eventually found the way through the carpark and passed the high-school (with kids playing on the gridiron pitch, another just-like-in-the-movies moment) to an onramp of the 66. After only a few minutes of standing at a rather awkward spot, I flashed my thumb unenthusiastically at a dark car, which promptly flashed some worrying blue lights at me.
“Do you think it’s a good idea hitchhiking a police car,” the very tall trooper asked me leaning out the window
“Umm.”
“Do you think you should be doing this here?”
“Umm. Well…I was under the impression that I wasn’t to hitch on the interstate, but that the onramp was ok.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said. “You shouldn’t walk on the highway.”
“Yes maam.”
At this stage she started shuffling around things in her car and I was waiting for the ticket she would issue that I wasn’t going to pay. But, it turned out that she was actually clearing the seat for me. What a great start, a ride in a police car 20 miles down the road to a great rest-area. Lovely.
From there I didn’t have to wait long before a convoy of cars going to a Nascar-meet offered me a lift. I was in the enormous Dodge truck driven by Kevin, with his son Kevin Jr. in the passenger seat. They were a great bunch of football throwing larikins off for a weekend away together, including Kevin Jr.’s pregnant girlfriend and a bunch of other guys who liked to compare the size of their fuel tanks and gas mileage. I was a bit sorry when they dropped me off after a great 100 mile cruise through the Appalachian Mountains along highway 89.
This left me in a slightly chilly Staunton, where I didn’t have to wait too long before an environmental-scientist went way out of her way to take me to the very top of the mountain range where the Appalachian walking trail crosses the highway. A few spits of rain at this stage might have helped my cause. A 17-year-old high school senior, on the way to his girlfriend’s house, took pity on me. He too went a bit out of his way and dropped me off right in downtown Charlottesville.
Back on track, and faith in American people renewed. Virginia: tick.