My first hitch hike

I have been meaning to blog about my recent trip for work to San Francisco. I was only there for a night and a day but I must say, I had a crazy experience in that time. The first day I was there I commuted home with my co-worker Brynn on the bus to Oakland. She asked me to stay in Oakland at a hotel because she wanted to make me dinner at her house. The next morning, she picked me up at the hotel at 7am to take me back to her house for breakfast and then we would be off to work. As we were driving to her house she asked in a very sly way, "do you know how we are getting to to work today?" Keep in mind we had to cross the bay bridge into San Francisco. I guessed the bus, BART, driving? All were wrong. She pointed to a group of business type people standing on the corner as if they were waiting for a bus. All the sudden a car pulls up and 2 people hop in. I see this one more time and I realized we were going to bumm our ride into town. Its called casual carpooling. Google it. I did. Very interesting. Its a win, win sort of a situation. The people that bumm their way into the city don't have to pay for transit, and the people driving don't have to pay the toll and get to ride in the express lanes. The article I read said that its one of the very rare things in this world that just works. It is also common back East mainly in the DC area. Over the 30 yrs. that this hitchhicking/ casual carpooling has taken place, there has not been even 1 act of violence. I was so entrigued by the whole process that I talked about it all the way into the city to the poor man driving us there in his mini van. Once I read the article I realized there are a bunch of unwritten rules and initiating the talking is done only by the driver. I broke that rule for sure. He was very polite. He told us that he had been car pooling like this for over 20 yrs. and has only had the same people in his car maybe twice. I thought the whole process was great! Just would hate to be the first person to be involved in a crime!