This is part three of a four-part series at The Slice called "End of the Road," about America's waning love affair with car culture. Read the series intro here and the second installment here, on the hell of being carless in America's suburban sprawl.

In the early 2000s, a friend of mine was hitchhiking from San Diego to Tempe, Arizona with a buddy. The first thing they figured out as two guys, one of them dark-skinned enough that he got his very first sunburn on that trip, was that sticking your thumb out doesn’t work particularly well. Actually, it didn’t work at all. Two guys might actually be worse than one— “It’s not like your buddy vouches for you,” he told me. So they took to hanging out at big rest stops and gas stations, cornering motorists at the pump, looking them straight in the eye and giving them a little tag-teamed spiel intended to ask for a ride while simultaneously conveying that they were the right combination of fun and totally-not-crazy.