Anyone Ever Hitch Hike Kilted?

**Riverkilt** · 20th March 13, 09:36 PM

This morning saw a guy in jeans and a backpack hitch hiking along our local 2 lane highway. Occured to me that if he was kilted he might get a ride sooner....or never if the kilts "scared" drivers off.

Don't remember any threads on this subject. Just got to wondering if anyone on the board had tried hitch hiking kilted and what the results were.

Yes...I know....its dangerous...not wanting to go there - just whether it helps or hurts getting a ride. Maybe there's an experiment here.

**Andrew Breecher** · 21st March 13, 05:04 AM

I've hitched many times kilted, in Ireland as well as in the U.S. It's hard to tell if it makes a difference though - sometimes hours and hundreds of cars go by with no results, and sometimes I've gotten rides from people who have told me they picked me up because I was wearing a kilt.

**Riverkilt** · 21st March 13, 07:08 AM

Ahhh, we got everything here! Thanks Andrew.

Did occur to me that if we can afford a kilt we can probably afford a car too...

**Andrew Breecher** · 21st March 13, 07:34 AM

Whether or not you get picked up might also depend on where you are. As I've often noticed, most of my hitches have been from young hippies, or middle-aged men who used to hitch themselves. Though in New Mexico I was passed by dozens of white folks in nice cars for hours, and ended up getting a ride from a Mexican family who didn't speak English and didn't seem to care that I was wearing a kilt. Like I said, it just goes to show that nothing really goes to show.

**creagdhubh** · 21st March 13, 08:13 AM

Nope, and I don't think I ever will.

**GMan** · 21st March 13, 08:13 AM

Haven't hitched in years, but thanks to this thread, may just have to try it again.

**flairball** · 21st March 13, 08:39 AM

There is a scene in the movie Play On, where the Scottish main character hitch hikes kilted in Kansas. It doesn't end well.

**Mike_Oettle** · 21st March 13, 09:31 AM

Hitch-hiking is not something I have done since 1974, but I did quite a long trip kilted and in uniform in 1973.
I was living in Pretoria at the time, and travelled by train to Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape, for a training camp. Afterwards I put my rail warrant in my pocket and headed west, since I had an additional week’s leave and planned to visit my family on the Cape West Coast.
I travelled successfully from Grahamstown through Port Elizabeth and down the Garden Route as far as Mossel Bay on the first day. One of my rides was with a man from the same regimental company as me, and he took me quite a distance. In Mossel Bay I met up with an officer from my regiment who lived there, and whose family put me up for the night.
The next day I continued westwards to Cape Town, and from there to Vredendal, 200 miles north of Cape Town, where my family farmed.
During my week in Vredendal I did not wear my kilt. (I feel now that I ought to have worn it in town, but I was nervous of the reaction from my Afrikaner former schoolmates.)
On my last day I kilted up and said farewell to my brother and the collection of hippies he had helping on his commune. They found my soldiering rather odd (my brother was a draft dodger), but were quite complimentary about the kilt.
My mother took me to the national road, just outside the next town, where I stood for a while until a former teacher picked me up. When he stopped his car, he said (in Afrikaans): “Michael, I didn’t know you had joined the Scotties!” He took me about 80 miles towards Cape Town, after which I got other lifts.
Around sunset I was passing through Worcester, a mostly Afrikaans country town across the first mountain ranges. As I was walking along the national road, which was fenced off from a residential street, a Boer in a nearby garden shouted at me to lift my “skirt”. I just ignored him, and he got quite angry, but did nothing further. Eventually I was picked up by a Jewish family and taken as far as Beaufort West, the main town in the western part of the Great Karoo. The family stayed overnight in a hotel, and I did, too.
The next morning I was standing outside the town waiting to be picked up when a train came past, some of its coaches full of soldiers who called out to me. I got some wolf whistles.
Sundry lifts took me to Colesberg, on the Cape side of the Orange River, where I thought I could catch a mid-afternoon train to Johannesburg and Pretoria. Unfortunately I was half an hour late for that train, and had to wait until after sunset . . . when the same train that had passed me at Beaufort West came into the station.
I made friends with some of the troops – they were “parabats”, members of the elite Parachute Brigade, heading for Bloemfontein for their umpteenth training camp. I was invited to have a beer with six men sharing a train compartment. Several of the chaps were quite a bit older than me, and at least one expressed regret that he had volunteered for the “bats”.
Their coaches were unhooked from the train in the middle of the night, and when I woke in the morning the train was nearing the Vaal River (boundary between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State).
Nowhere on my route did I encounter serious negative comments on the kilt (the man at Worcester being an exception), and several folk were pleased to see it.
I found it very handy when I needed to answer the call of nature at the roadside on one particular occasion: there was an early morning mist, and I stepped through a farm fence into an orange orchard where I was invisible to anyone nearby – on the road or on the farm – as I did what was necessary.
I have undertaken longer journeys hitch-hiking, but that was my longest while kilted.
Regards,
Mike

**Nathan** · 21st March 13, 12:22 PM

I hitchhiked to the Glengarry Highland Games from Ottawa a few years ago with a kilt and a sign. They guy who picked me up drove 40 minutes out of his way just cause he thought it was so cool that I seemed determined to get there...