What a great sport we have

Reflecting on an incident of good fortune fifty years ago, Roger Errington is asking for our help… read on:

In 1972, I hitchhiked out to the Tetons from Massachusetts with a buddy from High School to go climbing. We were not looking forward to the return trip, and on the penultimate day before our departure, I noticed a Soling on a trailer in the campground parking lot. A short while later, a young guy was hitching it to a station wagon with Illinois plates.

I told my buddy that the boat must have been coming back from the USA Olympic Trials on San Francisco Bay. Sure enough, when asked he said he was part of the crew and was driving the boat back to Chicago for the owner. We asked if we could get a ride and he said sure, so a short while later, we threw our gear up into the boat and were off.

At night, he’d stop in a campground and sleep in the back of the car while we slept up in the Soling. The guy’s name was Scott Stokes and the boat belonged to Bob Johnstone. We never did exchange contact info with Scott.

All these years later, I’d love to track him down and thank him again for his help. Bob no longer has his contact information, so I am hoping somebody that knows or knows of Scott will contact me at r_errington@hotmail.com.

Epilogue:
When we got into Illinois, we were still looking at a long hitch to get back to Massachusetts. Scott told us to make a sign that said “Need Ride Back to Mass” and every time we passed a car to hold it up in the passenger window. At some point we passed a VW bus with California license plates and a long-haired guy driving.

We couldn’t tell if he was saying yes or no, so Scott slowed down and pulled over behind the van. He proceeded to instruct us, “Okay guys, he does this, you do this” acting out the sign language to use. We got back out in the passing lane, pulled alongside and the guy was nodding his head yes.

Scott slowed down and we both pulled over on the breakdown lane on I-80. We jumped up in the boat to grab our gear and a couple of minutes later we were heading east with a group headed to a Grateful Dead concert in Hartford, CT.

At 7:00 am the next morning, they dropped us off on the side of the Mass Pike in Lee. We hopped over the guardrail, walked down to a gas station and called home for someone to pick us up. We made it all the way from the Tetons to western Mass without having to stand on the side of the road with our thumbs out.

Had our departure from Scott’s car not been so sudden, we probably would have exchanged contact info.