Idiot Wind by Peter Kaldheim

You live in New York and your job is to buy and sell drugs from a dealer named Bobby Bats, who will kill you if you don't deliver the money on time. You purchase a large quantity of cocaine, then decide to party a little. After a lost weekend of fun and sharing, you wake up Monday morning with no drugs and no money. Bobby is looking for you, so you decide to hitchhike across the country to the West Cost.  Hitchhiking is not easy. You have no money and you've lost your ID. The trip involves long waits, sleeping by the side of the road in the rain, cops moving you along, strange people who include you in dubious enterprises, hunger and catching rides on freight trains.  Eventually you land in Seattle where you are homeless.  You figure out where to sleep and how to get food.  You get new boots and a friend from the shelter shares his place under a bridge. Eventually you are hired for a job cooking in Yellowstone and change your life.

I'm glad Kaldheim described his trip in so much detail. Hitchiking across the country is now off my bucket list.