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Off topic response: A scary thing in my life happened in San Francisco in the mid-70s, After an all day meeting at the Federal building, I decided to walk back my hotel, the Jack Tar (or whatever it was called by that time), at Geary and Van Ness. I took out my blue, hooded sweatsuit because I wanted to run. I figured I would run north North Point Street, the same street that Ghirardelli Square is on. I was about 5:45 that late afternoon.

In terms of running, I did the wrong thing. I decided to sit down, then I laid back, and went to sleep. I awoke at about 8 o'clock, decided to scrap the run and went to dinner.
I learned that evening on the 11p.m. news that a runner wearing a blue, hooded sweatsuit was shot dead on north Van Ness avenue at about 7:15. That would have been about the time I would have been on my way back to hotel, if I had in fact gone on my run.

I still think about that every now and then, and I thank the Lord for his goodness.

I posted my abduction-by-serial-killer story once before on FR. I stopped hitchhiking after that.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1818327/posts?page=23#23

I’ve been in only one situation even remotely similar to this and I panicked. A police car drove right past me and my abductor when all I needed to do was turn the wheel and cause an accident to free myself. When the time came that the truck was slowed down enough I jumped out. The guy asked, “Why did you do that?” I was so full of adrenaline I said the first thing that came to my mind: “It’s against my religion!” I wasn’t even a believer at that time.

So the guy starts rooting behind his seat, I hear the clunk of metal-against-metal, and ran as fast as I could, even weaving back & forth because I was convinced I would have a few rounds coming my way. But I learned on that day that people do panic, it happened to me. When you’re stuck inside 4 walls, the fight-or-flight syndrome can go off into the weeds. As a p.s. to this story, about 15 years later I saw an article that had a picture of someone who looked like him, so I read the article — it was about a guy who had been executed in California for picking up hitchhikers, raping, torturing & murdering them.