The Story of Sushi, and why we should catch our own fish:

 

 

And like a raindrop falling from a luscious leaf, my time in Australia comes to an end. Almost five months, but they seem to dwindle into a small stack of memories, finishing before they fully begin. When I left Madison, last year in early winter, life was pretty chaotic. My four years away from ‘home’ had finally caught up with me -  I was losing touch with myself, grasping for truth, for happiness, and looking in all the wrong places.

Getting back to Australia, to the people who will always know and love me – let life click back into sense. I spent much of my time alone… reading, learning, growing… and enjoying my solitary company. I’d bike around for work from dawn till mid afternoon and silently watch my city come alive. On rainy days and during my breaks, I’d devour a book on sailing, or diesel mechanics, or live-a-board lifestyles, escaping into dreams and plans for my pretty little Cape Dory. On weekends, a train then bike to the beach would replenish my soul and inspire positivity. Life makes more sense in the water, that’s just the way it is.

Often I’d catch up for tea with one of my few dear friends, who’d listen compassionately and help look for new perspectives. The running saga of my life (latest skype calls, emails, letters) would tumble out my mouth as Mum, Ange, Andy or Jester returned comments, suggestions, or just hugs and understanding.  Always I’d come home to smiles, good meals, and a cosy nest. And as the quickening time tramped on, my heart mended itself, my soul found itself, and happiness happened.

A jet plane blew me into yesterday, a train choo-choo’d me across America’s plains, and now here I am, full circle, back in Madison’s Midwest.

This last 6 months Charlie and I have jumped some big hurdles. We stumbled a few times, made lots of mistakes, and the tunnel grew dark once or twice… but from here, sharing together this springtime light of day, I’m thankful. Our strength feels doubled, our love more unified… and our new adventure ready to begin…

Owning a sailboat! California here we come!

There’s a story I’ve been meaning to tell that belongs here on awkwardbeautifulpeople:

A few weeks ago driving in a town about an hour west of Austin, as I was returning home after SXSW, I drove past two guys on the side of the road. They were obviously looking for a ride.

I drove only a second longer in order to find a spot to pull over and turn around to go pick them up.

Now, I will preface that I am an individual apt to impulse and fancy, but picking up hitchhikers isn’t in my history. As a young, naïve and mostly defenseless lady, you can imagine why. But somehow I instinctively knew this split-second decision was a good one.

This was partially due to circumstances: I had already seen people coming or going to SXSW via I-10. Over many years I have developed a close relationship with this long, isolated highway. Hours upon hours desolate landscape leaves little to look at besides endless mesquite bush and other drivers, and earlier that week I had already come across folks and vehicles that (insert hick twang here) “sure didn’t look like they were from them parts.”

But more so than the immediate social context, I had an immediately good instinct about these guys. Not to say I wasn’t nervous, but somehow knew it would be ok.

I pull up to them and explain that I’m only going 4 hours west, if they want to go.

Introductions are made; Dean and Moon. With a name like that, I’m convinced this will be fine. “I’ve always wanted to pick up hitchhikers,” I said.

“Well, we’ve always wanted to hitchhike!” They throw their instruments in the back of my car and hop in.

I learn they are musicians based out of Chicago working their way across the west and then the coast. They would part after California, for Frank to head up to Alaska while Moon headed back to Chicago. They had played a show at Pete’s, which earlier that week had grabbed my attention for being the only place that was not playing live music. Even better, it was tejano. In retrospect it was just the kind of obscure hole-in-the-wall I could imagine them playing in, hootin’ and hollerin’ and hyping up the tiny crowd with their pure energy and imagination like they had nothing to hide from anyone.

Within 15 minutes Rooster (Dean’s name for Moon) is raving to me about honey and Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. We traded ideas within topics like dissatisfaction and self-illusionment of the masses, the existence of a greater power, and Rooster’s theory on end of the world. Dean scribbled madly in a journal, assumedly trying to document all that which was taking place. We discovered that each of us have a tattoo of some words or phrase very meaningful to us. They had swapped stories with a former prisoner and still somehow found understanding in their hearts. We expressed our belief in fate, God, or whatever cosmic conductor is carrying out the order of operations, and we called it the Source to appease all parties. They were gushing with compassion and love for the world and the universe as we know it. They were just living, in the truest sense of the word. And they could sense that I too was just trying to live and love living.

The time passed so quickly, I could hardly believe it had been four hours. Out on that lone country highway we has ascended to a crest of incredible shared understanding of each other, and of the world passing by outside. We felt that the Source had meant for this chance meeting to happen, and we were grateful for its generosity.

We were Love Beacons.

But trying to explain this to others, I discovered, would be harder than I thought.

We eventually arrived in my hometown right off of 1-10. We decided to get Mexican food, and I had to leave them to report to my work at a nearby bar, where they planned to meet me later. But due to circumstances too tedious to explain, it turned out that I didn’t have work after all.

On the way I had described to them Alpine and Marfa, Texas, two nearby cities that has many more attractions than my dull hometown. Marfa in particular is known for its growing art community. Their interest was sparked, so now that my schedule was free, “Why don’t we just go there?”

I was of course immediately in agreement. The trip had already brought us together closer than expected possible. Bland courtesy usually inhibits challenging questions; guarded reservation generally aborts love and truth before they can even be conceived. But these walls had already been torn down quickly, and we could see that there was nothing to fear in one another.

But there was a catch; in my hometown I was living with my parents. And despite all of this heart-pouring, soul-discovering, overall goodness I had so fortunately come across, I didn’t think they would take too kindly to the idea of me running around with hitchhikers. I had to find a careful way to handle the situation.

This, dear readers, is a careful turning point in this story. This ‘me’ I have described to you thus far is a work in progress. It is not one that has been displayed much in public, or if it has it has not much been in the presence of my parents. My parents are fine, respectable parents, but I have concluded we live on different planets. They inhabit the Real World, while I inhabit the Ideal World. Naïve and foolish as it may be, my chosen environment at least offers a shot at truly living. If you’ve read other things here, you could gather that truly living is not something I’m willing to trade for anything.

Thus we have a predicament here:

• If I lie I continue to shelter the true ‘me’ from them and otherwise potentially worsen the situation.
• If I don’t do this I continue to linger in vague passivity, wondering for years about what could have been.
• If I tell my parents the truth and risk alienating them with my free, uninhibited spirit. And even then, in their understanding it will be regarded as foolish, precarious decisions that should be suppressed for the sake of security and social conformity.

So it’s a good thing I’ve never been too worried about those last two things anyway.

Day 4
New Market, VA to Washington, D.C.: 125 miles

I sit on the bench in front of an I-81 rest area on a chilly Saturday morning, flying a sign that says “TRYING TO GET HOME TO WASH DC.”  I’m a little nervous about the rest area attendants (the guy from last night is gone and there are two new people this morning) but they still ignore me.  I appeared over the crest of the hill in stealth mode this morning when nobody was looking, so I do wonder if they wonder where I came from.  A ride does not come quickly.  I’m out there for three hours.  I smile at people.  I watch the sky.  I use the bathroom.  I scribble in my notebook.  Waiting becomes a meditation, an exercise in patience, and I try to stop focusing on the ride and start enjoying the blessed warmth of the rising sun, though thunderclouds have begun to darken the horizon.  An old woman walks by and wishes me luck, and gray clouds tumble in over the sun.  The sky flits back and forth between pockets of sunshine and threats of rain, and I remind myself to keep faith and not to worry.

People are friendly, at least.  Many of them come say hi and tell me they can’t give me a ride but they hope I find one soon.  A happy Québécois man strikes up a conversation with me as he’s doing exaggerated leg stretches.  “Ave yoo veezeeteed Canada?” he asks in his thick French Canadian accent.  I mention that I had just traveled through BC and the Yukon a few months back.  “Ah, BC ees good, eh?”  “Yeah, it is so beautiful….  So you’re heading back to Quebec right now!”  “Yes?”  “Is there any chance you’d want to give me a ride up a few miles?”  “I canNOT!  We ah com-PLEH-tly fool.  It wood be a plehzoor, but zeh ees no space even for a bag of peanoots!”

I make friends with one of the new morning attendants.  “So, you’re trying to get to DC,” she says.  I smile.  “How did you know?  Hmm, you must have seen my sign.”  I lower my voice to a whisper.  “Is it ok for me to have this sign out here???”  She doesn’t care at all, so I take it out and prop it up against my bag even more obviously, and under “TRYING TO GET HOME TO WASH DC” I add “even just 30 miles up to I-66 would help a lot!”  Not five minutes after this upgrade, a trucker type with tattoo sleeves glances at me as he strides by.  “You hitchhiking?  Where ya headed?”  He doesn’t even read the sign.  “I’m heading to DC.”  He looks blank.  “I’m heading up 81, just trying to get up to the junction with I-66 if possible.”  “Up to 66.  Ok, yeah, I’ll take you up to 66.  Come on.”  “Ah, THANK YOU!”  I leap up, sling the pack over my shoulder, and follow him over to a white pickup with two other guys sitting up front.  He tells me to hop in the back.  “Thank you so much—this is incredible.  Can you guys let me out one stop before we get to 66?”  They tell me to just knock on the window.

So I lie down and lean back against the cab and we cruise.  The wind rushes over me and I face backward, watching the road zoom away into the distance.  Some people we pass point at me and wave.  Through patches of cloud the sun smiles down on me and grazing cows.  I knock when we approach my exit, and they all nod.  A couple minutes later they pull over onto the shoulder just before the exit ramp, I jump out and thank them profusely, and they smile and drive off.  There is seriously nothing I love more than getting a ride in the open bed of a pickup truck.

I walk the quarter mile up the off ramp (ramps are so much longer on foot than in a car) and then I cross the street and head to the onramp.  The spot is beautiful; the shoulder is wide and traffic soars onto the ramp from both directions.  Trees sway on both sides beneath unfurling gray.  This is the last exit out of a little town called Strasburg, the last exit before I-66, just two miles away from the junction.  I figure, if I can find anyone going to 66, even if it’s only a short ride, I’ll at least be pointing in right direction.

I’m not out there fifteen minutes before a guy stops.  “Yeah, hell, I’ll take you to 66,” he says.  I ask where he’s going.  “I’m going the other way, but it’s right here, I don’t mind taking you up there.”  We fly, he tells me a strange story about cowboys, and soon we merge onto 66.  He drives for about a minute or two, and then he pulls over in front of an ‘unauthorized vehicles prohibited’ police turnaround.  “Um…would you mind taking me to an exit?”  “Nah, this is fine, man.”  “Uhh…please?”  “No, I can’t go any further, because I’ve gottta turn around right here.”  “What?  How far is the next exit?”  “It’s just a hundred yards up the road.”  “Can you take me?”  “I don’t have too much gas.  Don’t worry, people out here are friendly.  You’ll get a ride in no time.”  Is it because I’m so close, on my last highway with only 60 miles to go, that I get careless?  Rather than just go back with him in any direction until he can leave me at an exit, I actually get out.  He offers me a few bucks, does the illegal turnaround, and drives away.  I walk 50 yards down the road and realize I am screwed.

I look around.  There is absolutely nothing here.  The highway stretches into infinity in both directions.  Old farmhouses rest on a hilltop half a mile away.  Tall golden grasses whip in the gusts of wind that sweep across the roadway.  I pull out my tattered map and squint.  The next exit is, amazingly, eight miles away.  And to go back would be at least two miles to the highway junction and another two to the last exit.  So I’m at least four miles from anything.  I silently curse the guy who just took me here.  I stand trying to hitch for about ten minutes, and then realize that this is going to be completely impossible.  Nobody’s gonna stop going this fast, especially if they wonder why someone decided to kick me out of their car here in the middle of nowhere.  Not to mention the illegality of standing out here on the interstate.  I actually start to hope for a cop to show up—yes, write me a ticket, but please just get me out of here.  Well Dave, how in the hell are you gonna get yourself out of this one?  After a moment’s pause, I grin.  This kind of situation is what I thrive on.

There’s only one thing that I can really think to do.  So I hop the barbed wire fence that runs along the interstate and scramble down a hill to an unlined 10 mph road that weaves up towards the farmhouses.  Everything is deserted.  The clouds have evaporated and the sun burns hot.  When I finally reach a house, I follow a path through the yard up to the front door and I ring the doorbell.  What the hell am I going to say?  Hi, I’m a hitchhiker and I got stranded not far from your house because somebody just dropped me off on the side of the highway but ya can’t hitchhike out on the interstate like that because it’s impossible to catch rides when cars are going so fast and now I don’t know what to do or where I am?  Suddenly the door opens.  An old woman waves her hand at me.  “Dorsey’s in the workshop,” she says before letting the door go.  “Wait!  I’m not looking for Dorsey.  I…uh….”  I falter.  “I’m a traveler, just passing through, and I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving me some water.”  She stares at me, studying me for a moment.  “Hang on,” she finally says, and she lets the door slam.  I hear things clanging through the window.  A moment later she returns with a cup full of ice water.  “Just leave the cup on the stoop when you’re done.”  “Thank you so much.  Oh, also!”  “Yes?”  “Can you tell me how to get to the closest town?”  “That’s Strasburg.  It’s a long way.  Just keep following this road, turn right at the corner up there, then left, then it‘ll take you to 11, turn right there and that’ll take you in to town.”  “Ok, thank you….”

The door shuts and I’m left on this woman’s front stoop.  I drink the water and set the cup down.  This hasn’t particularly helped my situation.  I return to the road and start walking again.  Maybe I can try to flag someone down if I see a car.  Or, I might be able to hitch once I hit 11, wherever the hell that is.  As I approach the next property, I see a guy on a riding mower up a hill on his lawn.  I wave, he waves, I signal and take a step up the hill towards him, and he rides over and kills the motor.  Two barking dogs follow him, tails wagging.  “Hi,” I say.  “So…uh… I’m lost.”  I grin.

He chuckles.  “Well…where you tryna get?”  “Umm….” so I launch into my story.  “Shoot,” he finally says.  “So you’re tryna go out to 66…well, the nearest exit is way down in Front Royal.”  He thinks for a moment.  “Well…come on up here, the dogs don’t bite, I’ll run and get the keys to the truck.”  “Excuse me?”  “Yeah, I’ll just take you down there myself.”

And he drives me six miles through curving wooded back roads to the ramp in Front Royal: civilization again!  And what a beautiful spot this is.  I’m near a McDonalds and a gas station, the ramp is great, and I’m just under 60 miles from DC.  This is it.  I just have to get down this road (actually even just as far as Vienna and I’ve hit the metro system) and I’ve made it.  I prepare to hit the road, but instead I just walk up the hill beside this ramp to a little spot next to a nice grove of pine trees.  I sit on my pack in the shade and relax for a few minutes, soaking it all up.

I hitch for twenty or thirty minutes and then suddenly feel a strong impulse to walk over to McDonalds.  I hesitate for a good moment, because I am trying to hitchhike here, not sit around in McDonalds, but my intuition has been trustworthy on this trip (as always), so I shrug and listen to the urge.  As I walk up, I see an old homeless guy with a pack sitting outside.  He smiles when he sees me.  I shake his hand, and we chat.  He just made it from Albuquerque to Knoxville in three rides, and then from Knoxville to here in another two.  Before going inside, I ask if he needs anything.  “Nope.”  “How much money you got?”  “Bout $75.”  “Shit, more than me.”  (I’d started with about 20 bucks, which had gone into food, coffee, and local transportation; I now had $35, the sum of the money that had been given to me on the road by different people.  If I’d had more than he did, I would have split my money with him.)  I go in, wash up, get a coffee, and sit down next to my pack.  I can tell that the woman next to me wants to ask me questions, so I strike up a conversation with her.  She’s so excited to talk about travels, and she wants to give me a ride (in her mustang convertible) but I have to turn it down because she is going north on 81 and not east.  She really wants to do something for me, and I try to explain that her willingness alone is enough of a gift.

So finally I return to ramp, ready to move east.  I sit on my pack, thumb and fly my DC sign, and after a joyful hour or so, a small beat up black 2-door civic pulls over.  I run up to the window; they are heading to Woodbridge.  It’s far east, but south of DC on the I-95 corridor.  Why not.  The guy in the passenger seat hops out and folds the seat down, and I stuff in my bag and crawl in.  These guys have full tattoo sleeves, chain smoke cigarettes, and drive stick shift with loud hip hop bass pulsing through the car.  They’re on their way to a mechanic job out in Woodbridge.  They are great, and we are enjoying each others’ company when after ten miles the car begins to overheat.  The driver swears and slams his hand against the dashboard.  (“This keeps happening,” he turns around and explains to me.)  So we pull over, they whip out the tool kits, pop the hood, and deftly perform some sort of practiced jerry rigged surgery.  Finally they get it to work, we get back on the road, and the car immediately overheats again.  They pull off, add bottles and bottles of antifreeze, tweak their surgery, and we get back on the road.  Ten miles down, the car overheats again.

Sweating on the side of the highway, cigarettes droop from their mouths as they lean under the hood, trying not to burn themselves on the hot car.  “Bet you’re glad you took a ride with us now.”  “Actually, this is one of the more efficient rides I’ve had.”  Finally, in a fit of anger, one of the guys simply rips the offending part out of the car.  Some random nuts and screws go in instead, and we just hit the road.  The car does not overheat again.  I’m trying to figure out when they will pull off 66 towards Woodbridge and when I should get out, but they suggest I just come all the way with them—there’s a bus terminal, and I could catch something up to the metro in Springfield.  So we settle into the drive.  They ask me about the kinds of people I meet through my travels.  I tell them how that’s probably my favorite part about being on the road.  People all have their own little rituals, their own little universe.  “Right now you guys are drinking Monster and smoking cigarettes and listening to hip hop cranked up.  Yesterday there was with a guy who chewed loose leaf tobacco, and the lady with a spotless car who drank herbal tea and listened to classical music, or there are people with a cross or rosary beads hanging from the rearview.  Whatever it is, I get to step into each of these little universes for a couple minutes.  “Have you met any crazy people?”  I laugh.  “People always ask me that.  But I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any good stories there.  The worst thing that’s happened to me is getting dropped off in a bad spot.”  “So you think there’s more good people in the world than bad?”  “You know, I just met someone a couple days ago who broke it down like this.  He estimated—and this was about hitchhiking only, not about the goodness of people in general, because he was only talking about whether people would stop to give you rides—that 10-20% of the world wants to help you out.  70-80% of people don’t care if they see you out there.  And 5% are bad people who want to hurt you.

“I’ve been thinking about that.  And there’s no way that could be.  Because here’s the thing.  When you are standing on the side of the road, often hundreds of cars will pass you before you get a ride.  Hundreds.  If 5% of the world was bad people who wanted to hurt you, that would mean that 1 in 20 people want to hurt you.  20 cars go by every 15 seconds on a highway.

“So, rather than 1 in 20, here’s my estimate.  Each day on the road, probably at least 10,000 cars notice you.  (This is combining: time spent standing on ramps.  Time walking on highway not hitching.  Time walking through town with pack.  Time sitting out flying a sign.  Etc.).  If none of these people come try to hurt me, that means that in my personal experience, less than 1 in 10,000 people want to hurt me (that’s 0.01%).  That’s based on a single day.  I’ve been on the road like this at least a hundred different days, so that makes it 0.0001%.  So, based only on my own personal experience, which I completely acknowledge might be different from that of others—in my experience, the breakdown is more like this: between 0.1% and 1% of people will go out of their way to stop for you and help you out.  98.9999% of people pass you by (at best, they want to help but don’t, cant’, or are afraid to, so they could be considered potentially good, and at worst, they are harmless), and less than 0.0001% of people (maybe MUCH less than that) are bad and want to hurt you.”

It’s not long before we arrive in Woodbridge.  They take me out of their way to drop me off directly at the transit station in Dale City, where I thank them profusely and we part ways.  It is then that I learn there is no bus up to the Springfield metro on weekends.

I ponder this one for a moment.

I ask a bus driver what he would do.  He suggests that I take a taxi.  I am fifteen miles from the metro.  I call a cab company and they tell me it will probably be about 30 bucks.  So I say yes.  Even though 30 bucks is the same amount it would cost to get to DC from Boston; I realize that it is much less about the money as it is about the feeling of having accomplished what I set out to do.  Taking a $30 bus from Roanoke, Virginia would have felt like giving up.  But taking this $30 taxi the last fifteen miles?  I could easily camp out until Monday and catch a bus.  I could search craigslist for a rideshare.  I could make a friend on couchsurfing who might drive me the distance.  I could find my way to a coffee shop and try to meet someone.  I could even attempt the tough hitchhike up suburban I-95.  But there is no need.  It’s 5PM on Saturday, day 4 of this journey, and I’ve made it far enough.  I’ve done what I needed to do.

The taxi shows up.  My driver is named Gabriel and he’s from Ghana.  He’s amazed that I hitchhiked here from Memphis.  We chat about life, work, travel, and he encourages me to visit West Africa.  I tell him he is my last ride home at the end of this journey, and he is thrilled.  When he drops me off, the final price is $35—the exact amount I have been given over the last four days.

I hop on the subway in Springfield.  I can’t believe where I am.  I slip on my headphones and rest my arm on my huge pack, staring out the windows into the sunset as we cruise up the highway past clogged traffic.  I stand out.  My clothes are ripped, my face caked with dirt, my dreadlocks a tangled mess.  I sit in silence.  All these people with briefcases or purses, on their ways home from work or school or a day in DC, none of them know who I am or where I just came from.

In downtown McLean I walk into my favorite coffee shop, the place to which I always return when I am in town, the place where I have spent hours upon countless hours engaged in the act of writing.  The sunset is still raging when I arrive.  Matt is behind the counter.  When I walk in, he throws up his hands.  “You’re back!”  He makes my favorite drink and I tell him how I got here, in between customers.  Then I sit out on the patio writing until he gets off work and joins me outside.  “Well,” he says when it’s dark and we are ready to leave.  “You need a ride anywhere?”  I smile.  “Yeah.”  I ask him to drop me off at a trail by my neighborhood, and I stand in the woods for a long moment looking up at the sky through darkened tree branches.  Then I shoulder my pack for the last time and walk down the street to my house.

Traaalaa laaaa, hellllooo from Aija, I’m here again! Kā iet mīļie? Man superīgi! Awwww sorry,

Another car passes: more local Kiwis with no interest in hitchhikers. We continue our march, fifty pound packs strapped to our backs, great green mountains pinned to our path. The baritone rumble of a mangled muffler draws our attention back to the road. We backpedal, thumbs to the heavens. It’s a small hatchback. No space the driver will likely attempt to gesture with his hands and an apologetic expression. Instead it clambers to a rest at our feet.

Their faces are radiant. Two sets of blue eyes sparkle at us, the corners fully wrinkled. “As far as you’ll take us.” The driver’s smile pushes aside his snowy beard and any pride we felt for our two month old scruff. Thanking them we cram into the backseat, our packs digging into our thighs.

Shiloh and Lani were looking for us and us them. They had taken a different route home in search of hitchhikers; we had sold our car to continue on foot. The road and our stories unwind and bind us. There’s nothing more to ask for when they reach their turn, but they offer us beds. We can’t refuse. They smile that genuine smile again. The lines of their lives caress their faces.

Three beds are already occupied by other travelers. This is the way of life at Shiloh’s. We’re not the first and we’re not the last. His home is an open one. Shiloh’s school was the road and his teachers were the people he met along the way. Learned in unconditional love and mastered in hospitality for strangers, he now houses a provisional band of vagabonds.

He built this ideal with his own two aged agrarian hands; the water mill too, which provides electricity and grinds grains into flour. The orchard and gardens provide each ingredient for the delectable dinner we all share. This is sustainable living. This reversion to our fellahin fathers produces pears so juicy you can drown and apples so tart you shiver.

It is love. Pure love that they give back to the earth and the tellurians who travel it. A gift for those on the right road at the right time.

Last Thursday, Susie gave me a ride over Cedar Pass to U.S. 395 north of Alturas, California.  I walked a mile or so and got picked up by a tractor-trailer.

The driver was Ken and he said that he had picked me up before a few years ago.  He drove me to Lakeview, Oregon and dropped me off near the library.

I walked into the library and asked the librarian if there was a barbershop close by.  She said there was a barbershop on main street.  I spent some time on the Internet and then walked to the barbershop.

I was sitting in the barber’s chair getting a haircut when this older man and woman walked into the shop.  Before they walked in, I gave Diane–the lady giving me a haircut–my card.  Diane gave my card to the lady who had just walked into the barbershop.

The lady looked at my card and we started talking about my hitchhiking travels.  Then she said, “I’ve read your book.”

I said, “High Plains Drifter?”

“Yes.  A friend of mine bought your book and then gave it to me.”

This was quite a surprise.

She later told me that I should go to the local newspaper and maybe they would do a story about my travels.

After my haircut, I walked to the offices of the Lake County Examiner.  I talked with Ryan Bonham, who is a reporter for the Examiner.  He told me to come back at 2 PM.

I walked to this motel in Lakeview and got a room.  I made some money working for John and Susie, so I thought I would get a motel room.  I ended up staying in Lakeview for two nights.

I walked back to the Examiner and talked with Ryan Bonham for about an hour.  The last time a reporter interviewed me for a story was in Hamilton, Montana in 2008–the Ravalli Republic Newspaper.  That reporter interviewed me for about a half hour.

After the interview, Ryan told me that the article would come out the following Wednesday or in the next two or three weeks.  We shook hands and I walked back to the library.

On Saturday morning, I left Lakeview and walked north on U.S. 395.  I thought that I would go to Burns and then head north to Washington state or head east towards Boise.

This guy named Chuck picked me up and took me to Bend and then to Redmond, Oregon.  He had pruned some trees for John and Susie a few years ago.  From Redmond I walked a couple of miles and hitchhiked to Prineville.

I got a room at the City Center Motel in Prineville.  I watched Road to Perdition starring Tom Hanks and some other Irish gangsters while I was there.  I have always thought that Prineville was a real nice town.

The next day, I got two rides to John Day.  From John Day, I got a ride to Seneca with this old codger in a beat up pickup.  He was wearing a worn out cowboy hat and had a few bags of groceries in the cab of his pickup.  I asked him how old his pickup was and he said that it was a ’63.  He said it was built before I was born.  I told him that I was born in 1960.

In our conversation, he said that he had spent some time in prison years ago.  When he got out of prison, he did some hitchhiking.  For some reason, he thought that I said that I was born in 1946.  I said, no, I was born in 1960.  He said, you look like you are 46.  I then asked him if he was born in 1946.  He said, no, that he was born in 1929.  Yeah, I probably said, you look older than 46–you look older than your ’63 pickup which makes sense if you were born in 1929.  1960, 1946, 1929:  I guess it’s all the same thing–especially if you were born after 1990.  Sometimes details get confused when a hitchhiker who was born in 1960 talks to an old codger who was born in 1929 who later spent time in prison who thinks that the hitchhiker is 46 when in fact the hitchhiker is 52 . . . . .I think I’ll stop here before I paint myself into a corner.

The old guy then proceeded to tell me how I could steal gas out of other people’s cars with this device that you plug into your dashboard cigarette lighter–which didn’t make a whole lot of sense because I didn’t have a dashboard cigarette lighter and I didn’t have a car and I didn’t need gas.  Some people don’t make a whole lot of sense.  He was an old ex con who probably drank too much beer, stole too much gas and spent too much time in the pen.  He dropped me off in Seneca and I hit the road.

I walked a couple of miles and got a ride to Burns with a guy who was born in Massena, Iowa.  I told him that I was born and raised in Iowa.  He went to school at Iowa State and worked for the U.S. Forest Service.  I told him that my grandmother was born and raised in Massena.

I got dropped off at this truck stop on the west side of Burns (Hines).  I hit the road and got a ride to Riley with a couple of guys going to Bend.

From Riley, I walked a couple of miles south on U.S. 395 and then the sun went down over the western horizon.  I laid out my sleeping bag in the sagebrush near this fence line on the east side of the road and went to sleep.

Sometime after midnight, I woke up and the night sky was overcast.  It started to sprinkle a very light rain.  I packed up my things and walked back to Riley.  I walked to this horse shed next to the gas station and laid out my sleeping bag in the shed and slept there the rest of the night.  It began to rain much harder and I was grateful to be out of the weather for the night.

At sun up, the rain had stopped and I walked to the gas station and got something to eat.  I walked back to the intersection and got two rides to Lakeview on U.S. 395.  From Lakeview, I got two rides to Highway 299.  From Highway 299, I got two rides over Cedar Pass to Cedarville.

A Thumb and a Prayer

Thrifty:

We have spent the last few days travelling with, “The Fucking Hantavirus,” The University of New Mexico ultimate Frisbee team. Our host, Ben, hooked us up with a mini tour of Arizona: Tuscon to Phoenix, Tempe and back. While leaving New Mexico something funny happened..

The team had decided to grab some road beers.

“Who wants to DD?” asked Dylan the owner of the van.
“I’ll do it,” I say, I want to do it.”
At this point the sun is setting and the only pair of glasses I own are sun glasses with a 5-year-old out of date prescription.
The sun starts to set when someone realizes that the only sober person is the one that can’t see at night.

Today we are going to buy jackets and head North on the train to Santa Fe, N.M. The Burquenos tell us that it just as cool as Albuquerque, with a lot of hippies. I’m stoked to keep moving, each mile down gets us closer to more truth and better understanding, but are also meaningless. We don’t have deadlines or major responsibilities, and flying through the state only cheats us out of experiencing that state the way it is supposed to. Sure, you should see the sights, but building friendships is a lot more satisfying.

So to the fucking hantavirus boys in the ABQ, stay safe and study hard… not eeeeven.

Biddy Early is a well-known name in this country. A famous witch from Clare born in the seventeen hu

This video is an inspiration to many. It is often the fear or the laziness that stop things from happening. Time and money becomes a lousy excuse, and what started as an excuse ends as a way of life.

There is only one way to break these pro-created patterns and to release yourself from your inner chains, and that is by doing. Just…doing… No man or woman does something you cannot. It is only the fear from the abnormal that makes you think otherwise.

Have you tried to do something when part of you said no? You should try it, because it might make you enjoy some things you would have never seen otherwise.

Check out the guy in the video, I am sure he had no idea where he was going. He just had an idea of what he was doing, and that was to show you his travel into the unknown. I must say other than the unique characters he met, he has also seen some crazy stuff!!

Check it out!!

This video is an inspiration to many. It is often the fear or the laziness that stop things from happening. Time and money becomes a lousy excuse, and what started as an excuse ends as a way of life. There is only one way to break these pro-created patterns and to release yourself from your inner chains, and that is by doing. Just…doing… No man or woman does something you cannot. It is only the fear from the abnormal that tells you otherwise.

Have you tried to do something when part of you said no? You should try it, because it is often awesome and it might make you enjoy some things you would have never seen otherwise. Check out the guy in the video, I am sure he had no idea where he was going. He just had an idea of what he was doing, and that was to show you his travel into the unknown. I must say other than the unique characters he met, he has also seen some crazy stuff!!

Check it out!!

Desert roads are long and boring.

For your enjoyment today, I present the first half of a short story I wrote in the space of about an hour. I’ll put part 2 up next week.

Odd One Out

 No one wanted to pick him up, the hitchhiker. He looked genial enough, standing by the side of the road in a casual pose with a pleasant smile on his rather thin, tight lips. But still, there was something odd about him, something that made everyone else drive by without giving him a second glance. Maybe it was because of the way he was dressed, with that skinny black tie snaking its’ way down the scarlet collared shirt tucked into his slightly too-tight black jeans. That could have been it. Or perhaps it was because of how the dry air seemed to swirl around him when he moved, like it was trying to get out of his way. It might have been both of those things together, or the incongruity of seeing a well dressed man standing by the road out in the middle of the arid desert, trying to thumb a ride. The most likely explanation, though, might be that no one really cared. Hurrying around their busy lives, trying to get back to civilization as quickly as possible, thinking only about themselves. Whatever the reason, no one stopped. The stranger really didn’t seem to mind. He just stood there for hours, ignoring the scorching rays of the sun beating down on his closely cropped head. Someone would stop, someone always did. It was just a matter of when.

And someone did stop, finally. A small, shabby blue’99 Dodge Stratus emerged from the mid-afternoon haze. The driver sped past the stranger as if he hadn’t seen him, but then slammed on the breaks mere seconds later. The driver’s side door flew open, and a young man, all arms and legs, bounded out.

 “Hello there!” he called, waving his arms at the stranger. “Need some help?” 

Not bad, for an old car.

The stranger smiled in thanks as he approached the vehicle. “I’d appreciate a ride, if you could give it to me, sir and ma’am,” he boomed in a deep baritone, noticing the feminine second occupant of the car. “Seein’ as I’m rather stranded here.”

“Call me Sam,” the car’s driver offered genially, opening the back door. “That’s my wife, Debbie,” he added, gesturing towards the petite blonde woman. “What’re you doing out here in the middle of the desert? Don’t you have a vehicle somewhere?”

“My name’s Eli,” the stranger responded, sliding into the backseat. He raised his hands in apology as several bags went flying off the seat and onto the floor. “Sorry. No, I don’t have a car. I’ve been catchin’ rides the whole way. It’s been three or four days now, I reckon. The last gentleman kind enough to take me part of the way dropped me off at the last exit, right before this dry patch of desert. He wasn’t goin’ this far my way.”

“You walked this far in that heat?!” Debbie quickly retrieved an unopened bottle of water from the Wal-Mart 12 pack at her feet. “Take this. I’m surprised you’re not dehydrated!”

 “Thank you, ma’am,” Eli said, taking the proffered water. He unobtrusively set it down on the floor without drinking from it while Sam restarted the engine and took off down the road again. “And I much appreciate the ride, I really do.”

 Debbie laughed as her husband took one hand off the steering wheel and rested it gently on top of hers. “Oh, please don’t call me ma’am. I’m only 23. Where are you headed, Eli?”

Don't pick up hitchhikers. Seriously. It's not safe.

“Oh, home,” he said noncommittally. “Y’all can’t take me the whole way, so I’ll let ya know where to drop me off. Always plenty of folks goin’ my way.”

 “Are you sure about that, Eli?” Sam asked, absentmindedly fiddling with the new ring on Debbie’s left hand. He was going to rub a dent into it at that rate, his wife had teased him earlier. “We’ll be going straight through to San Antonio.”

Eli shook his head and chuckled. “Not far enough, Sam. I’m going south. Deep, deep south.” His eyes glinted with amusement as if at some private joke.

         

Round Ireland with a Limp, Episode 3: Cork to Cahermore Monday 16th April 2012 Cork It’s impos

Round Ireland with a Limp, Episode 3: Cork to Cahermore Monday 16th April 2012 It’s impossible to say “Cahermore” in an English accent and have people understand you. “Ohh – Caa-herr-mohrr” – locals roll it through their mouths like wind rolling through a tunnel, when they finally work out where it is you want to [...]

My girlfriend regularly hitchhikes…in Africa.  What is more mind-boggling for me than this, however, is that it is probably safer for her to hitchhike in Africa than it would be in the US.  I must add that Courtney is living in Lesotho (which I now know is not pronounced at all like it sounds, but rather ‘luh-SOO-too’), a relatively safe part of Africa where hitching is a common and accepted form of travel.  Still, I sometimes think about this and shudder.  I do this because I was raised to believe that if you hitchhike or pick up a hitchhiker, even just once, you WILL be killed.  The in-between parts vary from the entirely unsavoury to the outright horrifying, but the end result is death.  Terrible and inescapable death.  So, no, I’ve never hitched before.

What’s funny about this is that I had never felt that my life was any less rich for not having done so.  I didn’t feel like I was missing out or being a chump for paying bus or train fare, and to be quite frank I saw little romance in the thing at all.  Granted, there must have been the rare moment (probably when reading a book or watching a movie about traveling with only your thumb as a means of transportation), when I wondered what it would be like, but since the answer was invariably, ‘it will be like dying’, I never really got much further than that.

It was not until I was in Croatia last September, Courtney’s freewheeling stories of African adventure fresh in my mind, that I first began to feel a little bit jealous.  I was adventurous, wasn’t I?  I had done my fair share of wild stuff, right?  There must have been all kinds of things!  At the time that I was engaging in this childish monologue nothing cool sprang to mind, but in retrospect it was probably because I was severely dehydrated from my latest attempt to do something that was, if not wild, at least very stupid.

I was spending a few days on the absolutely gorgeous island of Hvar, a jewel of the Adriatic (which is like saying that it’s a cherry on top of the most scrumptious sundae you can imagine…or, you know, some other dessert metaphor).  It’s about an hour by catamaran from the Croatian mainland and the kind of place that you think doesn’t really exist until you get there and you’re arms are sore from the constant need to pinch yourself.  Seriously, it’s beautiful.  So beautiful in fact that it convinces you that you can do anything you set your mind to.  This can be a wonderful thing, as long as at least the most primitive parts of your brain are working in order to keep you in check.  Apparently those parts were so overwhelmed and hyper-stimulated that they blew a fuse and left me flying blind, which is why I decided that I should walk across the island.

Now I must admit that this is a long, skinny island, and my aim was to traverse it from one long side to the other (more or less…it’s not exactly a rectangle, so if you look it up online don’t be surprised.  And you SHOULD look it up online, and then go there.  Tomorrow.).  That said, it was in no way a straight line and ended up being quite a feat.  The ultimate goal was to make my way from one port town to the other, Stari Grad, or The Old City, being the destination in mind.  It sounded lovely, and I’m told that it is.  I never made it there myself.  After walking for 7 and a half hours and I-don’t-know-how-many kilometers or miles or stadiums or however you choose to measure things, I was confronted with a highway that would have taken me the final three kilometers into Stari Grad if I had wanted to play a live-action version of Frogger.  I didn’t.  I walked about a mile to a bus station and let a motorized vehicle bus me back, my head hung in the shame that only the pedantic and incredibly stubborn can know.

Between the beginning and the end lies the middle, of course, and the middle was a harrowing adventure indeed, which is to say that I walked a lot and was thirsty.  And my feet hurt.  I can’t stress the feet hurting thing enough.  But the beginning, as beginnings often are, was full of hope, arrogance and naïveté.  It was near this auspicious beginning that a car passed me and set into motion my thoughts on hitchhiking (admit it, you were wondering if I’d ever get back to this).  The car slowed and the friendly-looking driver asked if I wanted a lift somewhere.  Now I had already come to realize that Europeans tend to hitchhike a lot more frequently than we do, too.  This seems to be especially true for Central and Eastern Europeans-I can’t speak for the French.  With that in mind, I was less nervous about the prospect of accepting the offer and more excited about my walk.  I am an avid walker, just love it as a pastime and a mode of transport, and when I decide to walk somewhere it’s difficult to dissuade me.  Makes me feel like I’m being untrue to myself.  So I waved the fella on by and kept going.  The thought struck me just as he pulled away that this had been my chance to take a ride from a stranger, and I had just missed it.  Now as I had not flagged him down myself, I really don’t think I could have counted it as hitchhiking, but it still would have been a new experience.  Right then and there was when I started asking myself why my life was so bereft of crazy adventures and dug in my heels to make the walk count.

After that it wouldn’t have mattered how many people offered me lifts (no one else did).  I was bound and determined to prove something that, had I paid even the slightest attention to my own memories or even my current geographical location, I already knew.  My life was and is full of adventure.  But that day, that moment, I was out to prove something, and I can tell you that that is often the start of doing something extraordinarily ridiculous.  Armed with shoes and a bottle of water, I figured that I was ready for anything.

And even the water itself was a new addition to my adventuring gear.  Before I had begun my walk, when my head was still clear, I had thought back to another walk a couple of years before.  I had been traveling in Slovenia and decided to walk from Bovec, the town I was visiting, to find the source of a river.  I walked 10 kilometers to the base of a mountain and started hiking, thinking that the water at the river’s source would be my reward.  Hours later I was swaying dangerously on the path and contemplating how much water was in a handful of the slightly moist dirt under my feet.  I was just about ready to find out when I finally met other hikers who gave me water and told me I’d need climbing gear to get to the top.  They kindly gave me a ride back to town.

With this knowledge, I knew that it was folly to attempt an island crossing without water, but in case you thought that I had learned my lesson, I should point out that I only brought a half-liter bottle with me.  I started my walk at midday, and the sun was strong and ready to exact its full judgment for my hubris.  Thus, my bottle was empty long before I had reached the first village on the road to Stari Grad, but in another shocking display of my ignorance I had assumed that I would be able to buy some more water in the village.  The Croatians already had reason enough to laugh because I was speaking to them in my flawed Slovene, but when I asked where I could buy water they shook their heads and stifled their grins.  Silly boy, there aren’t any stores.  But in a display of characteristic generosity, an old woman gave me a 1½ liter bottle of cold (!) water.  I accepted it as graciously as I was able while speaking to her in a language that was neither hers nor mine.

With this water and the sparing consumption of it, I finally made my way to the highway that eventually thwarted my forward progress, but the in-between was one of the loveliest walks I had had in a long while, despite the intermittent delirium and aching muscles.  The winding road gave way hills that rolled on and on, evaporating into coastline and the azure sea beyond.  Gnarled and wizened trees dotted the landscape, their slender trunks twisted by salty gusts of wind into strange shapes and blown until their branches had begrudgingly relented and grown with the current as if stretching with all of their might toward some unseen goal.  And village after village, secreted away in leeward pockets, revealed themselves slowly as the walk progressed.  More than once, in fact even more than twice, I remarked to myself that I was no longer in Croatia at all.  I had stumbled into the mythical world of Hyrule, if Nintendo games can be considered myth-makers.  And in the end, although I never reached my destination, and although I charmed/annoyed villagers with my delirious singing, it was one of the best times I had on that trip.

I am left now wondering what the moral of this story is.  It’s not that hitchhiking is the answer, and it’s not even that being stubborn is ultimately a bad thing.  After all, I feel that my life was enriched that day, and I even learned something about water that I can apply to future adventures.  I suppose that, if there is a moral, it’s that I should be less concerned with what I haven’t done and may never do and more appreciative of the things that I have done and am doing.  Yeah…that sounds about right…

Benjamin Jenks went after his dream of hitchhiking across the USA and realized not only would he be safe, but he would have the time of his life. Watch Jenks meet 930 new friends during his 5,000 miles excursion in the 162 second video below.

Weekend motivation round two. I had written to an American CSer who was hitching around Ireland for

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― Maewyn Succat ―

Many travellers assume road names and mine is that of childhood hero and patron saint who was born Maewyn Succat in 387 AD at Kilpatrick, Scotland, the son of Calpurnius and Conchessato who were Roman officials in local government.

At 16 years of age, Succat was kidnapped by pirates and taken to Ireland where he was sold to a Druid high priest in Antrim. Working as a shepherd slave, Succat became fluent in Irish and knowledgeable in Druidism.

After many years of captivity Succat escaped, returning again sometime after 432 AD — an ordained priest and bishop using the name “Patercius” or “Patritius” (derived from two Latin words ‘pater civium’ meaning the father of his people) which was conferred on him by Pope Celestine.

Succat died on 17 March 460 AD and is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. Today, Succat is known as Patrick . . . which is my given name.
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“Life on the road is an unpredictable affair. Often times you end up at the mercy of whatever powers may be. Now I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I think there’s something to be said for that.  Left or right, right or wrong– truth is, you don’t take to the road at all. In fact, the road takes you. The moment you let go– that’s when the real adventure begins.”

–Intro to “One for the Road”

Photo: Matt Young

Thankfully, living in Europe without a car and trying to ski a whole bunch lends itself to almost daily instances of ‘letting the road take you.’ Like here, hitchhiking with Matt in the Brandnertal, trying to flag down a golf cart–complete with a dog in back who looks about ready to chomp on that thumb.

 

rain hit the blacktop

headlights from behind

a sister in a Lexus

was the ride I hoped to find

 

pancakes in a Friendlys

then Kush was in the air

she dropped me off south of Augusta

with a full eight hours to spare

 

they said my shower was ready

I put the Chronicle back in the rack

cleaned up, sat in a Dennys

at a table in the back

 

speed freak in a Wal-Mart truck

outside the Flying J

took me on into Savannah

to the river to meet Jonet