Travelling Bug
Where did this urge to “Hit the Highway” begin for me?
I often joke that at age 18 I raised my hand at the dinner table and asked to be excused for the highway, but when did it really start for me? Was it those train trips to Washington D C as a second grader, with my Mom to visit her sister? Maybe the ramblings got embedded by taking the train deeper into the south for longer visits to my legendary Aunt Genies plantation in Bishopville, S. C.
Could it be that the cultural shift that took place on these trips was the very beginnings of my ability to blend in with whatever new surroundings I would find myself in future years?
Driving a car back from Florida to CT with friend of my Dad’s during my senior year in high school definitely had an effect on my travel foundation. But maybe it was getting lost in Long Island Sound with a beat up old yard boat while working as a dock boy at a local marina that really wetted my appetite for all type of travel.
Then again, the following summer’s escapades probably sealed the deal on my travel fixation, when I hitch hiked and took busses across America while doing college interviews in Ohio and Colorado between my two years of prep school in Maine.
At age twenty, I landed a job in the Merchant Marine which would launch me into the international arena of destinations. The family tradition of putting your son on a ship to travel the world, if only for the summer, to raise his hell, sow his oats elsewhere and not destroy any home town reputations, worked for southern boys in Mississippi, (my dad) so why not get me, (this Connecticut Yankee) out of the country for a month or so to learn about all the crazy stuff in life?
Being a pot washer on a modern day container ship leaving out of Port Newark, NJ for the rough and tumble ports in Columbia, Panama, Equator and Peru, resulted in some dangerous adventures that would be hard to replicate with a typical summer job on the Connecticut shoreline. ( I would be back in this same port 45 years later as a 65 year old truck driver flashing back on my youth as I looked out at the huge cranes and thousands of containers being loaded on ships and trucks for destinations around the world).
All this taking place before I unpacked my bags as a college freshman at a small liberal arts school near Richmond, Va.
Upon flunking out of college in one semester, I asked my dad if I could get back on a merchant ship to work while I figured things out. I got a stiff “No!” for an answer because he felt I would get stuck in this world-wide travel life style and never settle down to a normal life. In other words, the life of a student with summer jobs had passed and it was time to get serious about what the real world had to offer.
Less than two years later, I was living at home, working first shift at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, and taking classes at night, when I heard this ad on the radio about truck driving school. Talk about getting stuck in a traveling life style, this would open new vistas of escape for me. With-in 6 weeks of hearing that ad and attending the school part time, I had landed a job on a two driver rig that was hauling freight throughout the 48 states.
There was just no “Holding me down on the Farm,” and I was even able to predict the future, when I wrote at age 15, in a recently found essay.
“As soon as I am old enough I would like to go to California and get a job where it is warm all year long. If I can’t get a good job there, I guess I’ll travel around doing odd jobs.”
At this point, I’m pretty much hooked on travel and I was just 23.
It would be another 5 years before I got hooked on cycling and rode across America and onto the U S Team, where things really got crazy. I would live out of a suitcase, sleep on couches, and in hotels while travelling internationally for the next seven years.