Derelict Days . . .

FOREWORD (2^nd edition)

By Author

The original edition of this book celebrated not 66 years of hitch-hiking, but 60.

I was quite sure six years ago, after a relatively short but record-setting hitch-hike had capped for me a full six-decade span of open-road hitch-hiking, that I had done my last of it. By one's mid-70s, after all, the fun of it lags considerably behind the challenge of it; I was content to bask in memories with an incontestable record in hand, and compile the book of my tales.

But one does not so easily leave behind the spirit of adventure once it has claimed residential space in one's heart. Age alone does not still the yearning. This ultimate realization, and other elements as well, in these radically changing times, led me to reconsider my 'retirement'. And in the early summer of 2009, freshly aware that one more good road trip would notch two-thirds of a century for me, as a hitch-hiker, it was simply too compelling to resist.

And what a road trip it was! A tale definitely worth the telling . . . justifying -- indeed, necessitating -- a new edition.

But more than that, as I say, urges me to the task. In the six years gone by since that earlier edition, hitch-hiking has surged in the worldwide youthful imagination, and one of its periodic flowerings is recently underway. For almost a century, now, ever since the automobile displaced the horse-and-buggy as the personal transport of choice, hitch-hiking has gone through a series of popular vogues, always a bit on the disreputable side, but ever attractive to the young and adventurous . . . and, of course, the momentarily needy.

For the time being, that resurgence is mainly outside of the U.S.; but this limitation will surely change, if our past history is any indication. Its absence here, up to now, I suspect, is largely because we have not yet emerged from the fear generated by the 9/11 terrorist attack -- maybe not as personal fear, but in the protective attitudes that virtually became a national policy after that tragedy. But a society's resilience resides in its youth, and that will eventually force the issue, as the young abroad are hitch-hiking in steadily increasing numbers.

The development is being mediated on the web -- and also broadly publicized --, through specific hitch-hiking resources like hitchwiki.org and digihitch.com, along with general hospitality sites that have hitch-hiking sub-groups, one of the most prominent being Couchsurfing.com, with an international hitch-hiking contingent that presently numbers more than 5000 (and includes a remarkably large number of women).

Having been a hitch-hiker since the days of