Given the choice, I would rather drive somewhere than walk
– no matter how short the distance.
Given the choice, I would rather drive somewhere than walk – no matter how short the distance.
It’s gotten so bad I won’t even walk the block and a half from my work to the bistro up the street for a cup of coffee in the morning.
It’s not that I’m lazy or abhor exercise – I’ll run five miles on the treadmill at the gym, but can’t walk five minutes on the street without whining and complaining the entire time.
The other day, while listening to a co-worker harangue me about this exertion aversion, I suddenly realized why I hate walking when I’m not doing it strictly for exercise.
It’s because of hitchhiking.
When I was 19 I decided to take some time off school to travel around Europe with a volunteer group that did solidarity work for impoverished people in Third World countries.
The idea was to take a bus from Norway to India and back; chronicling the lives of the people we ran into the entire way, and then publishing the experiences so Americans and other interested individuals could see what the rest of the world is really like.
Sounds pretty noble, huh?
The premise was very noble, and I left home for the crystal clear fjords of Norway with the naive hope that I was on my way to really making a difference in someone’s life.
The only problem was the group wasn’t as organized as I had hoped. When I arrived with two other women – one from San Francisco and the other from London – we were informed that the bus trip was being postponed because the rest of the group signed up late and wouldn’t be arriving for several more weeks.
So in the meantime, the three of us would be hitchhiking around Europe for three weeks, disseminating flyers and information about the program.
The directors of the program assured us our safety would never be compromised because hitchhiking was much different in Europe than it was in America.
So we loaded up our backpacks with a few change of clothes and about 50 pounds of flyers, and set off with our feet as our main mode of transportation.
The first person we got a ride from was a gentleman driving a typical European car.
Translation: It was about as big as a jelly bean.
But because we had been walking along the highway for hours we jumped at the ride, and it was starting to get cold … really cold.
It is important to note that although it was only September and most Norwegians were wearing shorts and T-shirts, I’m a born-and-bred California girl who thinks 60 degrees is close to freezing, so anything to cut the wind chill and the biting cold was very welcome.
The very first thing that came out of the jelly bean driver’s mouth was also of some interest and was the first real indication the people back at the institute maybe weren’t on the up and up.
“You girls are taking a chance hitchhiking out here. It’s not safe.”
Super. I’m in a foreign country, hitchhiking with two strangers, I’m cold, tired and hungry, and now I have to worry about being snatched up, raped and left for dead in a ditch.
All I could think was, “My mom would kill me if she knew what I was doing right now. Better not tell her until I’m back home, safe and sound … assuming that actually happens.”
During the trip we got rides with lots of interesting sorts – from crazy truck drivers to some guy who didn’t speak a lick of English but jabbered on and on for almost an hour in some language I didn’t understand, and had eyes that looked like they were the size of coffee-cup lids under his coke-bottle glasses.
We ended up walking so much and for so many hours at a time, it was all I could do not to burst into tears and make a break for the nearest airport terminal.
As I mentioned earlier, the organization wasn’t much on organization, and after more than a month of what seemed like constant walking and being jerked around by the flakey directors, I caught a jet plane back to sunny California.
And after hitting up Taco Bell (which I had been fantasizing about the entire time I was gone), I ecstatically jumped in my very own car and swore I’d never walk again if I could drive there instead.
I didn’t actually say that, but when my dogs are barking because I insist on wearing shoes that get an A for fashion and an F for comfort, four wheels are a lot more appealing than two pins.
