Wizstar

Member Since: September 2022

Open for read requests: Yes
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Wizstar

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Featured on Booksie by Wizstar

Running With the Enemy? Running With the Enemy?

Running With the Enemy?

Short Story / Memoir

Viet Nam veteran returns to Nam 43 years after the war to run in the 2013 Danang Marathon. Read More

It Will Humble You It Will Humble You

It Will Humble You

Short Story / Memoir

An old man goes to South Africa to run the oldest ultramarathon in the world. Read More


About

Just an average guy of no particular importance.

 

A 73-year-old kid from the projects who spent years

backpacking across the world during the height of the

American empire in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a time when a

blue-collar kid with an American passport and a strong US

dollar could go anywhere. A time before computers, cell

phones, GPS, ATMs, and Google. A time you could get lost in

a wonderful world. 

The stories here are about the journey and not the destinations. It didn’t matter if I was heading to the Oktoberfest in Munich and ended up in a casbah in Tangiers. The real destinations were the road itself, the people I met, the jobs I worked, and the adventures I experienced.
How I traveled wasn't important. I hitchhiked, hopped freights, rode Greyhound buses, bicycled, and walked a great deal to see what was around the next corner or over the next hill.
There were no hotel reservations. I slept where the setting sun left me. It might be in a gypsy camp in Ireland, under a bridge in Hong Kong, in an army barrack in Bulgaria, or inside a Goodwill bin in Kansas.
My pockets weren’t full of money, but I was a rich man. I had no responsibilities, and I owned the open road. I earned money by selling souvenirs at the Pyramids, picking grapes in France, acting as a movie extra in Tokyo, and working on ranches in Australia. I earned as little as 25 cents a bushel picking peaches in South Carolina and as much as $150 an hour teaching business in Japan.
But the real reward of travel was mingling with the people of more than 50 countries. Whether it was drinking brandy with Tito's army generals in Yugoslavia, talking with the Zulu's in Lesotho, or sharing lunch with the Russians on the Trans-Siberian train, I learned that friendship has no borders.

 

 

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