Bridges I Have Slept Under

  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 farms in Canada. 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.