7/3/10
I’ve been regularly checking out Hobo Matt’s website. He’s walking across America while pushing a baby carriage filled with all his daily needs, and a sign attached to the front saying “we may never meet again.” His website says he’s doing it for no reason at all, much like Peter Jenkins did in the 1970s. I read Jenkins’ book, “A Walk across America” years ago when it first came out, then followed it up with William Least Heat-Moon’s “Blue Highways.” Both are “must reads” if you have a predilection for travel, are easily bored with the daily grind, and don’t really have any money, all pretty much my issues!
Read Martha Irvine’s AP article about Matt’s endeavor here. This guy has all the high tech gadgets to post pictures to his website instantly, unfortunately, his camera phone produces horrible image quality. I see a rather deep magenta halo around the periphery of every picture that has a large area of even tone, like the sky. I hope he’s only using his camera phone for the website picture posts, and has a real camera to properly record his travels.
The journeys mentioned above (and no doubt similar journeys across the world) should be on everyone’s list of things to do at some point in their life, although I suppose if everyone did it, it wouldn’t be special, and sitting at home for your entire life and never going anywhere would be considered exciting.
I slightly prefer Jenkins’ chronicle over Moon’s , but I greatly prefer Moon’s method of travel, which is by Ford Econoline van. I can sleep in the car, but I’m not real big on sleeping by the road in a tent, or getting people to let me come in their house to stay the night—too weird for me.