My Wild 1970 Ride

A sixty-minute escape to 1970, when gas was cheap, hitchhiking was safe(ish) and adventure waited around every bend. I was twenty-one, broke, and itching to escape the gray slush of Indiana winters. The Vietnam draft had been breathing down my neck for years, but with a lucky twist of fate-I was free. What I wanted next was simple: adventure. This book is the story of that wild year. It's about hitchhiking to Mardi Gras and ending up afterwards with fifty cents and a knapsack, working on an oil platform in the Gulf without a toothbrush, and driving 14,000 miles across the country with nothing but canned sardines, bad maps, and a stubborn belief that things would "work out somehow." It's a memoir of people and places as much as events-Saints cheerleaders, eccentric roommates, roadside hustlers, and strangers who turned into lifelong friends. It's about laughing through mistakes, finding beauty in the unexpected, and discovering that the best adventures are rarely the ones you plan.