I loved long distance hitchhiking. It was free, it was fun, and I indulged in it often during the golden years of thumbing, 1968 to 1972, when a lot of ordinary folks hitchhiked and a lot of ordinary folks picked them up. I met many interesting and eccentric people that way and had some wonderful adventures on the road. I had no idea who would pick me up, when a ride would come, or what surprising experience was around the…
The deputy sheriff of Vega, Texas, chewed heartily on a toothpick, his feet up on his desk as he perused a paperback copy of Perry Mason’s The Case of the Rolling Bones. I guess it was a slow day in the justice business. I sat in a chair across from him, fresh from a night in the local jail. Somehow a pleasant jaunt across the American southwest had turned into a Coen Brothers film. It all started innocently enough when…
It was the day of the juga. My nearly two-week trek in the Langtang, Gosainkunda and Helambu regions of central Nepal with my delightful and unflappable 21-year-old guide-porter, Pempa Tamang, was mostly fabulous fun, though very hard work because we walked up and down the hills like happy maniacs. With the good must come the bad, unfortunately, and the morning of September 24, 2014, the next to last day of our journey, quickly turned into a Third World horror film…