Traveling by thumb

"Nowadays, no one ever hitchhikes."  That was a nephew's response to a remark I had made about having hitchhiked once through a particular area of England. 

"No one" is an exaggeration.  But to a large degree, he's right.  Several reasons, I suppose.  There's always the perceived danger, although I strongly doubt that there's a greater abundance of dangerous characters lurking out there today than there were fifty years ago.  But not only have we turned into a bunch of helicopter parents -- we hover over ourselves as well, avoiding the darkness we fear all about us.

Another reason is that we're all -- by we, I mean you and me and most people reading this blog -- wealthier today.  The vogue for hitchhiking around Europe, especially, but around America as well, arose after World War II when not only was there a pent-up desire to get out and see the world, but also a lack of disposable income with which to do it.  Especially in post-war Europe, where for several years after 1945 you could still buy a lot of favors with a pack of American cigarettes.

Both before and after the war, young Europeans had developed a sense of wanderlust -- Fernweh in German -- to which the youth hostel movement had been one response.  Hitchhiking (as well as biking and hiking by foot) was a good fit with the widespread availability of youth hostels.

Now, when kids do travel about Europe -- which fewer seem interested in doing -- they travel by cheap airlines, or by trains, or by rental cars.  Their folks usually bankroll the summer's adventure.  If they choose, as they often do, they can afford to stay in hotels now, although hostels are still available and still attractive to a subset of the youth travel market..

In 1971, my friend Jim (with whom I'll be hiking (on foot) for a couple of weeks next month in Cornwall) and I hitchhiked in Britain and Ireland.  We hitched up the eastern side of England from London, to Cambridge, to Lincoln, and to York.  In Yorkshire, we stopped to visit Jim's British cousin, who was raising pigs in the rural countryside.  We continued up through Durham and Berwick to Edinburgh, all by hitching rides.  We met a lot of interesting drivers, whose accents became increasingly difficult to make out as we moved ever farther north. 

Finally, we met a Waterloo of sorts at Pitlochry, in Scotland, where the cars heading north were all filled with vacationing families bound for the Highlands.  They had no room for two grungy looking kids, although they often made politely apologetic hand gestures as they roared past.  We finally abandoned our hopes of going farther north, and took a train to Glascow, and then across the Irish Sea by ferry to Belfast.  After a stay at a hostel in a small seaside town north of Belfast, we got a ride to Dublin -- whoo-hoo!  After being awakened in the middle of the night by a cop, who found us sacked out in the largest park in central Dublin -- he just rolled his eyes and told us to be careful, once he heard our accents -- we toured the Guinness brewery down on the banks of the River Liffey, which for obvious reasons was a highlight of our Dublin experience, as was the related experience of listening to Irish folk music in a central Dublin pub.. 

My five weeks in Britain and Ireland cost me $160, excluding air fare. Jim thought me too lavish, and spent $140.

But I guess that in addition to perceived danger and economic improvement, there's a third reason hitchhiking has lost status and popularity -- we all today, including many teenagers, have become less free-wheeling in our travels.  We're more tied to schedules.  Today's kid can arrange hotel reservations throughout Europe for every night of his visit, by simply sitting at home playing with his computer.  In my travels, I sometimes would arrange a first night's reservation -- although I didn't in 1971 -- but to do so required an exchange of correspondence by mail and the complications of currency transactions.  It was simpler to just fly by the seat of our pants or, to change metaphors, play it by ear.  Things never worked out exactly as we had hoped -- Pitlochry being a prime example -- but we didn't care.  The complications, and how we handled them, were a major part of the experience.

I close my pondering on the glories of yesteryear by confessing that I have an appointment at the airport tomorrow morning to become approved for TSA Pre-Check.  God forbid that I should have to stand in line to go through airport security, let alone remove my shoes.  I'm a busy man; I can't waste time standing around doing nothing. I'll happily turn over all possible data, including fingerprints, to the Government -- in exchange for convenience.

Yes.  I've met the enemy, and he is me.