One People, One Planet: A Close Brush with a Global Hitch-hiker
Brugiroux was in his youth driven to explore the world by a mission I keenly identify with. He wanted to learn from the world and its people, to leave his own prejudice, fear, bias, lifestyle behind and plunge into those of other peoples to taste of them, and grow from them.
My greatest surprise perhaps was the insecure and timid soul that set out on that mission. He clung to others to his own profound regret for an inability to face the world alone - something he would learn within the first three months of a quest that would ultimately last almost 6 years hitch-hiking around the world. He set off from Canada in the company of two Canadians in their converted taxi. Meeting his first long distance thumber in Panama he notes "I didn't have the guts myself, but I had to take my hat off to him" but finally comes around, abandoning the taxi and his travel mates in Buenos Aires in favour of his own thumb. His first ride was ironically with three glum heavyweights armed with a pistol that left André in a wild panic - but they were in the end only game shooters.
But so deeply did André come to value hitch-hiking as a means of travel that he introduces his whole adventure with these words: "At first I had regarded hitch-hiking as simply a way to travel, but it turned out to be an incomparable means of maturing, of learning about myself and my limitations, and developing my character to the full. (c.f. Hitch-hiking: A Course in Personal Development?) . By Peru he says smugly: "I was becoming a professional hitch-hiker. Not bad!"
But still, in 6 years of thumbing all around the globe, 340000km , 1978 rides, 135 countries, eking out a place to sleep anywhere, anywhen, he never manages entirely to shake that formidably frightened nature he set out with. It's startling to read: "In the dark my imagination ran riot. I never slept soundly, for I never felt completely safe. Only exhaustion would force my eyes to close. I never really go used to it."
And yet he was a stubborn pedant by any measure. He has immaculate records and can tell you how far he travelled where and how and when, how much he spent, and how ardently he disciplined himself. In Calgary, for example, with -35 degrees Celsius he was stuck for a
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