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The Tide has Turned: Reflections on American Negativity

© Bernd Wechner

After my plans for an extended visit last year failed me, I'm suddenly back home in Australia with nose to the grindstone again, on the professional set, designing and delivering commercial training courses. My first job has me on edge, there's an awful lot to learn and do in preparation - but where should it be but the United States?

So, I'm on the verge of first trip to the States in a decade, and have very little time to squander - with enormous commitments and opportunities on the Australian side of the Pacific before and after the course. All the same, I'm excited at the opportunity to catch up with some of the old acquaintances I'd meant to track down last year, in the short few days I have in Seattle.

I find myself reflecting on the state of hitching of the States - the rather extreme views I consistently hear about it. I've never hitched in the States, may never do at this rate. And yet over the years I've engaged in some of the most unusually biased discussion on the matter with all manner of American's, in person and on-line.

There's a near ubiquitous feeling that that it's just plain suicide, and more curiously, that it doesn't work anymore. In my scrap book I have some notes which epitomise these feelings. They were posted by the webmaster at digital-alchemy.com some while ago, but have disappeared now. Their author, Scott A. Moore has pulled those pages down, but according my notes on the site he wrote:

The first time I left Montana for an extended trip, I spent a summer hitch-hiking around the country. This got me excited about traveling, so the following spring I decided to take a semester off and do it again. This time I did it for a year. The trip took me to Boston, and California, and Georgia, and all over the damned place. I hitch-hiked through over 40 of the 50 states before I got back to Bohemia, in Bozeman, Montana. Of course I stopped to look around a few times, and even worked a few jobs.

Hitch-hiking is weird, especially in America. Hitchhiking in America is definitely much weirder than in Europe, perhaps because America is a little more on the edge, a little more extreme. At any rate, I met a lot of interesting people, and did a lot of interesting things. I'm sure you've heard that cliché adjective before, which is really a euphemism for "bizarre and trying". One thing I can say for sure; it's a good thing I did it then, because I sure as hell wouldn't do it now!

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