The traveller

While on the road, we are meeting many other people traveling on many other fashions.

There are many traveling in RVs or some sort of camper truck. We feel fairly free and minimalist compared to them. One such guy goes by the name of Ken and lives part time in Missoula and the rest of the time wherever he feels like it. He and his dog Badger were down visiting his parents who have a house way out on the very remote point near the Bahia Tortugas. A great guy and it turns out we have a friend, Diana Hammer, in common.

Then we met two guys from Vashon island, Greg and Josh who are riding their bicycles (that't right, human powered) down to Argentina. These guys were very zenned out in the middle of the Baja desert riding across vast expanses of nothingness. They have about a year to go on their trip. They made us feel a little like we had all the luxuries of the world with our gas powered vehicles and our stuff. Their blog is here if you want to feel like what we are doing is totally sane and normal.
Then we ran into John.
It was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon with around 1 hour of daylight left right near the 28th parallel. We had spotted a small dirt road leading off the main highway for about 8 miles to what looked like a cool little bay. About 2 miles in we spotted a guy walking down the road trailing a two wheel luggage cart with a duffle and a box of wine. In my head I'm thinking, "don't stop for people out here. You never know what they are up to."
As we pulled up closer to this guy, we saw a slightly overweight white guy, badly sunburned, who looked content as a fox in a chicken pen just strolling down the road. Of course we had to stop. We asked him what he was up to and he said he had been dropped off at the main road and told the beach was about 2 mile away. I looked at my map again and saw that it was about 6 more miles to the beach.
At first I didn't consider I could pick this guy up. I hardly had room for all my stuff, let alone him and his stuff. That and I was challenged enough on the sandy road as it was. He didn't seem to mind that I couldn't pick him up and wished us a good day. We drove about 50 meters down the road and Megan suggested that we just couldn't leave this guy out here. She was right. So I turned back around and somehow managed to throw him on the back. He suggested trailing his luggage rack behind the bike, but I thought that was a bad idea, so he just hefted it on. We drove slow and chitchatted about literature and drifting as we made the 6 miles to the beach.
As we talked more with John, he let us know his plans of hitching down to Argentina to go dove hunting. He had recently divorced his wife, sold his belongings and gave up his job in the military to follow his dreams of living off the land. It reminded me of a Jon Krakauer book.
The next morning, we fed him breakfast and coffee, gave him all our water and went on our way. I really do respect this guy for following his passion. I think more people could benefit by listening to that little voice in their head that tells them to go for it. I mean, why not?