Barefoot

We were in The Haight, San Francisco, when I saw her. She was sitting cross-legged outside a tattoo parlour in frayed olive green trousers, a long-sleeved black top and beads around her neck. She was also barefoot, the soles of her feet black and grimy.

Every time anyone walked past, she would smile sleepily and raise her hand to beg, but she didn't say anything. Very few people gave her money and if they did, it was mostly coins.

After about 10 minutes, which was how long I spent looking at tie-dye t-shirts in the shop next door, she got up and left.

We were on Haight Street and it was about three in the afternoon. My (then) boyfriend had gone off and disappeared into a dodgy-looking shop three doors down while our other friend was looking at colourful skirts somewhere at the back. Somehow she'd never struck me as the tie-dye type.

The t-shirts hanging in front of me swung to one side and a face poked through.

"Hey." My boyfriend was back. "Found some good stuff. I even met a guy who told me his whole life story."

"Really now," I said.

"Really. Let's go look for something to eat."

We passed the tattoo parlour, some kids getting high by the corner, the jewellery shops with the tongue and navel studs, more kids, the smoke shops and the shops selling kinky underwear when I saw her again, the barefoot girl in faded black, her brown hair turning red in the sun. 

This time she was standing outside a '60s record store, once again reaching out pathetically, asking for money. "Please? Please?" she said as people walked by. 

The three of us found a small pizza place across the street and I watched the girl as she continued to beg for spare change. "She's not asking for money to buy food," my boyfriend said in between bites. I asked him how he knew.

Chomp. "She would say so, right? 'I haven't eaten since yesterday, I need some money for food', etc. She didn't say that, so the money's for something else." Chomp chomp.

I thought about what he said. Do people really tell the truth when they beg? I've given spare change to people who'd said they hadn't eaten since the day before or needed money for a train ticket home, only to see them buying cigarettes a few minutes later.

The girl, in her early 20s, was getting ready to leave. She looked around one last time, her arms lowered, her hands no longer reaching out for sympathy. I saw her shoulders hunch as she looked down at her bare feet and in that instant, I felt guilty and turned away.

When I turned back to look, she was already gone.

The birth of a road trip

In October 2009, a group of friends and I flew into San Francisco, rented a car, drove to Los Angeles, acquired another car, and drove to Boston. After Boston we took a bus south to New York City and from there went on to Washington, DC.

Our journey looked like this:

©Burzum

Before our (pretty long) drive I had never gone on a road trip let alone visited the US, so the idea of driving over such a large expanse of land was both very exciting and a little daunting. The great thing about travelling nowadays, though, is the wealth of information that's available for the taking. As long as you know how to search for the information you need, you're almost guaranteed of finding it. 

Like most road trips, or trips in general, the route we eventually took wasn't pre-planned. My friends and I knew that we would be flying into San Francisco and flying out of DC, but we hadn't entirely decided what was going to happen in between. We knew that we would be stopping in Los Angeles, Austin, Memphis and New York City, but other than that, the route was still very much a mystery. 

It was only when we were in LA that our route was finally mapped out. I still remember that day; three of us were in our hotel dining area, either on our laptops or having coffee when the fourth member of our group came across a website called Auto Driveaway. This company does something rather interesting- it relocates or delivers vehicles from anywhere in the US to another location in the country. Vehicles, whether they be trucks, bikes or cars, are transported across the country pretty regularly for various reasons. Maybe a large national corporation wants to transport a company car from one branch to another, for instance, so it contacts Auto Driveaway.

But the really special thing about this company is that it doesn't transport the vehicles - you do it. You do the delivering. The company connects customers who want their vehicles delivered with people who don't mind driving it to the collection point. It was that link, that connection, which allowed us to figure out our route.

We found out from Auto Driveaway that there was lady living in LA who wanted her Jeep delivered to her daughter in Boston. It was like magic. We looked at our map, saw the great distance in between and took less than five seconds to say yes, we would so love to drive this lady's car all the way to Boston. 

Which we did. At the end of our road trip, we drove a total of 5,380 miles (8,658 kilometres) through 14  states. 

Tips for a great road trip

I'm a great fan of solo travel but I also enjoy travelling with friends. Looking for travel mates for short, one-week breaks shouldn't be too difficult but if you're talking about road trips or anything longer than two weeks, you're allowed to be more selective than usual. 

Remember that because you'll be spending weeks, maybe months, with this group of people, day in and day out, it makes sense to keep a few things in mind:

1-  Please, please pick someone you actually like

You don't have to be close friends with them, but you should actually like them enough to want to spend time with them. If you cannot stand being with someone for more than 10 minutes, you're looking for trouble by going on a road trip with him.

2- Be nice

Remember: it works both ways, so you need to work at being a good travel mate as well. Don't be difficult; if your friend prefers to drive early in the morning, let him. Don't expect everything to work out as planned and be prepared for your trip to be delayed by things like bad weather, a car breakdown and -okay then- a really bad hangover. In other words, don't be a pain in the butt. 

3- Divide your duties

Making sure that everyone is responsible for something may sound unnecessary, but it isn't. I've been on trips where one single person made all the decisions-food, accommodation, date of travel, destinations. You'll be happy in the beginning because you'll think that a load has been taken off your hands, but you'll get resentful when you finally realise that you have no say in anything at all. When someone else is calling the shots, it becomes his road trip, not yours. Everyone needs to be in charge of something.

4- Use the Net

There are a whole bunch of resources on the internet relating to road trips. Use Travelmath to calculate travel time and distance and Google Maps for routes. For our drive around America, we looked at RoadTrip America and Road Trip USA for ideas, but there are obviously loads of other sites you can use. If you're planning a road trip in the US, look out for options to deliver a vehicle from your location to another city, ie. to 'driveaway' a car for free, and design your road trip along that route. We did exactly that, and delivered a car for a woman in Los Angeles to her daughter in Boston. Have a look here for more information.

5- Be familiar with the route beforehand

This tip sounds like a no-brainer but its one of the most important. Bearing in mind the large distances you might be covering, always keep track of how much gas you have and where the next town is- you don't want to be out of gas, at night, and 200 miles away from the next gas station. Try to fill up your tank whenever you see a gas pump because you don't know how far away the next one will be. This is particularly important, for example, in large, spread-out states like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

A road trip is one of the best ways to get to know a country. You pass through small towns and get to see places you normally wouldn't if you were on a tour or travelling by train. If you ever get the chance to do a road trip with a good bunch of mates, go.

Road trip, USA

Road trip- two of my favourite words, when put together. There's nothing quite like dropping everything, grabbing a map and a friend or two and jumping into a car.

This might sound strange, but I felt kind of nostalgic during our US road trip. Which is weird, because I'd never been to the US before that. Maybe 'nostalgic' is the wrong word; whatever it is, it's that warm, happy feeling I got from driving past small towns, from crossing over into another state and laughing at funny signboards.

This is real, there's a town called Zzyzx on the way to Vegas

U-turn for Devil Dog, somewhere near the Grand Canyon

If we happened to be on the road, lunch or dinner would be at a diner in one of the towns along the way. Portions were huge so we usually ended up sharing. 

But above all, there's something really nice about driving in a country which (still) calculates its distances in miles. There's something old-fashioned yet different about it.

A mile somehow has more character than a kilometre. It sounds more authentic to say that you drove thousands of miles across a large country. 'Thousands of kilometres' somehow just doesn't do it for me.

I loved being told that it was 347 miles (thank you, TravelMath, you served us well) from Houston to New Orleans. I loved finding out at the end of everything that our drive from San Francisco to Washington DC through 14 states covered a total of 5,380 miles (8,658 kms).

The rest of the world can muddle along with its kilometres and kilogrammes. I find any country which tells me that it's 50 miles to the next town, terribly attractive. So attractive that I would love to go again.