1976 was the year of my great adventures. The first began actually at the end of 1975. I was on a rebound, having had a very serious relationship shatter that summer. I was seriously thinking about going into the Army and had done impressively well on the tests, but at the last minute, I went crazy, and decided instead to take the first lap of the Great Adventure.
With a person I should have known better than to get involved with, I left home one day in December and hitchhiked from New Orleans to Jacksonville Florida. Before I was done, I had made it as far south as Key West, and even spent a week hanging out in Ocala, Florida. It was an interesting experience, especially since I did it with less than $5.00 in cash when I left. Learned some interesting things, met some good and bad people and made it back home in one piece. Later on that year, I would hitchhike back to Jacksonville, and all the way up to Worchester, MA, to meet the family of my companion.
It must have been the last of my adolescent wildness getting out of my system. By the next year I had settled down, got a steady job, and turned my life around, but it did give me some interesting insights and sympathy that I might never had gotten otherwise.
