To give me a better shot at catching a long-distance ride, my father dropped me off at the Pine Valley entrance to Interstate 8, about forty miles east of San Diego. He waited till I’d arranged my equipment along the roadside, then took out his camera. I was outfitted from the Army-surplus store: canvas sombrero, dull knife in a canvas scabbard, thin camouflage jacket, full canvas-covered canteen hooked to my belt, and Vietnam jungle boots. I could have been a soldier except for my hair, which was way past regulation length, and my chronic asthma, which would have prevented any of the armed services from taking me. I had two hundred dollars in traveler’s checks and a hundred in cash. I had a forty-pound backpack and twenty pounds of canned food in a separate bag. For three months I’d been telling everyone I knew that I was off to find my fortune. After the chuckling had subsided, I’d explained that France would be my final destination. In my mind it was a land of freethinkers and artists and underground heroes. I admired the French, wanted to learn their language, and believed that France was where an American went, like Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller, to become a writer.