Preliminary Exercise

Such was the plan of action before the action.

The plan worked out the day before.

But i knew that plans of action, no matter how marvellous,

might not stand up to the real conditions

encountered on the real road.

Time brings many changes. Unforseeable changes.

Four years have passed since my last voyage to France.

Changes, no matter how small, must be reckoned with.

And the big changes, accepted and loved.

They are the spicy food of adventure.

They force me onto new paths.

It does not matter whether the changes be 'for the good' or 'for the bad'.

The hitch-hikers' first requirement is flexibility.

A hitch-hikers' first strength is love of the new.

And what be that,

but the love of the unpredictable wild?

And a hitch-hikers' second requirement, (somewhat at odds with 'flexibility'),

is to confront problems in a scientific way.

If changes are to be expected,

if four years of absence mean four years of changes

to be sprung upon me at once, then i must

quickly

determine the new forms of the given.

Data must be gathered and this gathering done

with the least expense of energy.

..............So feeling a natural pause.........arise.... in my Parisian life,

..........a pause within the last phase

of my French voyage,

for i am on my way back

--having hitched Calais to Toulouse and now returning through Paris--

and feeling light of spirit and strong of body,

without the weight of my heavy rucksack, i set out,

days before

the actual hitch-hike, to explore

the initial and usually the most difficult part of the hitching enterprise:

the discovery of the best location for the initial hitch,

--the first, strategic placement of oneself in the hitch-hiking chessboard-

my best first move to make.

For 'Hitching north to Calais from Paris',

I plan to use my standard, old favourite solution

to this 'initial location problem'.

I had hitched this route, without exaggerating, 30 times before.

My only usual expense over a quarter of a century

of round-trip-hitch-hiking between the two countries

was the price of one bus-ticket and one Metro-ticket in Paris

added to

the price of one bus-ticket and one Underground-ticket in London.

Ferry-crossing the channel i systematically solved

without spending a penny, without spending a sou.

 

But i haven't done this particular hitch-hike in nearly 4 years.

Much, i know, has changed. And so change i can expect.

And change requires me to be a practical scientist:

(1) to determine the present, practical viability of my old solution,

and

(2) update when necessary,

in order to

(3) possess a solution viable in the present.

CONTINENT-LARGE CONSIDERATIONS

These past four years have brought the further maturation of

the

concepts,

'Europe' and being 'A European',

emerging from the secret closets of the wielders of power

--in absorbable doses

so that panic is not triggered and plans ruined--

into the daylight,

into the lives of the readers of newspapers,

into my life as a hitch-hiker.

National boundaries between the old european NATION-STATES

are evaporating

and beings like me are sent scurrying

for new routes into the new, European cheese.

'THE EUROPEAN COMMON MARKET,

--or, as IT now wants to be called--

'THE EUROPEAN UNION

[self-baptised a second time

in order to better satisfy ITS new needs:

to enlarge

the narrow, pocket-book presentation of ITSELF as 'a market'

in order to

bind human hearts to IT in 'a union',

from 'Us' as trans-national economic actors

to 'Us' as possessors of the same trans-national heart,

-converting historical enemies into organ-fused friends- ]

HAS

actually altered

my hitch-hiking,

chessboard reality.

Nearly one month ago,

entering France at Calais Port,

i was confronted with The New Europe.

CALAIS PORT IS CHANGED

The lorry drivers,

coming from England,

who would have stopped at Calais

to get their French customs'papers,

who would have congregated

before the French customs' window

in the warm, Port Building

--with French administration offices and

ferry ticket-windows and sweet shops and restaurant cafes--

who would have been excitedly chatting to their fellow drivers,

offering warm counsel and friendship to each other

before they took themselves individually into

their lorries to pass another 8 hours of personal

isolation,

driving

thirty ton of freight

700 kilometres

further into Europe,

are not now there

--there, where i would have been able

to infuse myself into the buzzing crowd of

them

and speak my request but once or twice

and be connected for takeoff to Paris,

or, just less than best,

takeoff to the huge DREAM motorway Service Station

lying two hours from Paris.

Lorries are no longer obliged to stop here.

The national borders are evaporating.

So out roar the lorries from the British Ferries,

without a sense of guilt nor loyalty,

roaring past the few hitch-hikers spaced at intervals,

roaring past those who hold or shake their signs,

signalling their goals.

A hitch-hiker, now, has to count in hours

the time to get a lift

out of Calais port

onto the motorway system

connected with

anywhere and with anything thinkable

in continental Europe.

With the national boundaries up,

Calais had been a delight for hitch-hikers going inland Europe

or going cross-channel The British Isles

and

Dover, sweet for hitch-hikers going inland British Isles

--but nearly impossible for crossing the channel.

With the national boundaries down,

by some strange algebra,

the chessboard problem's difficulty inverts.

Dover has become

sweet-and-easy crossing the channel

and

Calais has become

difficult, difficult going inland.

THE DREAM SERVICE STATION

On that inland motorway,

some two hundred inland kilometres

from Calais,

some two hundred kilometres still north of Paris,

--with estimations very wobbly--

there is a huge Service Station

at which nearly all the lorry drivers stop,

before they dive out

into their different paths

to their different goals in France or Spain.

Stop,

perhaps,

for the fleshy professional services

of the gaudy-painted women bouncing in and out of the parked lorries.

Stop,

certainly,

for the only comradeship of the long distance lorry driver:

(aside from hitch-hikers)

the enjoyment of a lazy conversation over a meal with other drivers.

 

That Dream Service Station,

with its huge lorry park and just as huge car park,

and always crowded forecourt,

was usually my first goal in France. From there i had lots of

choices, and lots of drivers going down along these choices.

(I am actually in Paris contemplating the past and its consequences for me now.)

All this port's ease for hitch-hikers, that i had known, is now

gone.

The customs at Calais no longer exists.

A lorry driver no longer climbs down from his cabin

to jog to that crowded window

with a handful of official papers

to be approved and stamped by

the seated French

Customs officials

who speak only French,

and force these guys to use their intelligence

and solve the puzzle:

How communicate

with fingers and sparse, French words?

Lorries are no longer obliged to stop here.

The national borders are evaporating.

Now, the lorry drivers just roar off the ferry,

roar out through the port gates

and probably don't think of stopping

before they've arrived at the DREAM Service Station

on the motorway.

A DIFFICULT HITCH

At the outset of this hitch-hiking voyage, one month ago,

it took me ten hours to get my first lift out of Calais

onto the

motorway.

A storm had entered port that day

which maniacally drove the rain

and as coldly slung the wind.

There seemed no possible reason for a sane person

to want to test their stamina on that fury.

But are the young, sane?

Two guys, handsome,

in their early twenties, tallish, strongly built,

are hitch-hiking to a ski resort in the French Alps.

One has a job there. One is going to ask for a job there.

Their relationship to each other is unknown to me.

The rain and the wind are smashing into anything out in it.

But there they are:

refusing to stop side-of-the-road thumbing in the middle of this storm,

refusing to give-in to parent-induced fears

of colds and getting wet.

Their young, bull bodies' refusal to be dominated by any physical obstacle,

pressed them. And intelligence helped the first one i spoke to:

"There are rhythms to the ferries coming in.

So i know when to take a break and when to come back.

That's when i go into the Port Building to get out from the rain,"

.... the guy with the guaranteed job confidently tells me

as he

signals with a clearly written, crayon sign, 'Charmonix",

standing just outside

the inner port's exit gate for lorries, just before they get up any speed.

 

The guy without the job,

has chosen a hitching spot

in the dim, dim part

of the road leading out from the port to the motorway.

He's hardly seeable, and his sign is unreadable in such dim light.

I get in a conversation with him,

curious to speak with someone

so obviously innocent in the game of hitch-hiking.

In an attempt to help him,

i tell him,

"You are nearly invisible in this bad light.

And your sign is definitely unreadable."

Moreover, trying to help him further,

I tell him what i know about the hitch-hiking problem

at the roundabout

down the road one

hundred yards away:

"The lorries have effectively to stop

and look to see

if there's cars moving toward them

as they pick their entry into the roundabout.

But there's really no pressure on them to move quickly.

They can easily prolong the stop.

So your sign and a quick shout might work there."

But the young bull doesn't budge

though pelted

by the storm's swirling rain and its energy-sapping wind

and the gloominess of his present prospects.

"Hitching, where he is, doesn't make sense.

He must have hidden considerations inside his head.

He's probably proving something to the other guy,

--the guy with the job and the best spot to hitch from",

...i reason to myself.

Me,

pelted, as well,

but afflicted by it,

leave him to his own devices,

to pull my wheeling rucksack over to the far end

of the huge parking area,

to confirm again that

the special lorry was there,

the lorry in which slept a Scottish

driver

who had given me the guarantee of a lift

if

i hadn't found one by the time he'd get up, eight

hours time,

because he was going to sleep. He had driven all day.

There was no other way out of this Calais predicament

than to latch onto whatever minimal solution comes my way.

For as far as i see, there is no way

of striking up a conversation

with the lorry drivers.

(I haven't tried the car-exit gate

because it seemed too far to go with this storm raging.

Moreover, for cars as for lorries,

i reason, or suppose, the same frontier conditions are holding.

Namely none.)

 

Because they have no need to stop,

when the storm stops

i will be forced

to enact the role of the time-honored,

side-of-the-road-pleading hitch-hiker.

Only allowed to

wave a sympathetic flag

-rich with adventure

or, rich with innocence-

and thumb.

 

Such type of access

to car-drivers and truck-drivers,

--the human nutrients in which the hitch-hiker lives--,

makes the hitch-hiker

too passively dependent

on abstract, human admiration for someone

going somewhere

without using money,

makes the hitch-hiker appear

to be living life

with the freedom of a bird of nature...

...whistling a song

on the edge of a

country road;

temporarily needing something

from one of the busy people,

rushing

by.

I don't want to stand on the edge of a country road

as those young un's are doing

--and the rain pelting down,to boot--

and, scream out a need

without being able to offer in exchange

something more than my presence .

i love face to face, unstressed encounters as i love tasting honey.

Chatting with someone i just met is one of my sweet delights;

which is another way of saying

that i know how to make myself welcomed by a driver

in search of a lively and

pleasant drive.

I try to be an unexpected refreshment to counterbalance the

grueling road.

And moreover, i believe

--corrupted by my own hitch-hiking experiences--

that to have a chat with unknown me

will prove super-beneficial for the driver.

That's why i am not angry

with drivers who don't give me a lift.

They and i have not been cosmically

matched this time round. They have no need for me.

I am here to give help.

As i am here to receive help.

So go your way. Someone else needs me.

MOVING

Sitting alongside the driver

and looking out the window at the motorway life racing by,

and feeling the changing of the gears as the driver decides to act,

and catching a vision of ourselves,

--a moving outpost in the night

eating miles of it up--

and, then, saying to myself,

"I must try to get the social ball rolling,"

and, then, thinking a second level thought in the same direction,

"What subject or questions would interest this guy, this driver?"

 

And then i start the ball rolling, if it wasn't already started by him.

"How many years you been driving?"

"Did you always want to be a driver?, an international lorry driver?"

"Did you ever want to own your own lorry and work for yourself?"

"What is the longest trip you've ever made?"

"What's the most exciting trip you've ever made?"

"Are you married?, have children?"

"What do you want to do most of all in the world?"

"How do you feel about how the world is going?"

I am here to provide conversation

when conversation is asked for.

I can energise the driver through conversation.

I recognize a good and confident driver.

His automatic-driver's body is working well.

I am in good hands. He needs no aid as a driver.

 

.....might need light talk upon which to hang his thinking body?

....might need a rest from himself, a diversion?

....might need a clarifying talk with himself, an intraversion?

He needs nothing and is simply glad to have me aboard?

I start off talking of just about anything.

But i don't let conversation stay at anything.

I love conversation too much to waste it.

'I have something to offer him, but i don't know what, yet.

So i must search and ...

"A joke is always a good one."

But i rarely, if ever, try to contact another through jokes.

Or let myself be contacted through jokes.

Perhaps i'm too serious?

But, maybe

it's that the world's too frivolous!

Yet perhaps i am too serious.

I'm serious when i want to be of help to another person.

i'm serious when i take pride in

being able to always offer something

useful

for anyone's deepest commitments.

So whether it be

his business

his profession

or his loves,

whether it be

his vision of the world,

or pride in his children,

i'm enjoying with him, himself. And that i am serious about.

I'm a hitch-hiker. The driver is my benefactor.

Of such stuff is my sacredness woven.

Lorries are no longer obliged to stop here.

The national borders are evaporating.

In Calais' Port Building

there's no longer any reason

to hitch-hike

in its second floor

cafe-pub area.

The lorry drivers are no longer pausing there.

This time, i go up to the cafe for other reasons.

Feeling really wet and battered

from my last sally out into the storm,

(to alleviate my anxiety about

my one, on-going possibility for takeoff,

--anxious to know that the scot's lorry driver hasn't quit me--),

feeling like i really need some warmth within

and a pause in the tension, without,

i, and my rucksack-on-wheels,

wheel up two long flights of stairs,

i, pulling,

rucksack, rolling

over the steps meant for stepping on,

to get to a seat and a needed, hot drink.

I choose a table far away

from the counter's

three guys and a gal

happily blowing bubbles in the air,

employees, of this dying, outdated establishment.

Across the room, three male conspirators

dressed in black

and a velvet wench in black stockings

hunch

over their table whispering,

in a foreign

language, no doubt,

abominations of

normality, no doubt.

They are at the only table

occupied

in the ten-tabled room.

I turn my back to them

and huddle inwards

over my table.

To myself i automatically focus.

"Well, there's no doubt about it.

It's quiet, wait-time weather.

I can do nothing better,

than repair myself

through rest and nourishment.

"Wow. What changes have come about!"

I'll have to re-solve

the problem of inland take-off from this Calais Port.

For the moment, the obvious solution

is standing on the side of the road,

signalling;

like i might be forced to do

if that scot's driver wakes up and i'm not around,

and he don't feel like

waiting

for a guy who may never show up.

I used to come to this cafe area

to take a break in hitching

or escape the cold

or escape the night.

But it wasn't always a break from hitching.

I got the big YES

for one of my great lifts

at one of these tables.

Slowly,

i would be walking from the counter

--still tired from the stairs--

and walk pass the tables

slowly, slowly,

balancing my expresso in one hand

and pulling my wheeled rucksack with the other hand,

and hearing the lorry drivers talking,

and take my seat

sip my coffee, think what i have to do,

and then walk nimbly, happily,

up

to one of them,

alone at a table,

and pose my question.

I would, then, if i had to because nobody was biting,

go the round of all the tables

and have a quick chat with everybody in the room,

and take my seat and wait for newcomers,

and maybe, go to the counter again and buy me a beer.

Everybody would know what i wanted

and would aid me when

they could.

I would become the common concern of the entire cafe.

All that's past.

Calais Port is dead.

No reasons for drivers to spend time here.

A DREAM

standing next to a driver,

casually leaning on a long-stalked, small and circular tabletop,

with our two, separately-bought

coffees,

(proving our independence),

brotherly sharing

the tabletop,

and me, just by accident, saying,

"By the way,

I've been stuck here ten years. I'm a hitch-hiker

that's got to make progress.

Can you throw me a lift?"

And the guy laughs and says "Why not?"

That's a real sweet way of getting a lift.

But those long-stemmed tables

are at the Service Stations on the motorway.

And i'm here. Calais Port.

(Actually, i'm in Paris and i'm planning to hitch North.

I'm telling a story

about my recent, harsh experience at Calais Port.

Harsh,

because all had changed,

and changed in such a way

as to put me, and other hitch-hikers,

in a deep, deep

hole.

Somehow, i've got to climb out of this hole),

as my story continues.

Lorries are no longer obliged to stop here.

The national borders are evaporating.

When i had just gotten into the port,

it was still morning

and it was still dry.

Doing a fast look around at the exit gate for lorries,

gave me no great hopes about the hitching here.

It was obvious that

the only way out of Calais Port

was hitch-hiking

from the side of the road

as close to the exit gate as possible

before the lorries gathered speed

and sped by.

But this technique creates too little contact with the driver:

through the windscreen he sees me fuzzily;

through the closed door and the roar of the motor

he cannot hear me.

This weakened type of impression-making

in the hitch-hiking endeavor,

which can only just be 'attention getting',

is the least successful.

And it charges a toll to those who practice it.

Pumping energy outwards

to people who hardly have time to react,

trying to catch their fleeing, gratuitous attention

and, therefore,

pumping energy out to people

who mostly don't

return a bit of energy

back to the pumper,

wearies the pumper, in the long run.

So i decided to check out the road

up the road,

the other side of the port's huge, parking lot,

where the road signs seem to indicate a juncture

and the lorries seem to pause in their choice of roads.

Pulling the wheeled part of me, my rucksack,

along the side of the road,

with the lorries roaring and speeding by,

fearful of their massive presence,

i stop from time to time

to hale the drivers with my voice

and bounce a two-step dance

and tell them what i want

--as if they truly didn't know--

with my thumb,

and soak up their refusals

and know that this side of road stuff is not for me.

At the roundabout juncture,

they actually are slowing down,

but don't find reason for saying "Yes" to me.

To themselves, i imagine them saying:

"I'm on the road. Everything is in order.

My lorry is moving.

Why complicate life?

Next time."

"No. No.", i say to myself.

"This roundabout ain't working.

It might tap all my energy

and give me nothing.

Psychically, it's the wrong place for me to be."

Rather than become depressed,

i remind myself of the universal principle,

"There always must be some better solution".

Visually following the fleeing, inland-bound lorries

on their trajectories

beyond this roundabout,

shows me that the road

bends, 500 yards away,

out of sight under a car bridge.

Too much energy at this stage in the game

to check beyond the car bridge

for an advantageous hitching

point.

I turn to the Port, turn to reconsider

my problem

through what is offered

here.

I shift my attention

from this road out of the port, which so much

obsessed me,

this road being taken

by those

whom i needed to be taken by.

I pause my eyes

on lorries, lots of them, parked;

like camels settling down for the night.

But its daytime. What's happening?

They are waiting for their ferry's loading time.

They are outbound to Dover.

Look! They already have collected their tickets!

A new outdoor ticket window perched ten feet high

--that never existed four years ago!--

is serving queuing lorries .

It's so conveniently placed out in the Lorry park,

that leaving the cabin

is no longer obligatory, as it was before,

when the driver had to

climb down out of his cabin,

get over to the Port building

and signal his arrival to the Ferry Company

or buy his ticket from the Ferry Company

or be obliged to chat with Custom's Officials

and, in doing, make himself available to me.

Hitching across the channel to England

was, then, cushion-easy.

I'd catch the lorry drivers on their way

to buy the ferry tickets

which had free space for a 'second driver' in its rules.

Everybody knew about 'a second driver' then, as now.

The lorry drivers use this 'perk'

to bring their wives, or kid, with them and sweethearts too.

Many a lorry driver, back then, was willing to give me a

"Why not?"

and then give me a simple gift of a five minute, free lift into the ferry,

and leave me there to my own devices:

to wheel my rucksack way through the idle passengers

asking each if they are driving; if they are going

along the road to London; if they would take me.

A voice inside says,

"On my way back to England,

i shall have to solve this how problem

'How to approach the lorry drivers,

before they get their tickets.'

But, i'm now in France and inland bound.

That problem is for later."

Walking towards the Port Building

and, at its side,the Exit Gates from the port proper,

i catch a possible break in the problem.

Some of the lorries, leaving the exit gates,

pull over to the side . Their drivers seem to be congregating

for a chat.

Here are drivers out of their cab. Just what i need. Drivers that

have come through the exit gate. Drivers, therefore, who are

inland bound.

What an opportunity!

But as i begin to voice my question, having gone up to them,

i get hit over the head with an undeniable truth.

These are East European drivers.

I don't speak their language. I have little magic with them.

They're together. There's no take-off with them for me.

And, then,

walking and continuing the survey of my possibilities,

i arrive alongside the young guy with a ski-resort job waiting for him,

still pushing his energy out to the passing lorries.

He tells me,

under a rain that had already begun its mild-mannered entrance,

i should check out a british lorry

parked way out

in the farthest corner of the parking lot.

And that advice i took

and that's how i got to speak

to this thirty-five year old scotsman

just before he was going to

take his obligatory 8 hours off-the-road

and profitably sleep.

And that put me into pretty good gear,

being the best thing going.

I had, at least, a little promise:

if i didn't find, in these 8 hours, some other lift,

he would take me to a motorway service station.

A LAZY WAIT

With the storm outside,

i knew immediately that inside is where

i have to 'do my hitching'.

I have somehow to occupy myself

for eight long hours

without nodding off

--and i haven't slept last night.

I have to stay awake to protect my rucksack.

I am alone and must be responsible for everything.

With the storm outside,

I must find something to do

in the only available

covered space,

in the three-story confines of an impersonal, universal mother,

The Port Building,

whose breast of sweeties and drink is amply

supplying

for those who ply her with money.

But my style

is not to play money games,

nor to first rely on money solutions.

So i trudge into the The Port

Building,, knowing that i must solve

how to live these next eight hours

without digging into my shalllow pocket,

and without too much pain.

I have to make the most of this forced, inactive interval.

Indeed, it is the best i am offered

within the heavy constraints of the moment.

I've got my lift. I'm cool.

Just a lazy wait. Can go to the bar. Can do what i want.

Buy me a coke or some other cold drink.

Can buy me a hot drink. Or an expresso coffee.

Even hot chocolate.

In the beginning of the wait, i lounge on the ground floor

with several other hitch-hikers

and interchange road wisdoms.

Then upstairs, two flights i trudge and into this cafe-pub,

desiring to lay low and conserve my energies.

.

I take a chance and ask the barmaid for hot water.

She fixes me a cup of hot water,

not thinking twice about it and refusing any money i offer.

At my table, hidden from the counter,

i fish out a tea bag from my rucksack

and convert the hot water to a fine cup of herbal tea.

Later on in the evening, i go again up to the bar,

and,

risking to be judged a non-spending nuisance

ask the luscious, obliging barmaid

for another cup of hot water.

And again she uses the expresso machine to

give me a marvelous cup of hot water.

And this also for free.

And,

again, i make myself a fine cup of herbal tea.

Later, i get into a conversation with a very young guy. He had

been in an accident, and he had called his mother who was coming

here this evening to pick him up and drive him home. He's going

in a direction that's not mine.

So time passes.

For a while, the young guy,

--with a job at Charmonix waiting for him

--who had told me about the parked british lorry,

from time to time shows up

Never the other

guy.

 

And then, towards late evening, he stops showing up.

He must have achieved take-off.

And i have still two hours to wait till my scottish driver awakes.

Why wait and do nothing?

"I think i'll go out and see if he's still there."

And lo and behold, i arrive at his lorry just as he is awakening.

He looks out , sees me, opens the window,

and tells me sweet

words.

"Come back in one hour, and we'll be off."

I do. I do. My first success!!

That was one month ago.

It's one proof amongst many, that

Times have changed.

The old solutions are no longer workable.

----The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way---

Martin Segal
107 Southover Street,
Brighton BN2 2UA, Sussex, UK