What twenty-two-year-old guy in his right mind marries a woman seven years his senior with three children? Then, four years later, I convinced her that I should hitchhike to Arizona, leaving her alone with four kids for a month, while three months pregnant. What was my compelling reason? All I can say is a desperate situation required a crazy solution.
It was March 1978, and we lived in an old cold house in New Hampshire. I’d been working in the woods, cutting cordwood during the winter. It was brutal work. Work that didn’t support my family. I needed more money and had to come up with a sustainable career. With hyperactive boys tearing around our small house and a teething baby, I couldn’t think straight in that chaos. Then I came up with the brilliant idea! I’ll get away and figure out a plan. Well, at the time, it seemed like a good idea. But hitchhiking in late winter, thumbing for rides in the middle of the night, and traveling in the psycho-mobile brought my sanity into question. However, the pressing need to transform my life and support our family pushed me forward.
An adventure of another era,
A Wild Ride: The Plan that Changed Everything
, is a memoir of my quest, the characters I encountered along the way, and how the plan that would change our lives came to me.