The Moneyless Man

by Boyle, Mark

  Trust your instincts. If you have a nervous feeling about getting into a car with someone, make a polite excuse and don’t. But don’t be too fearful – I’ve hitchhiked since I was a kid and never once had a problem, although there are issues to consider regarding your gender.

  Don’t feel down. Don’t let cars going past get you down and don’t criticize the drivers who do. A positive attitude is vital to get you where you want to go!

  In many respects, hitchhiking is a good metaphor for life!

  My positive mental attitude seemed to work and I made it to Fishguard in less than five hours, not much longer than if I’d driven myself. However, this did leave me with about twelve hours to pass in an empty ferry terminal. As I sat there, alone, I wondered how busy the airport was and what impact cheap flights have had on ferries. The good news was that I had half a day to read in silence, something I crave. The bad news was that it was very cold. There was a television room, in which the heating automatically went on as you walked through the door. But I was the only one there, and my self-imposed rules said I couldn’t go in, because the heaters would be on just for me. I spent the entire day glancing at the door, knowing only too well that if I went in my body could thaw out. Moments like this made me wonder if I was taking things too far; then I visualized the sea-levels rising over low-lying countries such as the Maldives, and went back to reading my book.

  A terminal attendant came to tell me about this warm room and even went in to turn the television on. When I stayed where I was and he asked why, I didn’t know what to say. If I told him the real reason – that I wasn’t going in because of climate change – would he have thought me insane or would he have respected my views? Arrogantly, I didn’t give him the chance, but muttered that I was really comfortable where I was, though I appreciated his offer. He left, looking at me curiously. Around midnight, another passenger arrived and headed straight for this room of luxury. The sound of ten electric heaters turning on and my footsteps aiming in that direction quickly followed each other; I convinced myself that if the heating was going on anyway, I may as well make the most of it.

  I got about thirty minutes’ sleep on the three-and-a-half-hour journey to Rosslare. On the ferry, I had some problems with drinking water. I’d assumed I would be able to get some water either from the bar or in the bathroom, so hadn’t bothered filling up my bottle. That was a false assumption; one of the restaurant cooks warned me that the tap water was far from drinkable, pumped full of chemicals to make it clean. I’d lived on a boat, so I should have remembered this. Already slightly dehydrated, I had to start hitching without water, knowing that it could be at least five hours before I could find somewhere I could refill my bottle.

  It was Christmas Eve and I had about twelve hours to get from the most south-easterly point of Ireland to the very north-western coast; roughly three hundred miles. On the freeway, the route most long-distance drivers would use, this would normally take about six and a half hours. The problem was I couldn’t risk taking the freeway route. It’s illegal to hitchhike on a freeway; you can’t get dropped off on them and the on-ramps are always hit and miss. So I had to go on the smaller roads, which meant I would have to get a lot of short rides.

  I hightailed it out of the ferry port to try to get ahead of the cars and ended up running for over a mile to get to a good spot. Rosslare is a very quiet town – whenever the cars get off the ferries and leave, nothing much else passes through. My ferry was the last one before Christmas; if I missed the traffic coming off it, I was in trouble. But my luck was in; a truck driver took me a few miles up the road to a great location and I was off. And that luck continued all day – the longest I waited for any ride was about ten minutes.

  By 3.30pm I was knocking on the door of my folks’ house, to the complete surprise of my mom, who thought I hadn’t a hope of making it the whole way before Christmas. It had taken me just under nine hours to get from Rosslare, about the same as if I’d had my own car and taken a couple of breaks. Humanity, it seemed, has a really positive side that we don’t hear about too often. Between Bristol and Donegal, Ireland, I had fifteen hitches altogether. Compared to a cheap flight, the results were varied.

  This table tells a story in itself – have we as a species swapped adventure for convenience?

  It was really fascinating to see the types of people who gave me a ride. Every one of them had an average car, which made me question whether the more wealth you accumulated, the less you wanted to share. Most of the people who gave me a ride said that they had hitchhiked when they were younger, so there was a definite empathy. From their stories, I could tell that some of them wished they were back on the road and feeling the adventure of hitchhiking again; in some cases it almost felt like owning a car was something inflicted on them. Although there was only one person in the car every time, they were a very diverse group. Contrary to popular opinion, the majority were women (about three out of every four rides I receive are from women). One, who had just come off the night shift and faced a fifty-mile drive home, told me she always picked up hitchhikers whenever she saw them, just to keep herself awake, and in ten years had never once had a problem.

  One incident, which really uplifted me, came after I had got out of a car only to realize I’d left my freshly filled water bottle behind. This was my only water container and I hadn’t drunk much for twelve hours. Without it, I would have had to search in a trash can for an old plastic one and fill it in a bathroom somewhere. One hour, and another hitch later, the guy in whose car I’d left the water bottle pulled up. He’d spent forty minutes searching for me so he could give me my bottle back. I’d told him I was living without money and he guessed the bottle was pretty important to me. This guy had told me he had just spent two years in prison after a fight outside a nightclub. And here he was, going to all lengths to make sure a complete stranger had his water bottle. This reinforced my belief that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person; each of us is just as capable of huge acts of kindness and generosity as we are of causing harm. Our challenge, as evolving humans, is to maximize the former and minimize the latter.

  Another guy had heard me on the radio a few weeks earlier as he drove along the exact same stretch of road where he’d picked me up. He was fascinated by it all and asked me to come and stay in his place in Waterford, on the south coast, to help him build his new house. I promised that if I got another chance to come to Ireland within the year, I would take him up on the offer. Everyone I got a ride from was extremely interesting in their own way, each with a story to tell and a great knowledge of their local area. In almost every case, we parted having learned something from each other.

  A CASHLESS CHRISTMAS ...

  Now that I was home, it was time to think about how to spend an entire Christmas without buying anything at all. My friends like a beer at the quietest times of the year, but at Christmas they move into top gear. This Christmas had an extra edge; my friend Barry was getting married and his bachelor party had been arranged for December 27. This meant – obviously – a huge traditional Irish drinking session was on its way.

  In my days with money I was, like almost every other Irishman, one of the first at the bar buying a round for the crew. Given that it was a bachelor party, my Irish instinct was telling me to get everyone a bottle of the best and a double tequila. You can imagine my discomfort at having to go to the bar knowing that I couldn’t even buy myself a drink, let alone the guys. They were great; only I felt a bit off about it all. They tried to fill me with booze, though I repeatedly refused, trying to make a point about the year not being about freeloading. It was a wasted effort. Before I knew it Marty, my best friend since I was about six years old, had put three glasses of organic cider in front of me and told me I could return the favor by giving him a plug on the Gráinne Seoige show. I was bartering drinks for street cred.

  My awkwardness increased as the night went on. After the bar, the guys said they would pay my cab fare and Barry said he
would pay for me at the nightclub. This I had to draw the line at, but I couldn’t win. I didn’t want to be freeloading on my friends but I wanted to go and celebrate. In hindsight, I think I took the cowardly option. I went home, putting my desire not to be seen as a freeloader over spending one last night with my friend as a free man.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d been in such an awkward social situation; I’d already had a few in Bristol. Whenever I went out with acquaintances, they would start the conversation with ‘am I allowed to buy you a drink?’ When I answered ‘no’, they kept trying and if I finally said ‘yes’, they’d say ‘oh yeah, you won’t buy one but you’ll let me buy one for you!’, and I’d say ‘no thanks’ again. There were few exceptions and although it was always done in jest, my over active male ego didn’t really enjoy it. The bachelor party was perhaps the most extreme occasion and the one time I felt I’d made the wrong decision.

  Waking up on Christmas Day was odd. I’d been a really good boy all year and was hoping Santa had brought me the latest video games machine, complete with solar panels. But I awoke to an empty stocking. It was completely refreshing; in the past we’d often get each other the most needless and uninteresting things you could imagine, faking our excitement as we unwrapped the layers of wrapping on another pack of socks or an electric foot massager.

  All my family are Catholic; my uncle is a priest who does great work in the community, so we always say grace before everyone starts to eat. This is a practice I love, for no other reason than it makes everyone think about where their food comes from. While everyone else had the normal festive feast (turkey, beef and roast potatoes for the main course, swiftly followed by Jello, dessert, custard and cake), I ate my own little, more humble, stash. This was pretty much the same as the dinners I had eaten for the previous four weeks; mainly food I’d brought with me, along with some steamed root vegetables my mom and dad had got from a local organic farmer. There were plenty of brussels sprouts, so I was more than happy.

  I am very lucky to have an understanding family. My relatives bent over backwards to accommodate me, even though I didn’t really need much accommodating. To a lot of families, I would have been the awkward son, always creating hassle, but I was surrounded by loving, supportive people. The great thing about this Christmas was that I got to spend a lot of time with my folks and we had a good time together. In years gone by, I would have been spending a lot of money getting myself a hangover or out at the January sales, doing the stuff you do when you have some disposable income. Having no money forced me to do the simple things. We spent two or three hours every day walking the coast, playing beach tennis or going for a wander through the woods. Other times, we’d sit and talk together or play cards. This was normal in the Ireland of thirty years ago, but is becoming more alien to a country bitten by the Celtic Tiger.

  Having a shower in Ireland was challenging. I’d left my solar shower at home, but to be honest I didn’t really care. It wasn’t very useful in the winter, but it did give me a way to sprinkle water over myself, even if it was icy cold. Over here, it looked as if my best option was the Atlantic Ocean but given that it was one of the coldest Christmases in living memory, it wasn’t something I wanted to do every day.

  For the first week, I just didn’t wash. Then, because it was coming into a new year, the time of fresh starts, I decided I should polish up my act and so off to the beach I went. It was freezing cold, as you expect at Christmas in Ireland. Getting in was harder than being in. I had to do some exercises first to get warm enough to strip off before sprinting to the sea, where I knew the best course was just to dive straight in. This was easier said than done. The water was up to my rear end before I took the leap. But it was surprisingly good and much more invigorating than a hot shower. The water felt amazingly clean on my skin and the sun was shining down from a blue sky, doing its best to negate the chilly westerly breeze. The surrounding green hills and mountains converged to the beach. I could not imagine a more picturesque, beautiful bathtub. It was cold and it wasn’t very convenient but the setting, and the feeling of being with nature, more than made up for it. I think we have swapped the experience of being exposed to the elements for comfort. We have, in the words of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, become ‘comfortably numb’.

  Not buying something, regardless of how much healthier it is for your body, is not very good for the economy. You’ll never see a magazine advertise this approach; you’ll see a model you could one day look like, if you only buy the product that they hold between their palms. Years of multi-million-dollar-backed propaganda is hard to delete from people’s minds. When I told people I only washed once a week in winter, without soap, they did the thing where they scrunched their faces, said ‘ooohhh’ and asked me ‘don’t you feel dirty and smelly?’ I’d explain how soap was completely unnecessary, but it would fall on shocked ears.

  My other piece of advice, if you don’t want to use soap or wash so often, is to eat organically-produced, fresh, vegan food. Sweat is little more than salty water if you are healthy; if you put trash in your body, you must expect to come out smelling like it. Since giving up both meat and dairy foods (both especially bad at causing this effect), I’ve found a massive difference in how I naturally smell. Avoid or reduce both if you want to start going without soap. Being vegan has also meant that I don’t need to wash my dishes with detergent, as dish-washing soap is only necessary when you are cleaning dishes that are likely to have bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter on them. According to the UK’s Food Standards Agency, the rise of infections of these bacteria is due, in part, to the terrible conditions in which we both house and kill animals.

  LOW-IMPACT TRANSPORTATION

  Transportation is no longer seen as a complete luxury. We rely on it to get to work, to see family and friends dispersed around the world, and to eat. Transport is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the US, so it is important that we come up with solutions – and quickly – if we are going to prevent serious climate chaos.

  Some of these solutions are already available. Organizations such as Liftshare (www.liftshare.com) and Carshare (www.carshare.com) enable people who are taking the same journey to travel together. It’s like hitchhiking, organized online, making it safer and less uncertain.

  Other projects, such as the City Car Club, are also helping. This is a ‘pay as you go’ system, which makes driving much cheaper and cuts down on numbers of cars produced, as several people can share one, using it only when they need. And if you offer your journey up as a lift-share, you can help the environment even more.

  Hitchhiking is becoming a thing of the past, which I think is very sad. Once in a generation perhaps, someone is killed while hitchhiking, the media sensationalize it and no one hitchhikes for a long time. Hitchhiking is a great adventure, you meet amazing people with lots of local knowledge, and you sometimes decide to go to places you had never intended. My favorite journeys always involved sticking my thumb out.

  Walking and cycling, I find, are the most relaxing forms of transportation. They’re really natural exercise and save your gym fee into the bargain. I have friends who drive to the gym, get on a bicycle machine, do forty-five minutes and then drive home! I tell them they should save themselves the gym fee, the cost of the fuel, car tax and insurance and cycle to the gym and back without going in!

  Two organizations which have made walking and cycling a lot more fun, safer and more enjoyable are the American Volkssport Association (http://www.ava.org) and the Adventure Cycling Association (www.adventurecycling.org).

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  Consuming as much alcohol as humanly possible is synonymous with December 31 in most of the western world. Indeed, in Ireland, they do not limit it to what is humanly possible.

  Until now, New Year’s Eve had gone something like this. Wake up, eat a quick breakfast, phone friends, get to the bar, convince the bartender I am not an undercover cop and start drinking by ten o’clock. That, however, was
when I had money. This year, it was going to have to be different. Even the crap bars seemed to charge an entry fee on New Year’s Eve and tickets for the lowliest of nightclubs started at £20 ($30), with drinks at a huge premium. This was irrelevant to me; I couldn’t afford to look at the bartender, let alone ask him for a drink. Even my parents were partying. My friends went out as normal, but to save myself the mental turmoil of the bachelor party, I stayed in. As 2008 became no more, I lay in bed writing the start of this book.

  This was a blessing in disguise. For once, I began a new year without feeling like someone had drained every ounce of water from my body, gripped my head in a clamp and repeatedly smacked me on the back of the skull with a rubber mallet. I hit a deserted beach for a stunning early morning walk with my folks, looking forward to the year ahead instead of wishing somebody would use a rusty saw to disconnect my head from the rest of my body. This, I decided, was how I was going to spend New Year’s Eve from now on, money or no money.

  Normally, on New Year’s Day, I would get up and write a list the length of my leg of things I resolved to do (or not do) in the coming year. But what on earth was I going to give up this year that I hadn’t already? There wasn’t much left. Food? Water? Oxygen? Hope? To retain the last, I decided to call off the resolutions: enough was, finally, enough.

  RETURNING TO AN ICE BOX

  Christmas was over before I knew it and I had to make my way back to Bristol. This time, the journey had to be broken, to complete my end of the bargain by talking about my experiences so far on Seoige. And a bargain it was for them – I couldn’t accept their cab rides or even their food; it wasn’t vegan, let alone organic or local.