Under the Wing of the Hobo Traveler

I sat in awe as the un-conjoined links of what was once my disaster-zone knowledge of web-site construction began to solidify together in a solid chain. One piece smoothly lead into another and I am now starting to see the big picture of websites, SEO, and the internet for the first time. I am learning. Andy the Hobotraveler.com is at the helm of my instruction, and I am taking it all in – amazed and in awe. My mouth has dropped open, as it all is beginning to make sense. The first light of dawn has fallen upon my brow, and I am staring at it wide-eyed.

Prior to the day before yesterday I knew how to make webpages in an editing program, but I had little clue how they really worked. These two halves have now taken their initial steps at coming together: Andy sat me down in front of his computer and showed me how it is done. I nodded my head, tried out what I was shown, messed it up, fixed it, broke it, and put it back together again.

In only a few days with Andy I was probably save more than a year’s time of website screw-ups. Meeting the Hobo Traveler could not have come at a better time: I was on the teetering edge of plummeting Vagabond Journey head-first into the deep ravine of website disasters.

Andy essentially pulled me back from the edge, slapped a harness on me, and invited me to be the initial lap-rat for a new project that he is working on called Experimental Lifestyles. This is a project that is orchestrated by a traveler to help other travelers obtain the necessary resources to keep traveling on. It is a project that is instep with old days of the Hobo – in which those who knew the Road ahead would share their knowledge with those who followed. Andy knows this Road, and he has opened a small portion of his notebook for me to study.

I am being given a map. I accept it with a deep bow of appreciation and graditude.

Travelers share their knowledge with other travelers:

From the liturgy of Hobo symbols carved into fence posts to the extensive notebooks kept by the German tramps of old, a “swell graft”- ways of finding the necessary resources to keep traveling – have always been passed along from traveler to traveler. This sharing of knowledge is a part of the creed of the Hobo, the tramp, and the long-gone backpacker.

I smile, as I now know that this tradition lives on. The Hobo Traveler found a map, and he has shared it a portion of it with me.

Someday I will surely do the same, and pass my maps along to the travelers who will surely follow.

I am sure that they will appreciate it as much as I am appreciating these lessons from the Hobo Traveler.

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Antigua, Guatemala
April 5, 2008