Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brassbound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. A journey is a person in itself no two are alike. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness.

A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teenagers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and destination.

He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. This to the practical bum is not difficult. It continues, 'When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. When I very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. I tagged passage after passage after passage. For those unfamiliar with the premise, it is the story of a man (famous writer though he may be) and his dog as they travel across the United States in 1960. I love the reflectiveness of the book it's very straightforward. history-lovers-particularly those that are interested in America's culture and politics literature-lovers-particularly those that love nice-and-steady prose that satisfies. (In fact I stayed up with this one because I just couldn't put it down!) I recommend it for those that fall into one or more of the following categories: dog lovers-particularly dog owners travel-lovers-particularly those that dream of taking a cross-country road trip across the U.S. Travels With Charley is my second John Steinbeck book.

Travels with charley dog