T A B L E_T A L K San Francisco: What shouldn't you miss when visiting the City by the Bay? Swap advice and stories in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Suddenly last summer By Hal LaCroix Babes, buzzwords and biz-bonding at the Nantucket Film Fest (06/12/98) Letter from Jakarta: After the sky falls By Jeff Pulice When expats flee, foreign guys become very attractive -- and other bits of wisdom (06/11/98) Are we the world? By Andrew O'Hehir Despite our uneasy place on Planet Soccer, the United States will be one of 32 nations vying for glory as the globe's most passionately watched sporting event begins (06/10/98) The Internet comes to the Outback By Simon Winchester A 7-year-old boy's life changes forever (06/09/98) Mondo Weirdo Slow boat to Thailand Temptations and tribulations on the Mekong River (06/08/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		HOW CAN MIDLIFE TRAVELERS RECAPTURE THE CAREFREE WANDERINGS AND WEIRD ENCOUNTERS OF 20 YEARS BEFORE? BY LOUISE RAFKIN | It's been 20 years since the nippy spring day when I stumbled for over an hour along the shoulder of a dusty Spanish mountain road. It was somewhere between Bilbao and Pamplona. My 40-pound red backpack dug into my hips. The cheap sneakers swinging off the side of my pack, the ones I'd purchased in an outdoor market in Paris, had worn blisters on my heels. Wearing only heavy gray backpacker's socks, I navigated around broken bottles and other roadside debris. When I look back on this desolate scene, I am most baffled to recall that at that precise moment in time, I felt entirely elated. "I never want to stop doing this," I wrote in my diary, a smelly, worn and tattered lined notebook. "This is it." What I meant by "this" and "it" was traveling raw, hitching through foreign parts with little or no money, greeting whatever mishap occurred -- and there were plenty -- as an adventure. I had grown up in a small, sleepy town, but in college I discovered the diaries of Anaïs Nin and the works of Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac. So, damn it, I knew there was adventure out there, somewhere, and I was determined to find it. For nearly two years, I hitched around Europe, living on nearly nothing -- sometimes, literally, cheese heels and day-old bread -- sleeping on rocky roadsides, taking jobs and risks that now seem completely nutty. This particular day my adventure had been a tad trying. I'd snagged a perfect ride -- over four hours -- with a genial Spanish gentleman who conversed with me in halting French and was traveling all the way to Bilbao. He'd shown me pictures of his wife and four children. A rosary swung from the rearview mirror of his European compact. I figured I'd land in Bilbao before sundown, in time to scout a cheap hostel or even a secluded beach or park where I could crash. (Though earlier that spring I had fallen asleep on a deserted beach on an island off the coast of what was then Yugoslavia and had woken to find myself staring up at a semicircle of men, several of whom sported machine guns: I had camped on an army reserve.) In Bilbao, I planned to find -- somehow -- a high school friend who was there -- somewhere -- on a Mormon mission. I had his small school picture in my pack, along with $50 -- an absolute fortune during that period of my life -- a map of the city and a Spanish-English dictionary. I felt pretty dang lucky. The kindly driver had even paid for my lunch at a roadside cafe -- wine and olives and fresh bread and pâté -- and then suggested that we take the "pretty road," the scenic route. I enthusiastically agreed. It certainly was a pretty road, rural and winding, though also pretty deserted. We passed a few farms, but not even a cafe or a petrol station. So when he pulled over to the shoulder and stopped the car, I assumed my driver had to relieve himself. I stared out the side window, past rolling hills and grazing cows, in order to afford him some privacy. I heard a zipper unzip. I waited for the car door to open. It did not. "Tu fais un petit massage?" he cut in. You make a little massage? N E X T+P A G E | Breaking the rules