Age is Just a Number

For some reason, I’ve met very few young people on my route. Maybe it’s the time of year, or the fact that the Dodecanese islands are little off the beaten path, but most of the people I’ve met on the road have been at least 30, with some notable exceptions. While at first I was a bit puzzled by the disappearance of the teenage backpacker, I’ve grown used to making friends with middle-aged people who aren’t parents or professors. 

Besides, there are some definite perks to running with an older crowd. For one, they’re more likely to pay for your dinner, since they sometimes feel responsible for you. Secondly, longer lives mean more varied and interesting conversations. Today in Patmos I went to the beach with a German woman traveling with her church group who grew up in East Germany and remembers when the Berlin Wall fell. Last week I hung out with a Deputy Sheriff of the LAPD who told me all about what happened behind the scenes in the post-Rodney King police force, and then drank me under the table. Before that I rode around with a long-haired 35-year old beekeeper who had been arrested for weed possession and beaten up by the Greek cops. 

In many ways, the age difference is really liberating, because there’s much less social pressure on me. I don’t feel awkward asking lots of personal questions, because older people just assume it’s because I’m young and precocious. People my age would think I was a total weirdo if I started asking them if they believe in God, or how to elicit a confession on tape. But old people love imparting wisdom to young people, and it’s easy to get them talking about themselves and all their personal issues. Besides, most young people have a similar reason for traveling (“Because I can, because it’s fun, and because I’m of drinking age here”) while many old people are on the road because they’re fleeing from twisted pasts.