Broward Community College - Silver Sands Yearbook (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

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CRGGDCDIYI RID-GRI l 4 ll 1 me tions more l text and photos by Dave Patrick s l I I On the radio some guy was talking about 200,000 or so already in attendance at the festival. Then he played side one of Sgt. Pepper. Before the turntable crossed She's Leaving Home we were gone. It was after dark before we stuck out our hand-lettered sign and headed south, but it no longer mattered exactly when or if we got to Atlanta. By leaving, we had already arrived. We ran into some bad weather around midnight and tried to get some some coffee at a nearby Union 76 Truck Stop. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the storm was far from past. A few minutes later, the lights went out in Halifax, North Carolina. Around 1:30 a.m. some guy with a flashlight and a wet cigar told us the station was closed and asked us to leave. The only available shelter was the leaky overpass on the highway, so we crawled underneath and made attempts at getting comfortable on some newspapers and broken glass. A few hours later we quit trying and worked at rubbing the newsprint off our hands. It was almost daybreak when we walked out on the interstate and waited for the first passing car. At least it had stopped raining. It eventually took us nearly twenty-four hours to cover six hundred or so miles to the festival. Duane Allman and Dickie Betts were busy with Statesburo Blues, while a group of fifteen bikers tore down a ticket booth. The Second Annual Atlanta Pop Festival had become the Second Annual Free Atlanta Pop Festival. We stretched out in the later afternoon sun, and enjoyed a couple of peanut butter and corned beef hash sandwiches. There was a good feeling about living on the road. An illusion of independence that almost seemed real, and very definitely habit forming. That's the way it started three summers ago, when a friend and I, both airmen apprentices stationed with the Navy in Norfolk, Virginia, decided to attend the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival. At ther time we didn't have tickets or leave or a ride either, but that was the least of our worries.

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to be, but if you're sent, you have to make the decision whether to live out the year with as much activity as you can find or to sit and do nothing at all. Hunting, for such game as fox, caribu, and ptarmigan, and fishing in the streams and bays for trout. bass and the huge salmon gan ease the pains of being stationed. Outdoor sports are limited by the weather, but football and baseball .-.4-igiiiseiiwfv. i 'r survived. Skiing can be interesting on a mountain with deep gorges and sledding can also be risked by the brave. ln the bottom of the recreational building was the base's indoor swimming pool. Pollution has no meaning in Adak's vocabulary. The Water is clean enough to drink right from the mountain streams. The pioneers had a yearning for wide open spaces and I believe many people in our present society do also. advocate Adak as a spot for colon but Adak is for the individualist person who wants to think and t who is not afraid of isolation, the who still believes that the conjeste of this world are doomed. Text and photos by Bob Pearsall

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Before returning to Virginia some three weeks later, my travels had covered nearly 5,000 miles. Expenses ran about S80, and I had crammed a lot of being alive into those twenty-two days. Other ventures followed, resulting in sixteen trips up and down the East coast, and three cross-country journeys as well. Adding up to more than 50,000 miles-42,000 of them recorded since April 1972. The last major hike took place in 116 1 AQf's'- -J ' - l -,.:.:.::.,-... . I-ii., ,- ,.j'4o-fc, k August, when Nancy Carta fa 1973 BCC graduatej and I covered the distance between Fort Lauderdale and San Francisco in less than four and a half days, including overnight stops in Flagstaff, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. Starting out on the Sunshine State Parkway at State Road 84, we scribbled our names in red crayon on the back of the sign which reads, Turnpike Entrance Ahead and promptly got our lirst ride to Vero Beach. Almost before our bags even hit ground, a middle-aged, tattooed, ci chomping, all-American tractor tr driver pulled off the highway and offe us a ride to Mobile, Alabama. Coffee k the conversation going all night and af stops in Tampa and Tallahassee, arrived in Mobile at dawn. Nancy and I thanked him for thel and hopped out just west of the c limits where Interstate 35 goes north Interstate 10. Thoughts of Bob Dylan, and mama, can this really be the end, to be inside of Mobile. . ., but halfw through the second verse, a clean-shav crew-cut, 26 year old, going home leave to see my wife and kids, Ar pilot slammed on the brakes of his ' Plymouth Fury. r He was on his way to Ft. Wor Texas, and talked about how he'd bou the car brand spanking new, years ago. He seemed anxious to home and sleep with his wife again. closer we got to Ft. Worth, the faster drove. We raced the sun to the horizon ll at about 90 miles an hour. For a wh it didn't look like the sun was going win, but it beat our flying fury by an hour. The sky darkened even fastl Two cars passed and within minut it was night. The air was cool ag strangely still. Another car approachq dimming it's lights while streaking by.lI kicked at stones on the highway ag waited. Talk centered around cheese omele California and good places to roll ol sleeping bags for the night. A pairt headlights twinkled in the distance. 4 the semi approached, we thought abol all-night rides, kicked a few more storl and waited. Our sign read Amarillo. Il then it was too dark to even read it. Tl driver whizzed past at about 80 miles pl hour. Then he slammed on his brakt We gathered our things and rt toward the flashing tail lights. The driw threw open the cab door. Nancy climbt in first, handing me her sleeping bag all thanking the driver at the same tint Somehow, there was room for both! us and the baggage. After slamming!! door shut the driver seemed Texan al very friendly, but he said he was frot Oklahoma. I