Been very sad today. I woke up this morning hoping it was just a dream. But it wasn't.
"Anyways, busy on the road but I would love to get involved in the hitchwiki sometime...I don't think I've hitched as much as you but I hitched from Finland to Spain and spent 2 months hitching around New Zealand (went everywhere) and have been hitching around oz since the end of May."
This is the first email Taylor wrote to me in 2007. It took another 5 years before we met in real life, in Lithuania. Meanwhile he he surely hitched a lot more than me, through many of countries in Eurasia. At the Hitchgathering we made vegan pancake dough together - and we both helped out with the non-vegan dough. Someone later mixed both doughs and Taylor didn't eat any pancakes that day. Afterwards we both stayed with Mikael in Vilnius. I had carried a jar of peanut butter all the way from home and was happy to give it to someone with higher vegan standards than me.
In January I read he was planning a trip into Africa, which immediately reminded me of Kinga Freespirit's story, another vegan hitchhiker I had met in 2005 at the Monnai camp. She died in Ghana of malaria. So I wrote Taylor he should bring some malaria medication. He replied 10 days later, "don't worry, saved some of my juggling money and bought 50 pills of anti malarial drugs..."
Last week Taylor was hit by a car while hitchhiking at night in Chad.
Adding a suggestion to wear a safety vest when hitching at night to the Hitchwiki page about safety seemed appropriate.
I'm very sad I won't meet Taylor again. I would have loved to work with him on the rural hospitality project of which he was the main driving force.
Hello. My name is Taylor - and I am a nomad.Somewhere along the way in life I gave up a sedentary lifestyle and hit
the road, always moving somewhere new, seeking new experiences.I can't explain exactly what makes me move...except to say that I have
this wanderlust inside of me that drives me on, to feel the earth spin
beneath my feet, to wake up and see a new horizon, feel a fresh breeze
against my face....to be a stranger in a strange land.Please dont ask me when I am going to stop travelling, I will stop when its time to stop. I wont know until I get there.
Rest in peace, Taylor
