Guaka! - veganism

Best Vegan Blog

Guaka — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:30:19 +0000

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I just started bestveganblog.com, which will also give me some energy to give new life to Vegan Wiki. We'll probably have ads on best vegan blog, but we'll make sure to avoid advertising for non-vegan stuff, like I've seen on a big vegetarian website.

Rest in peace, Taylor

Guaka — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 01:56:10 +0000

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UPDATE: You could send flowers to family's address: 6989 Owen Rd, Lantzville B.C. V0R2H0 Canada. (if you have to enter a name, the family name is Booth) - or plant a nut or fruit tree somewhere in Taylor's memory.

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

guaka: I just set up http://vegan.wiki.yt/ #veganwiki #veganism - looking forward to your edits!

Guaka — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:46:33 +0000

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guaka: I just set up http://vegan.wiki.yt/ #veganwiki #veganism - looking forward to your edits!

Montreal, Boston, NYC, Dublin, Treviso, Verona, Trento

Guaka — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:02:22 +0000

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We left Morgan a bit later than planned. I really didn't sleep well with the prospect of waking up at 5AM. We started of taking a bus out of Montreal, at 9:16. Hitching in Quebec is easy. We had a couple of short rides, and then a ride down to Burlington, a college town in Vermont (in the US, the State of Cheese). Like most college towns, it was easy to hitch out of there. But then we were in a shitty spot. We waited a long time, till we finally walked to a traffic light, where someone was so friendly to drive out of his way. amylin prefers "on-ramp hitching", that is waiting at on-ramps, but our luck with that had been mediocre in the US, so I decided to change strategy and be dropped at a rest area. The first guy we saw asked if we were hiking, and I said "well, we're hitchhiking", and we were treated to a long ride and an interesting life story. We made it to Boston that night where we had interesting conversations about Esperanto, veganism and (not for me) push-bikes with our hosts. The next day we met up with John and his wife. After fruitfully working together on CS and later BeWelcome, for almost one year, it was great to finally meet John. Later that day we took the Chinatown bus to NYC and went all the way to the upper point of Manhattan. The next day we walked a lot, saw some German thing at the Goethe Institut, with pictures and some dude who was going to go around the world with his motorcycle. The guy taking pictures was very interested in amylin and me. Rightly so, we were by far the most colorful people around. Friday I had to say bye to amylin :( and take a plane to Dublin. My flight arrived in the very early morning, and I basically had a stop-over of 23 hours. Fortunately, through BeWelcome I had found out that Matthew, who was my guest in Paris in 2004, was now living in Dublin. So I had a place to crash for a couple of hours. The check-in for my next flight (with another Irish low budget company) was at 4 in the morning. Since there's no nightly public transport, nor cheap taxis, I had to take my bus there at 23:00. I arrived at Treviso around 9AM. I slept a bit in the first train, changed to the other one, and then got to Verona, to find out that there was a train strike, and no trains going north until after 21:00. Shit! Well, just hitchhike, I thought. I saw a car in front of the station, and fortunately they took me to a better spot. But, not too great. So, from there I started walking, and walking. Into a bar, for a toilet, a pen (for my sign) and a cola. Then, more walking. Walking. Walking. And I walked more. I started to feel quite unhappy about all the Italians that were speeding by without stopping when someone finally stopped and took me for 15 km or so. From there, same story. Italians are wary of strangers! I ended up on a spot where I had found a ride straight to Trento the first time. But I wasn't so lucky this time. I was getting thirsty. I saw some black people in the backyard of a house and they were from Ghana and very nice. A guy gave me a big bottle of mineral water. After a while I decided to walk. And walk. Until there was a point in the road with construction work and a traffic light where all cars had to stop for a while. Finally I saw a small Fiat and got my ride. Until a couple of kilometers before Roveretto, where I was picked up after not too long. By a very friendly Albanian couple, who started explaining that Italians are bastards. They dropped me off at the station, where the trains still weren't going. So at 19:00 I finally took a bus to Trento, where I was treated to an excellent vegetarian meal. I woke up at 16:00 this afternoon...