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Fifty States, Fifty Bucks, Fifty Weeks: The Odyssey Begins

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Fifty States, Fifty Bucks, Fifty Weeks: The Odyssey Begins

By Nancy K. Crevier

Late this summer, 25-year-old Charles Emmett Milbank Fulkerson, a 2004 graduate of Newtown High School with a degree in sociology from Ithaca College, put on the new $600 suit his father had just bought him for upcoming job interviews in Boston and New York City, and made a video presenting his idea of traveling through 50 states, in 50 weeks, with 50 bucks. Hobodyssey, as he calls his journey, would have no need for the slick suit or shiny shoes. Then he presented the video to his father.

His father, Chuck Fulkerson, of Newtown, was less than enthusiastic, he said. “He thought I was joking,” recalled Emmett (who prefers to go by his two middle names), in northern Vermont on October 5, and two weeks into his adventure. “I’m pretty sure he had hoped I would go the more traditional route,” he said.

His mother, Jone, also had her reservations, he said, but realizing her protests would be fruitless, only asked that he call every day.

Eventually his parents, both writers, warmed up to the idea. On Saturday, September 24, Mr Fulkerson gave Emmett a ride to a gas station in Derby and pressed an 1878 silver dollar into his hand for good luck. It was the beginning of lessons in walking, talking, and living frugally — for 50 days, through 50 states.

“I love to write and I love to travel,” explained Emmett. He had spent ten months traveling in Southeast Asia after college graduation, held an internship in Singapore at IS Magazine writing movie reviews, and worked as a writer and in marketing in Chicago when he returned stateside. “I know that marketing is not my thing. So I came up with this idea of taking just 50 dollars, and visiting every state in 50 days, to create a platform for a book. There is no better way, I figured, to get material and stories, than to just hit the road.”

In just a few days he had already compiled his own tales of sleeping in a train station, riding in a tractor-trailer truck, networking to find places to stay overnight, and learning through trial and error some rules of the road.

“One day, I walked in the rain by the side of the highway for four or five hours,” said Emmett, “with cars whizzing past me and people swearing at me. I’ve learned that one of the keys to doing this is to get dropped in a good jump-off location, where there are lots of ride opportunities.”

He has learned, too, that people don’t want to be backed into the corner by someone begging a ride. Instead, he shares his vision with people he approaches, and lets them decide to offer a lift or not. He also tries to alleviate others’ fears by showing them the journal he carries called, I’m Not Crazy. “Everyone who helps me along the way, I ask to write in this journal,” said Emmett. He has found that wary would-be ride providers are reassured when they read the notes written in the journal by others who have offered him support.

Not everyone who finds his story intriguing is able to assist with a ride. Some just listen and walk away. Some people give him money — anywhere from $5 to $20. It was not his original intention to take monetary donations, said Emmett, but the extra cash has come in handy. In an age where gasoline costs closer to $4 a gallon than $3 a gallon, he is happy to pay toward the cost of filling the tank, when he can, for people who give him rides. At some point, he expects he will take on short-term jobs in order to fund his travels.

Others offer him shelter at night He has bunked with college students at the University of New Haven and Providence College, and those connections found him a spot at a University of Vermont frat house. Other than one night spent bouncing between the floor of a train station and the asphalt just outside of it, Emmett has been fortunate to not have had to unpack his one-man tent and hunker down outside for the night.

The tent, a compact sleeping bag, and a compact pillow are the few items in his backpack that hardcore backpackers would recognize. He carries no cooking utensils, counting on the generosity of those he meets or purchases he is able to make with his fluctuating bank account. The original $50 has dropped as low as $4, but he has managed to get by.

Three flannel shirts, four T-shirts, a pair of jeans, and a pair of shorts are the only clothes in his backpack. “I hope to be far enough south by the time winter sets in that I won’t need a jacket,” said Emmett.

The space in his backpack that other hikers allocate to propane and pots and pans is taken up by a laptop, a Go-Pro video camera, a cellphone, “and a ton of wires and cords,” he said. One hundred beer labels from all around the world are also tucked into the backpack on the Hobodyssey.

“Everybody who helps me gets a thank you note written on one,” explained Emmett, who collected the labels while traveling overseas.

He is unapologetic about the amount of technology that he carries with him. “There are people who say you have to do something like this ‘organically.’ I have all of this technology at my disposal, though. Why not use it? I do lots of networking, and technology has already helped me spread the whole Hobodyssey,” he said.

The momentum he builds through contacts made along the way and through his website will be useful, he hopes, when he travels through parts of the country that are less populated than the East or West Coasts.

More than the miles of walking each day, the uncertainty of where he will bed down, where his next meal comes from, or the weather, is the difficulty of constantly proving to people that he is “not a nut job,” Emmett said. That, and feeling that he has to entertain people who take him in. “The continual reassessing of each day, what it brings, and who is going to help is difficult. I can’t turn off what I’m doing and just relax, unless I find I’m somewhere to stay with people I know,” he said. And that is a less and less frequent occurrence the further from Newtown he travels.

Brief videos of each day or interesting characters he has encountered are posted at his website, hobodyssey.com, as are comments about his journey. Most of the videos and comments are light-hearted, except for one in which he encounters not-so-friendly police officers in Vermont, and in his hurry to bid them farewell, accepts a ride with two guys he has not vetted.

His letter, dated October 6, is addressed to his mother:

Dear Mom,

So as you know I’m not hitchhiking I’m going up to people talking to them and feeling them out to make sure they’re cool and not going to kill or rob me or make any sexual advances on me. Anyway so I was in this situation where I met these two cops who were harassing me for no reason.

So they check my pockets and keep bugging me and as all this is going on these two weathered Vermonters offer me a ride. Now I wouldn’t have normally gone with Mickey and Tom, but I didn’t want to get cavity searched by these two cops.

So I go with Mickey and Tom and everything is cool until they ask me if I have an iPod. I’m like this is weird, …are these guys going to jump and rob me? Then one of them asks how much money I have. I tell him again only one dollar on my debit card and three in my wallet.

My heart is pounding so hard its about to jump through my chest and hit the dashboard in front of me. I keep repeating I’m doing this to prove to the country that people care about others and will help people in hard times and that most people are good and you can count on your fellow country men.

Again they ask how much money I have. Then I find out one of the guys used to be a huge meth head and now I’m thinking game over, hobodyssey is over I’m about to die. I should have listened to everyone that this was a dumb and stupid idea. They’re going to drive me to the middle of nowhere and do bad things to me! Should I just jump out of the car. No I would defiantly [sic] die at this speed.

I ask them to pull over at the next gas station. They do and I see lights and people and safety!!!!!! I have the nerve to take a video of my good pals.

A more cautious Emmett was planning at the end of the first week in October to head next to Albany, N.Y., then to New York City, where friends promised to help him edit his Hobodyssey videos for the documentary he plans to make. New York will make the seventh state visited, after Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

“Then I’ll be heading south for the winter, and be back in Connecticut by September 2012,” said Emmett. “How many miles a day I make depends on my luck, though,” he added.

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