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Lauren had always wanted adventure, but the fears instilled in her by her parents and the media kept her from pushing her life out of the norm.  As a child, she dreamed of hopping into the boxcar of a train and traveling the country, leaning back on a pile of hay and pointing her feet to the door to watch the world change.  She would eat beans out of a can and build campfires.  Lauren even tied a red kerchief to the end of her practice baton to see how it felt.  It felt good.  But news stories about how many people were killed by trains, and how you could easily fall under the wheels and lose a leg, or the other stories about women raped down by the tracks made Lauren wary of hobos.

She tried again with the romantic idea of hitchhiking across the United States.  She would get good walking boots and a frame backpack and a roll of toilet paper and a flashlight and a rain poncho and some granola bars and put out her thumb.  School films about the dangers of getting into cars with strangers put an end to that adventure, too.  Having all your money stolen, your carefully stocked backpack pillaged, and, yes, more threat of rape, frightened her away again.

Lauren lived at home while in college, but she contemplated moving in with her longtime boyfriend.  Certainly, that could be an adventure!  It was nearly enough to make her enthusiastic, even though her boyfriend was a bit too macho, a bit too loose with money, and a bit too...realistic.  Driving back to her parents from his place, the sky was darkening, making Lauren think of wet city streets and detectives following dark strangers, when she registered a man with a dog walking on the side of the thruway.  You weren't supposed to walk there, which is why she noticed.  The man's frame backpack stood just over his head, and he already wore an army-green poncho against the threat of rain.  His yellow dog trotted next to him on an old leash.  Lauren noticed the man was dirty, but that he kept his dog away from the traffic, which was thoughtful.  She saw the man wore a red kerchief as a bandana to hold back his long, greasy hair.  The man's beard, and how fast she passed them, made it difficult to judge his age, but he stood tall and seemed to move easily.  The man and his dog would surely get soaked when the ominous clouds finally opened.

It was far too late to stop and let him walk up to the car--the thruway was 65 miles an hour--but Lauren found her mouth was dry and she was sitting up straighter.  She put on her turn signal and took the next exit.  Lauren couldn't believe herself when she made her way around the cloverleaf to re-enter the thruway on the other side, and essentially make a figure eight to come back around behind the scruffy man and his dog.  Lauren was about to pick up a hitchhiker.