Author Description

A DAY BY DAY CHRONICLE OF A YOUNG MAN'S ADVENTURE AND AN OLD MAN'S MEMORY... As a child, Jerry Shilan(ski) discovered that he suffered from an incurable disease. Before he was six years old, he knew he had a real need to find out what was on the other side of the hill, - and around every bend. He also wanted to know who put it there - and why. Someone told him he had a bad case of WANDERLUST, and the only way to cure it was to travel. Fate turned him onto Richard Halliburton books and National Geographic Magazines. As soon he was able, he took to the road on a life long journey to see as much of the world as possible. The first leg of this 78 year old's trek was a solo fifteen day hitch-hiking trip across the continent to the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. It was the defining experience of his life and in these pages he recounts the sights that he saw and the people he met on this extraordinary adventure that set the tone for a lifetime of Wandering and Wondering about the world.This book, fifty years in the making, is part memoir, part travelogue, and part geography and history lesson. Poignant profiles of the people he encountered along the way move the story through ten states and nearly 3,000 miles. The book is also sprinkled with trivia, recollections, reflections, philosophical musing, and self analyzation. Dialogue between the author and his traveling companions is often amusing and enlightening. WANDERLUST is an uplifting snap shot of life as it was fifty plus years ago and how traveling and meeting an array of people propelled a young man into a life well lived.... "I spent $24 on the necessities of life, $25 on colored film, and the longest I waited for a ride was one hour and five minutes. It was a different time" - Jerry Shilan(ski)