Week 8

I haven’t had any problems as a woman traveling alone – in fact, it feels exciting and freeing and I would highly recommend it – but still, it gets lonely sometimes. I run into very few other solo women travelers. So you can guess how excited I was when I met Tomato Rodriguez at a Bed and Breakfast as I was traveling through Texas.

Tomato wasn’t just a woman traveling alone – she was on a motorcycle, on her own, traveling all the way from one end of the country to another. She was pretty much exactly the type of person you’d expect to do that, if I’m being honest. She was loud and crude and didn’t care what anyone thought. We hit it off right away, not because I’m loud or crude or because I don’t care what anyone else thinks – I’m not, and I do – but because there’s something about meeting another solo woman traveler that immediately breaks down barriers. It’s like we only had one thing in common and it was the only thing we could possibly need. And besides, she was very friendly and an excellent conversationalist. We talked for hours as we sat around at breakfast. She was off to visit her father, and she hadn’t seen him in years, and I couldn’t quite tell how she felt about him. Anyway, she was enjoying her trip. She’d been traveling with someone else, another woman, for a while, but her partner had left (it seemed like they hadn’t parted very amicably) and Tomato had kept right on going.

We exchanged contact information, but I doubt we’ll ever see each other again. That’s okay. It was so energizing to meet another woman traveling alone. It felt like I was meeting someone who spoke my language for the first time in months. I mean, I felt really renewed after we talked, and even if we never talk again, I’m glad I met her – we met at just the right time, and that was just what I needed to get through Texas and keep on traveling. Meeting another woman traveling alone made me so happy to be part of that odd little tribe.