INTERVIEWS

ADVENTURES OF A CONTINENTAL DRIFTER

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2005
By Joe Holleman

Five Questions for author Elliott Hester
We've all fantasized about quitting our job, selling our stuff and hopping on an ocean freighter to seek adventure. It's nice to think about, isn't it?

Three years ago, Elliott Hester did it.

Hester, a 47-year-old Chicago native, quit his flight attendant job after 20 years, sold his car, condo and other worldly possessions and began trotting the globe with not much more than a duffel bag and a laptop computer.

Today, still without a permanent address, Hester is a best-selling author and award-winning travel writer.

His first book, "Plane Insanity," came out in 2002 and chronicled his years as a flight attendant. Then, he went on the road and carved out his reporting career, writing articles for newspapers, magazines and Web sites.

He is still on the road, touting his latest effort: "Adventures of a Continental Drifter" (St. Martin's Press, $23.95, 301 pages), a collection of short stories about his travels. It carries the Hunter Thompson-esque subtitle of "an around-the-world-excursion into weirdness, danger, lust and the perils of street food."

Hester will be in St. Louis on Thursday for a book signing.

He said a professor gave him advice that shaped his life.

"First, figure out what kind of lifestyle you want to live. Then find a profession that can give that to you," he said. "Don't do it the other way around. That's how I ended up as a flight attendant."

Before he could hang up his cell phone, we managed to ask Hester a few more questions:

Q: Did you ever become fearful at any point in the process of liquidating your stuff and hitting the road?
A: No, I never had a second thought about it. As a flight attendant, when you first start, you fly stand-by. So, you'd get a call saying you were leaving for Paris in an hour and 45 minutes. And then you had no idea where you'd end up from there. I found it very easy after that to lead a transient life.

Q: What is your favorite place in the world?
A: That's a tough question, but I'd have to say Paris. It has everything you could imagine. The collection of people and cultures is unlike any city in the world. It has the best food - I mean it has like 30 or 40 different types of African food - and the entertainment is amazing. The only problem with Paris is that it's expensive. I got a Coca-Cola and a glass of ice there, and it cost $6.50.

Q: What place would you avoid at any cost?
A: That's easy - Djakarta, Indonesia. It is the single most polluted city on the face of the earth. I stayed in a nice hotel as a matter of fact, about a mile away from the central business district. And I could never see it from my window, it was so completely immersed in smog. And after walking around the city, when I came back to my hotel room, I spit up black stuff. It was awful.

Q: Do you ever thing you'd like to have a home and stay in one place?
A: No, I dream of frequent flyer miles. That's my American Dream. I simply cannot imagine a life without traveling, it just doesn't compute with me. I enjoy leaving one destination, no matter how much I like it, to go somewhere I haven't been before, to hear a different language or taste different food.

Q: What is the best traveling tip you can offer?
A: Don't micro-manage your trip or vacation. If you try to schedule every minute and activity, something is going to go wrong - count on it - and you will be miserable. You have to go with the flow.

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