Author's Hitchhiking Bio

Kenneth Lobb was born in 1954 in Plainfield, New Jersey.  At age ten the family moved to rural Hunterdon County, the hamlet of Whitehouse Station.  As a teenager he developed a wanderlust for travel, mostly through a love of maps, riding trains, and hiking trails.

By the time he got to 9th grade, with both parents busy, Ken regularly took to the road with his thumb.  This was the late 1960's, when hitchhiking was still an accepted—though daring—form of transportation.  He hitchhiked mostly to school and back. But with the support of a friend, thumbed to the Jersey Shore, to New York, and throughout Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia.

Eventually the two developed the idea of a grand long-distance venture.  It would last 40 days and 40 nights, going from New Jersey to California and back.  Their budget was four dollars a day.  They set out in late June, 1971, when both of them were 17 years old, on summer vacation between junior and senior year in high school.

We Picked Up is the story of that trip.

Ken estimates he hitchhiked about 25,000 miles in the United States between 1967 and 1985.  His experiences helped to form his personality and to understand the soul of America.  He still loves any kind of travel, whether by car, rail, bus, plane, boat, bicycle, or foot.  He takes his annual vacation in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

After a career as a journalist and in the telecommunications industry, Ken became an ordained minister in 2010.  He serves in the Reformed Church in America (RCA) in Annandale, New Jersey.  He believes in the connected soul and advocates spiritual wholeness.  He likes to sing and often joins the choir, and sometimes plays the guitar.

Ken and his wife, Wonza, live in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.