女生靠社交网络免费穿越美国

As part of an experiment by Audi, Lindsay Rule made it from Boston to San Francisco relying only on the kindness of strangers and the electronic networks that now tie us all together.

作为奥迪公司的一项实验，Lindsay Rule仅仅依靠陌生人的帮助、和将我们连在一起的网络，成功得从波士顿抵达旧金山。

Hitchhiking, especially as a woman, has never been the safest activity. But the rise of smartphones and social networks has made the prospect of sharing a car--or a house--with a stranger much more palatable. Add that to the fact that young adults are buying fewer cars than ever, and there’s a strong case for car companies to start digging into carsharing and other alternative revenue streams.

搭车旅行从来都不是一项安全的活动，尤其对女性来说。但是随着智能手机与社交网络的发展，与陌生人搭车甚至共享一所房子都成为了可能。加上越来越多的年轻人都不再买车，是时候让汽车公司开始发展共享租车业务和其他的赚钱渠道了。

As part of a partnership between Architizer and Audi’s Urban Future Initiative, which examines the convergence of mobility, architecture, and urban development, Rule was sent on an ambitious assignment: traveling from Boston to San Francisco in two weeks without spending any money (there was a $100 emergency fund). She succeeded.

Architizer与奥迪合作构建的城市未来倡议能够检验城市发展、机动性及城市架构是否全面。而作为倡议中的一部分，Rule得到了一项高难度的任务：在两周内，从波士顿出发前往旧金山，途中不得有任何金钱支出（有100美元的紧急基金）。她成功了。

I met up with Rule at her final destination: Audi’s Powell Street Promenade in downtown San Francisco. She was surprisingly exuberant for someone who spent the last 14 days coordinating free journeys Westward. How did she do it?

我在终点遇见了Rule：站在位于旧金山市中心的鲍威尔步行街上，她对于自己在过去的14天里做了一次免费的西部旅行感到异常兴奋。而她是如何做到的呢？

There were a handful of services that made the trip possible: Facebook, Craigslist, Ridejoy (a ridesharing service), and CouchSurfing. When Rule began her journey in Boston, she didn’t know what to do--how could she start organizing the trip without WiFi? So she spent a little bit of her emergency cash on a cheap bus ticket to New York City that came with WiFi and a power outlet. Rule ended up hitching a ride with a photographer that she found on Craigslist all the way to Chicago, where she used Facebook to find a friend’s couch on which to crash. Soon Rule discovered a woman on Craigslist who was giving away a free bus ticket to Madison, Wisconsin--Rule accepted it and continued her journey, staying in Wisconsin with a couchsurfer who later drove her to Minneapolis.

一系列的服务设施让这次旅行成为可能：Facebook, Craigslist（资讯黄页网站）, Ridejoy（自行车共享服务网站）以及CouchSurfing（沙发客网站）。当Rule在波士顿准备出发时，她完全不知道自己该做什么——她该如何在没有WiFi的情况下组织行程？所以她用了紧急基金里的一点钱买了一张到纽约市的车票。车上有WiFi，还有插座。在去芝加哥的路上，她在Craigslist克雷格列表网上找到了一位愿意让她搭车的摄影师。在那里，她还通过Facebook找到了愿意让她睡一晚的朋友。之后Rule又在Craigslist上遇到一位想要免费出让一张去威斯康星州麦迪逊市的车票，Rule得到了这张车票并继续她的旅程。在威斯康星州里，她遇到了一位沙发客，最终载着她抵达明尼阿波里斯市。

Rule’s trip across the country continued like that--completely unplanned, made possible entirely by the kindness of strangers, including an entire CouchSurfing community in Missoula, Montana called Orange Acres. "This would have been impossible without social media," she explains. And yet, she never realized before the trip how vast this digital sharing network really was. "I had confidence in it. I’d do it again," she says.

Rule的全国旅行完全没有任何计划，全部通过陌生人友善的帮助完成，其中还有在蒙塔纳州米苏拉市的一整个沙发客社团。“如果没有社交网络，这一切都是不可能的。”她解释道。而在此之前，她还没有意识到数字网络究竟有多广大。“我对此很有信心，我会再来一次。” 她说。

Audi, for its part, realizes the significant of how easy it’s becoming to travel in the U.S. without owning a car. "Mobility in cities is getting more and more relevant to us," says Dominik Stampfl of the Audi Urban Future Initiative. "In the future, we’ll need more than cars."

而对于奥迪来说，他们意识到了做一次环美旅游是多么容易，即使自己没有车。“城市中的交通设施对于我们来说越来越重要了，”奥迪城市未来倡议的Dominik Stampfl说。“在未来，我们需要的不仅仅是车辆。”