Running on Empty (26 page)

The sheriff sized me up and then explained that folks in the country view things a little differently from how they do in the city.

“I'm a farm boy from Kersey, Colorado,” I informed him. “Our ‘country folks' don't shoot at other people for no reason.”

He was still reluctant to do anything about the incident.

About that time, the county sheriff showed up, and we told him we wanted to press charges. “Well,” he replied, “I'm not sure what I would charge him with.”

This was another one of those surreal exchanges where you can't figure out what the hell is really going on. What was it, though, that Mark Twain once said? “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Damn straight. We'd sure learned that over the last few days. “Because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.”

Ultimately, we drove to the sheriff's office and filled out a bunch of paperwork, and promised to come back to file a formal complaint in a few weeks' time, after I'd reached New York. It all made for another late night.

 

Meanwhile, my body was up to its old tricks. My feet still hurt, of course, and my left big toe had become infected. I'd even suffered some bouts of diarrhea, and I'd noticed that my muscles were beginning to shrink visibly. A few days after our encounter with the farmer, I felt and heard another loud
pop!
This time it was a blast from my own body, a noise coming from the side of my knee followed by excruciating pain. This was surely the end of the line for me. It was all I could do to walk like this, but when Dr. Paul examined me, he calmly informed me he could fix it. When he was done manipulating my leg, he advised that I ice and rest it, and all should be fine. So we did just that.

When I woke up from my nap, I realized my leg was nearly pain-free. Whenever something went wrong, no matter how serious, it seemed that Dr. Paul's expertise could always help. Later, I found out that I'd dislocated my fibula, and Paul had “relocated” it. Indeed, it seemed as if luck was always on our side. We'd overcome a lot of obstacles, but there was always someone nearby to help and give us what we needed. It was almost miraculous that we'd made it this far! And though I'd enjoyed finding those talismans along the way, I believed that through dedication and caring, we were making our own luck. When I was injured, Paul was there; when I had reached my emotional limits, Heather was there; when it was wet and miserable, Dave was there; when it was dangerous and dark, Brian was there. I reflected on the wonderful response we'd gotten from our friends, who were coming to be part of the crew just when we needed them most. Funny, as trying as aspects of this run had been, when we really needed something, it was always provided.

Friends, teammates, and athletic colleagues had come through for me: Back in Nevada, Phil and Kari Marchant had paid me a surprise visit, bringing me ice cream in the hot desert. In Iowa, Heather's mom and sister had driven down from Minnesota, leaving loads of wonderful homemade food. In Colorado, other visitors had included Roger's family, longtime friends Gary Kliewer, Deb Sensensey, and even Bud and Penny Smith, who were watching our dogs. In Illinois, Dr. Bob Haugh had driven in from Kentucky and run with me thirty-four miles through the night. Near Indiana, Chris Frost and Steve and Barb Shepard came to visit and run with me. In Ohio, Jean's cousin Craig brought his wife and her piping-hot blueberry cobbler.

Now, Alex Nement was on his way from Cleveland and had recruited his friend, Cole Hanley to help, too. Bob Becker was coming from Florida to help us in Pennsylvania, and Tom and Therese Triumph would crew all the way from Pennsylvania to New York. Just as he had done from the beginning of the run, Frank Giannino would continue to call and check on me. I could talk to Ray anytime I needed him, and he would listen to me; no matter what was going on, he would always tell me that I was going to let loose as I neared New York, that I was going to get through it and shine—this was my moment, he said, and it was exactly what I needed to hear. Elaine, Taylor, and Mace would meet us in Pennsylvania to crew, and Ali would be there in New York to see me, God willing, make it to the finish.

No matter how lonely I sometimes felt, never was I truly alone out there. All this adversity composed a simple refrain, one that applies to life as much as to running:
Keep going, one foot in front of the other, millions of times.
Face forward and take the next step. Don't flinch when the road or gets rough, you fall down, you miss a turn, or the bridge you planned to cross has collapsed. Do what you say you'll do, and don't let anything or anyone stop you. Deal with the obstacles as they come. Move on.
Keep going, no matter what, one foot in front of the other, millions of times.

—James Thurber

 

 

 

My wife understands adversity, perseverance, and the rewards of continuing even when you desperately want to give up. Heather had her own, deeply personal experiences with this long before we met. Trauma scarred her but it also shaped her character, tapped the depths of her strength, and made her acutely aware of how short and fragile life can be. Not too long after we started dating, she told me this story, something that had happened to her when she was a young volunteer with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Having arrived just one week earlier on Adak, one of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, about halfway between Russia and the United States, she set out with three other people on a boat to visit a neighboring island and move a field camp. Just as they were about to start setting up the camp at the new location, headquarters radioed to tell them that a storm was on its way and that they should return home before conditions got too severe. So they got on board for what should have been a forty-five-minute trip back to Adak, but soon after leaving shore, her four-person crew was slammed by the storm and became disoriented at sea. Snow fell, ruining visibility, and high waves broke over the boat. They dropped into troughs so deep that all around and above them loomed dark, threatening water.

The radio stopped working. So did the radar and depth finder.

After four hours in whiteout conditions, the
Kittiwake
flipped over, stem to stern. With little room to breathe in the small air space created by the cabin of the capsized boat, and no one else out in that storm to hear them scream for help, three agonized souls tried to keep their heads up. The captain had already disappeared from sight, alive or dead in the icy waters outside the cabin, no one knew.

Not long after that, one of the women in the cabin perished, and her body floated away, toes down, through one of the broken windows. Heather and one other crewmate worked their way closer to the bow, on top of the steering column and farther into the upside-down hull, desperately trying to keep the battering waves from drowning them. The water had already ripped off some of their clothes, leaving them exposed and vulnerable, especially whenever the water crashed in. They couldn't feel their feet.

Six hours later, Heather's friend died, despite her efforts to keep him talking, alert, alive. And then he, too, slipped through the windows of the overturned Boston Whaler.

Only Heather remained in the boat.

After seventeen hours in the Bering Sea, after eating waterlogged Triscuits and sipping juice from a Dinty Moore beef stew can to try to get some energy to warm up, after holding back tears for fear of dehydration, after struggling just to stay awake, much less alive, after pleading with God,
Please, let someone find me today—I can't survive another night,
blessed relief came. A stranger's head appeared around the wall of the cabin: a hallucination? an angel? the real thing?

He smiled at her and said, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Heather was rescued from the wreckage that freezing cold January day, spared her ultimate demise, though she did endure the incredible emotional pain of watching two of her colleagues succumb to hypothermia, then drown, and the physical pain as medics thawed her frostbitten feet. (The captain, who'd made his way out of the boat when it flipped, had gotten to shore.) She was twenty-three. When we met years later, I sensed in her a deep appreciation for life, a seriousness and sensitivity underneath her infectious laugh. There was more to this woman than her Midwestern accent, that was for sure. And when we shared our personal tragedies with each another, I understood why I'd been so attracted to her, not just physically but on some other, deeper level. There were things she understood, having been through this kind of experience—things she understood about herself, about me, and about what's important in this life.

Her past also helped her sympathize with my ups and downs as I ran across America. Nothing I've ever done compares to the night she spent in the Bering Sea, but analogies can be made. Winston Churchill once advised, “If you're going through hell, keep going.” If Heather had given up . . . I can't even go there. But she understands perseverance, and especially perseverance when it feels as if everything has been lost.

I needed her. As I neared Pennsylvania, the last big state of this run, I needed her more than ever.

 

Rain, sleet, and snow pelted me on day forty-six, October 28, as we left Canton, Ohio, and passed through Lisbon, East Palestine, and into Pennsylvania on various highways. That morning, I'd been dismayed; the map showed us that the next few days would include many hills, and maybe we'd have them all across the state. The route itself was discouraging, too. Except for the major interstates, the road structure looked like spaghetti, meaning that although we'd be going generally in an easterly direction, we'd also travel north, south, and even double back, heading west sometimes. Of course, I wanted to know where I was headed, but the obstacles were daunting.

Now, the infected blister on my toe was improving (thanks to antibiotics), but my calf muscles had been shrinking, and my back was starting to be an issue, owing to my tight hamstrings. I was dealing with a touch of diarrhea (also thanks to antibiotics) and some attendant chafing. Yep, my butt cheeks were burning, and I had to laugh about it all sometimes; this was yet another pain in the ass. It seemed that everything that could happen would happen. That much was par for the course; I'd expected physical discomfort when I'd committed to doing this run. Ray had counseled me to be prepared to be injured, sick, and otherwise inconvenienced by my own body, and he'd been right. So my approach was to consider this period as a life compressed: We'd take one thing at a time, fix or heal the problem, and go on. We'd try to mitigate the bad stuff and focus on the good stuff.