Staying Alive
Issue #10
Lucky and me the morning after our close call.
Running — movement, in general — is a great metaphor for life. It’s full of ups and downs, struggles, resurrections, trials and triumphs.
And, as was the case exactly five years ago, coming face to face with the unexpected.
It happened in Nebraska, near the half-way point of my run across America. There was much to learn about the state that surprised me: It’s almost 400 miles wide and it would take me 13 days to cross on foot. Wind farms generate over 30 percent of the state’s energy. And, Kool-Aid was invented here in 1927. Who knew?
On day three in Nebraska, I was set to meet Chris, my crew chief, and Lucky, my canine soulmate, at the end of my afternoon run, in the town of Sedan. As always, they would be waiting for me at our assigned spot, in the RV, where I would change, shower and go through my daily recovery routine.
As I approached Sedan’s outskirts, I saw that it was less town and more an industrialized complex of sorts, with towering silos and a maze of railway tracks that lead to loading docks. Enormous trucks were coming and going along the dirt road I was on, kicking up huge clouds of dust and grit.
If you can picture one of those outer rim territories from Star Wars - sparsely populated, rugged, frontier planets where pirates, enslavers and marauders lived in a parched wasteland — then you get the picture. Sedan was definitely from another galaxy.
The outpost outside Sedan, Nebraska, the industrial complex a quarter mile from the trailer.
About a quarter of a mile down the road, I spotted the RV. As I got closer, I saw that Chris had parked in the driveway of an abandoned house. So, I looked around to see if there might be someone to ask for permission to stay overnight.
A nondescript white van was parked nearby and next to it, what looked like a construction supervisor's trailer. I walked over. There was a keypad near the door handle, but nothing else - no signage, no business name or construction permits. I knocked and waited. No answer.
So I gently opened the door, hoping to find the construction foreman. Instead, I saw two youngish men, one clean-shaven, the other with a heavy stubble, and both wearing T-shirts and jeans.
One man was seated at a table on which were pills, scales, containers, and an assortment of paraphernalia.
The other guy was rummaging through plastic boxes and packages stacked on portable shelving. Neon lights flickered overhead.
Had I walked into freakin’ Breaking Bad?
Only this was no TV set. I was clearly in a very dangerous situation!
Both men turned around and spotted me: a sweaty, white guy wearing a cowboy hat and running vest, with reddish-brown hair, freckles and an untidy beard.
With angry, panicked eyes, the man at the table stood up, knocking his chair over behind him. He looked at his partner, then back at me.
"What the f**k are you doing here? You shouldn't be here!" he yelled.
His partner lurched in my direction. He was only six feet away, so I knew I had to act fast. My heart was thumping. Without breaking eye contact, I started backing out of the door, holding my hands up in the air, in surrender.
I mumbled incoherently about running through town and looking for a place to park, thanking him - WTF? - then quickly, slammed the door shut right before he reached me.
I turned and ran.
What if they had guns?
I kept running, adrenaline propelling me at full tilt down the road until I got to the rig. I jumped in, red faced and shaken.
"What happened?" Chris asked, clearly concerned. Lucky looked up, alert.
"There's a situation going on down the road," I said, taking a deep breath in and exhaling slowly but still panting hard.
“What situation?”
I told Chris what I had seen.
"Yikes, sounds like a pill den! We're getting out of here ASAP!" said Chris.
"Look...maybe...I mean, I don't know for sure. Those things could have been agricultural seeds or something," I said, sweat pouring down my face and neck.
"Shut the f**k up, Dave. We’re leaving NOW!”
In a matter of minutes, we broke down the rig and sped off to the nearby town of Davenport for the night. We were rattled but enormously relieved that our journey didn't end Breaking Bad-style in Sedan, Nebraska.
That was definitely not Kool-Aid being produced in the shed.
The trailer outside Sedan, Nebraska, photographed at 5:07am on July 25, 2021, the morning after, before I restarted my run.
I laugh about the incident now, of course, but it reinforces why I run and why I want to continue to move through the world for as long as possible.
We’ve become so conditioned to crave certainty in our lives that we demand information at all times, with our devices creating the expectation that answers are always readily available to us.
But, in reality, none of us have perfect information. By putting myself in a new place, a new experience, something unquantifiable, I am reminded that uncertainty is also part of the human condition. It forces me to live in the now. And I feel alive.
So, I’ll keep lunging into the unknown. Because that’s where magic, surprise and delight often live.
Hope you’ll join me.
Cheers,
David.
