Month: April 2018

Massive update!

So on the 19th (Day 10) I left Austin, TX, westward bound; I headed up over the hills and through the scrublands of west Texas. It’s an absolutely desolate place. Not aided by the fact that the endless barren fields and desert meant huge clouds of dust and sudden powerful gusts of wind. The objective for the day was San Angelo State Park in San Angelo, TX. After a paltry 200 miles and three and a half hours I arrived in town and not wanting to set up camp yet at the park I found the only open bar town, “The Penny Taphouse”. Does this blog have a theme yet…? At 3 in the afternoon the place a was empty except for one gentleman at the bar and the bartender. As it turns out the bartender was born and raised in Baltimore and had ended up in San Angelo for school. She liked the town enough that she decided to stay and co-owns this bar and another in town….What a small world. The other person in the bar was an Army Captain who was an EOD Training Specialist, he was waiting to catch his flight out of town to begin a year long deployment in Honduras. Very interesting guy, grew up in a small town in west-texas; his wife and children are going to live in Philadelphia with his wife’s parents while he’s on deployment. I think the starkest thing he said to me is how his perspective on the world has changed and how much Texas has changed since he grew up there. His over-arching comment was that he is continually surprised at how his higher education degree(s) have liberalized him AND the fact that whenever he visits home in Texas; just how much political ideologies have changed. “It seems like every time I come home, people are more and more accepting of change”. As I work backwards through these blogs, there are some other very interesting observations about Texas politics. After this gentleman left for his flight I ended up talking to four guys who came in after their respective shifts at the local hospital as HVAC mechanics. They had all worked construction jobs before their jobs at the hospital. Most of them had been there their entire lives, and had rarely left town. I asked them why they had decided to stay here and what their favorite thing about San Angelo. Two of them contemplated the question seriously and came back with essentially the same answer of; “Well….You’re born here and you just sort of wake up one day and realize you’re an old man.” Certainly food for thought. eventually checked out of the bar after a few hours. Camped in a lovely spot at San Angelo State Park for the night.

 

I’m writing this morning from Solid Grounds Coffee shop in Littleton, CO. Staying with an old college friend up the street in Englewood. Nothing super remarkable about the area, only that you can see the mountains from pretty much everywhere. Today is a major recovery day after 660 miles of driving from Alamogordo, NM, through Albuquerque, with a stop in Colorado Springs, on the way to Denver, CO on Saturday. I would have been a victim of road-daze had it not been for the endless parade of beautiful vistas on this drive. Took me roughly 10 hours to complete, and that didn’t include the stop outside of Albuquerque to see the Pueblo Petroglyphs. (Photos to come)

I had also elected to go snowboarding for the first time in roughly two years at LoveLand Ski Park about an hour outside of Denver proper. I think I’ve finally killed my desire to snowboard, I haven’t felt this beat-up since…I can’t remember when. They had several runs closed that would have been appropriate for my skill level, ended up going down blues (medium difficulty) and getting my butt kicked. Knees, hip, and legs are disappointed in my decisions today. Ooof…Today’s plans include; complaining about sore muscles, catching up on writing, editing photos, lunch with an old friend, a trip to REI, and maybe a hike later with my host.

Wish me luck…

Today was a moderate speed-run from Kansas City, MO down to Oklahoma City, OK.

The day started with a run at 7:30AM with snow coming down, the wind gusting so hard I was getting blown around, and without windchill…It was 28 degrees. A little bit of a rough start to the morning because of the cold, but I managed to pack in 3 miles before I started losing feeling in various extremities…Made it out to a WWI memorial (cold), took a selfie, and made it home as fast as I possibly could. 

On my departure from the city I was struck with how beaten down and desolate the city looked. Even after living in Baltimore for nearly 10 years, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a city that looked so broken and abandoned. It was a little sad, but there do appear to be efforts to revive Kansas city. They just haven’t gotten around to the “knocking everything down” phase that Baltimore is now engaging in. There also appear to be a number of the “Seattle” style apartment buildings going up in other parts of down, but the picture below don’t do justice to the endless blocks of abandoned homes/structures. Very eye opening; not sure you could have found a better example of a rust-belt  town crumbling to bits as a result of changing economic times. Very sad.

I also stopped at the Truman Presidential Library before leaving Kansas City. He was an interesting man and an effective leader who was thrust into inconceivable circumstances by history. His Presidency was defined by the decisions of his predecessor (FDR) and the beginning of the Cold War. I made it to Oklahoma City around 7:30 PM, stayed in a “Best Western Plus”

The night ended a small taphouse downtown in the “Bricktown” neighborhood. Enjoyable dinner, some good local beers. Boy-oh-boy was I tired, slept well that night.

Well over a week behind now….Oops…Onto the next one!

I promise I’m trying to get this blog back up to speed. Just having too much fun I guess….I left family in St. Louis on Saturday morning, it was really a good experience connecting with family I hadn’t seen in years and getting to know them better. There is value in having others to commiserate about family dynamics with; positive or negative.

I wound up downtown at the City Museum, perhaps one of the most fantastical places I’ve been in years. It was wildly crowded with overly exuberant children, and I honestly can’t blame them. Even at 28 the place put a huge smile on my face. I haven’t encountered many places that make your imagination soar in the same way. From a five story tall spiral slide,  multiple jet airplanes suspended in the air, and metal tunnels to crawl through….It’s hard to describe, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. The basic premise of City Museum was to preserve some of the architectural landmarks of St. Louis for posterity and over the years it’s evolved into a playground for adults and children alike.

This was followed up by an obligatory visit to the Annheuser-Busch plant in St. Louis. Excellent visit, only had to drink a small glass of Bud Light. They had Goose Island on tap in the tasting room. I survived…Had a quick lunch at an excellent BBQ place across the street. Little joint across the street from the brewery house in an old police station really hit the spot. Staff was friendly and food was good. If you’re ever in St. Louis, check out the Capitalist Pig.

 

 

 

 

 

After the brewery it was time to hit the road. I made it to Kansas City, M.O. by about 7 PM. I was lucky enough to procure the last bed in the only hostel in KC. Honeycomb Hostel. This is where it gets interesting. While reading the reviews of this place online (on the way there) there was a review that accused the place of being a human trafficking depot, at this point in the evening it was my only option. So onwards we go. Short version of the story, I asked the owner Elsa about the review and she freaked out. Apparently she’s been hosting some students from the Philippines for a couple months now and this person(online reviewer) was annoyed that there were young people present in the hostel.  I’d only been there an hour at this point.

One of the other guests (Dave?) was extraordinarily friendly, which is fine. He was apparently in town for “business” which turned into him launching into a full blooded sales pitch about how his business makes people feel, and how great his company is, and how it helps people! Notice he hasn’t said what it is yet…Eventually this discussion moves to the dining room where the hostel’s owner is and he launches in on the same sales pitch to her and she calls him out hard and he starts showing her the “product”. Oh if you could only feel the awkward tension in the room…There were seven people in that room and I’m certain he was the only one who didn’t know that he was  at the very least part of a poorly designed MLM company and at the worst a Ponzi Scheme style “travel deals club” organization. (worldventures.com, dreamtrips.com)  It was a little depressing. He was showing us videos of the “Quarterly Marketing Event” he was attending in KC, it wreaked of every MLM organizations “pump-up” event I’ve ever seen. Eventually he grew tired of the hostel owner telling him to “Stop trying to sell me this obvious shit“; proceeded to have a massive meltdown in the living room of the hostel. It was beautifully awkward. I felt a little sorry for him, but not enough to defuse the situation.

Later in the evening I made good friends with another guest at the hostel who was visiting the owner. She was a long distance runner (100 miler trail races), skydiver, triathlete, electrical engineer, and Phd candidate. I asked her when she slept and she very seriously said that she doesn’t sleep. I made it until about 12:30 in the evening with the remaining hostelers before I crashed. Overall a very enjoyable crowd, glad I stopped in.

 

Day 6: 259.4 Miles

Trip Total: 1430.8 Miles,

Unfortunately this is being posted a few days behind. I suspect there will be a time delay on most of these post. Oooops..

Today’s run was 289.8 miles. Roughly 7.5% of my journey…Ooof. I am reminded by my body that I have had numerous back problems and they’re always happyto come back if I let them. Time will have to be made to get out and stretch on this journey.

 

 

 

My driving today ended in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the home of my Great Aunt Suz. (Pictured Below) In my 28 years I’m not sure that I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet her.

(Edit: We actually met 10 years ago.) We had much to discuss and to no surprise most of it centered around the Scribner Family and the history thereof. We are definitely related. Unfortunately I’m writing this three days after the fact, so I’m going to try and cut it short this time and catch up on the last two days before I get too behind on this thing.

Tomorrow (April 9th) was supposed to be the start of my month and a half long road trip across the country, but the universe had other ideas. At the going away party my coworkers from Towson had thrown me at Michael’s Cafe in Timonium, a vest was liberated from my possession at some point in the night. Aside from my over indulgence in the finer distilled substances of this world, the vest was never more than 10′ away from me the entire night. I just don’t understand how someone “disappeared” it so quickly.

The unfortunate part of the story that arrives next(other than the loss of the relatively new Coleman vest) was that in that vest were my wallet and a backup smart phone. What a wrench to have thrown into the works. I’m sure there is a sage lesson in this somewhere, but right now I’m (literally) grasping at my obligatory millennial avocado toast attempting to figure out what I’m supposed to get out of this experience. Perhaps it’s for the best that this happened now, and not 1,500 miles into the road trip where it would be nearly impossible for me to get things back together.  One could also interpret this as a lesson in patience and forgiveness. Patience for yourself to allow for mistakes to happen and forgiveness to know that you can’t always do everything perfectly. As with many things millennial, we look (read: have to and should) for the positive things in every day events; sometimes it’s just harder.

Now, back to my avocado toast…