Race Report: The Type 1 Diabetes Run Across America

In memory of Rebecca Gartrell, who would likely have set a new Fastest Known Time across Texas.

Race reports serve several purposes: they give a feel for what it was like to be there and do the thing in question. They contain time-and-location-stamped photos and selfies important as evidence of FKTs (fastest known time on a specific route, maintained by FastestKnownTime.com) and are usually supported by other forms of evidence from live GPS trackers and GPS watch workouts. Together, they document a level of detail about road conditions, weather, or encounters that would be extremely difficult to falsify.

They also leave a record for others contemplating similar efforts that can help aid their own planning. I know that for my own runs, Leslie and I searched out all the race reports we could find from transconners, the more detailed the better.

Partly because of the above, a lot of the following may read a little like: “I went here. I did that. I ate a sandwich. I finished at 6:00 PM.” I apologize in advance if that puts you to sleep.

If you’re still reading, though, please enjoy! It’s harder to get a much closer look at the day-to-day experience of running across the USA.

2/1/2020: Newport Beach and the Pacific Ocean to Corona CA

I began the #T1Determined Type 1 Diabetes Run Across America on February 1st, 2020, at the beach at the end of 47th Street, at 6 AM.

My wife Leslie and I had already been in San Diego for about a week, where we had set up “home base.” I did a TV interview with KUSI / Good Morning San Diego which gave me a great opportunity to share my three goals for the run:

• Raise awareness of issues faced by people living with Type 1 Diabetes, including the special challenges to managing blood sugars while being physically active.

• To semi-officially run across the United States, according to the USA Crossers’ “two wet feet rule”: actually putting a foot in the water of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

• To become the first person to run from Disneyland to Disneyworld and set the FKT for that distance. Unfortunately, Guinness doesn’t consider those two endpoints significant enough to constitute a world record. Crazy, right?

Tandem Diabetes Care, who makes my insulin pump, and Dexcom, who makes my continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) had invited us to tour their factories, so we started the week leading into the run by meeting up with the folks who actually help keep me and hundreds of thousands of other people with Type 1 alive and out of the ER. As we left Tandem, community outreach manager Blair Ryan gave me a wonderful box full of notes written by some of Tandem’s Type 1 employees and other Type 1s, designated to be opened at specific points along the way.

Sara Hall and her Type 1 diabetic photographer from the Newport Beach Independent had come out to the 47th Street beach with me the afternoon of January 31st, when we relocated our headquarters to Newport Beach (so I could test-run the Santa Ana River trail and Power Line Road east of Palm Springs), in order to get some daylight shots for the paper in case the starting line photos didn’t turn out. That’s their article in the photos, and you can read it here.

I did a phone interview with the Orange County Register’s Disneyland reporter and you can read the article here.

My hometown magazine, Plano Magazine, also did an article about the run that ran January 31st, 2020.

Outside of raising awareness of issues faced by people living with type 1 diabetes, I had one other logistical objective for the run that I hoped our carefully planned route would help me achieve: to stay off the Interstates unless that was the only way to get from point A to point B (and even then, limit any such time to less than a mile), and stay off illegal or private roads in general so if any records were set, they’d be valid for someone else to attempt.

I wanted to make sure I documented the run thoroughly, so I carried with me a live satellite tracking beacon (a Garmin InReach), two GPS watches: a Suunto 9 Baro with extended battery life, plus a Suunto Ambit 3 that was a bit more accurate counting mileage but had known problems with refusing to record runs longer than 1000 kilometers; and my cell phone, which I hoped would record the time and location of abundant selfies I took next to unique landmarks along the way as I ran.

At the starting line, I was joined by USA Crosser Thomas Curran, who met us at the convenience store near Chronic Tacos a few blocks away and handed me a “lucky” $5 bill signed by previous USA crossers: for emergencies, or if you believe in luck, to prevent them. I ceremoniously signed it in anticipation of handing it off to the next crosser after me. The photographer from the Newport Beach Independent came out to get some starting line photos as well.

I was also joined by fellow type 1 ultra runner Jerry Nairn. Jerry was one of the people who had written some notes to me to be opened somewhere along the way. I discovered Jerry’s note when we reached DFW, and it warmed my heart and reminded me of that first day.

We targeted a 6 AM start, about 45 minutes before sunrise, so I could finish the day in Corona before sunset. It was very windy and cold on the beach at that hour. I had dressed for running, so I was shivering when the photographer did the starting line photos for his newspaper. We didn’t have adequate lighting for the starting line shot, and my wife Leslie and others improvised by turning the cell phone flashlights on. In the end, the starting line photos didn’t turn out.

Right at 6 AM, I scurried down to the water’s edge wearing my sand gaiters, as I didn’t want beach sand to be the reason I got blisters on the very first day, put a toe in the water, and with not much more ceremony than that, I was literally off and running.

Jerry ran with me about 10 miles until just before Disneyland. That’s Jerry in the photo above, somewhere along Superior / CA-55, a little before we turned onto Harbor Boulevard.

I reached Disneyland at 9:40 AM, just over 14 miles from my starting point, and my wife Leslie took a photo of me with our Disney type 1 mascot, Coco the Monkey, in the hotel parking lot across the street, where we had reserved a spot in advance so we could celebrate the moment.

Most of the remaining day was spent getting out of the congested area near the Los Angeles suburbs, which took a little doing for me as a runner. The biggest challenge on day 1 was finding a way to get past CA-93, a super-busy freeway that might have technically been legal to run on but which would have been suicidal or just crazy, without being too far from the van, which had most of our emergency medical supplies, including glucagon, spare infusers, insulin, CGM sensors, and glucose shots.

I found a paved bike trail, the Santa Ana River Trail, that ran from Yorba Linda parallel to La Palma Avenue. I stayed on La Palma until the sidewalk ran out, in order for Leslie to be able to spot me, then got back onto the trail just past a gas station approaching the turn onto Gypsum Canyon Road and the bridge over the Santa Ana River, since there was a barrier blocking access to the trail for the remaining distance to the turn. The trail descended and ducked under Gypsum Canyon Road and continued for a few miles parallel to CA-93, a busy freeway I wanted to avoid. We rejoined each other at the far end of the trail at Green River Road.

What I remember about the day was that my feet were fresh, I felt good, and the day seemed short. I made it to the gas station at Green River and Dominguez Ranch Road that marked my entry into Corona just before sunset, a total of around 36 miles.

2/2/2020: Corona to El Casco CA (Redlands & San Timoteo Canyon Rd)

The second day was a little more challenging that I had expected. I ran along 6th Street, then Magnolia, for a good portion of it, with a couple turns just east of Home Gardens to avoid a dangerous overpass. That’s where I ran into my “instant friend” in the picture above, in Corona around 11:15 AM. He was a fellow runner who had heard about my USA run to raise type 1 diabetes awareness. His sister has Type 1.

I no longer had the chilly wind from the beach, and even in February, the California sun just keeps coming. It was uphill into Riverside, and not long after turning onto Arlington / Chicago Avenue, I remember stopping on a little neighborhood pull-out just south of Andulka Park to meet with a lady who Leslie had been in contact with. By then, I was sweating profusely ad wishing I’d worn my desert running shirt.

Somewhere around the turn for Central, I ran into two parents with their daughter, who was selling Girl Scout cookies. I paid for a whole box and ate two cookies. They were delicious. That put me in a much better mood.

One thing I’ve learned is that you don’t pass up good opportunities to sit down for a minute or two. Somewhere along Central I found a discarded chair, and feeling like I deserved it, sat down–carefully. You can see how dodgy the chair looks in the photo above.

At Sycamore Canyon Road, I turned and followed the frontage, which kept switching from decent to weed-covered, until I got to my left turn at the Jack-in-the-Box at Box Spring / Ironwood Road.

Given its proximity to Los Angeles, I was surprised at how rural things got after that. The last photo above is of a bit of farmland along Ironwood before I came to the turn at Redlands Road.

The day wore on, and before long, I was starting to run out of sunlight. I ran fast along Redlands Road through Moonlight Rim. The shoulder came and went and then never came back, and the road got rather busy, so I adopted the habit of running when there were gaps in traffic, then stepping quickly off into the weeds when I had to.

I reached some kind of outbuilding just before the road bent slightly east toward San Timoteo Canyon Road and checked my remaining miles for the day. It was touch and go and very narrow or absent shoulders through the narrow canyon road just before San Timoteo Canyon Road. At one point, I’m pretty sure I lost GPS on all three of my trackers, because both of my watches reported a lost signal and my live tracker shows a gap. But there was nothing much I could do about it, and fiddling with electronics on a 1-2 ft. shoulder on a busy road just before sunset seemed like a horrible idea. I learned later that signal echoes and drop-outs are fairly common in canyons depending on how narrow they are.

When I emerged from the canyon it was mostly downhill and a wide shoulder. I reached the intersection with San Timoteo Canyon Road at last light.

2/3/2020: El Casco to Palm Springs CA

The early morning hours heading down San Timoteo Canyon Road toward Beaumont, Banning, and Palm Springs were a mixed blessing. February 3rd was one of the coldest days in the early part of the run, and I had doubled up my winter gloves to keep my hands, which are subject to Reynaud’s, from becoming painfully cold.

Despite the fact that it was a Monday, and around dawn, there wasn’t much traffic on the road. The road ran parallel to a railroad for a while. It was quiet, apart from a road crew that had set up near where a slight S-curve in the road crossed the railroad. Before I knew it, I was at Fisherman’s Retreat and the sun was coming up.

The sandy, off-and-on shoulder of San Timoteo Canyon Road eventually gave way to Oak Valley Parkway, a wider road with better shoulders, which still ran through a fairly rural area.

I ran along Oak Valley Parkway until it emerged in a more developed area and T’d onto Highland Springs Road in Beaumont. There, the road was under construction and the easternmost lane was blocked off with cones and trucks. I ran along that area until I felt I was becoming a traffic hazard. Eventually, I was forced to run in the grassy area on the east side of the street, which was absolutely full of cockleburs. By the time I reached the Walgreens at 6th / Ramsey, I had close to 20 burs stuck in my insteps, shoelaces, and even the soles of my shoes. I sat down on the curb and picked them out before turning onto Ramsey and continuing.

My running was relatively uneventful after that. I met Leslie and the van at the gas station at Hargrave before setting off on the next segment of the run, a section I hadn’t been entirely sure would work even after scouting it upon our arrival in Newport Beach.

Getting out of the Los Angeles basin on foot is harder than it looks. There are really only a few ways out.

• One is to run local roads or the I-10 frontage road until you reach Haugen-Lehmann near the Indian Casino and surrounding shopping, then get on the north side of the Interstate to take Tamarack and some small roads until you reach a section of sandy, non-vehicle-friendly land with windmills. You cross that for a mile or so and come out on a utility road that joins CA-62. From there, some transconners take CA-62 north for a while until they reach a hill called the Morongo Grade. The shoulder on Morongo Grade is very narrow, perhaps 2 feet at most, and it’s next to a busy multi-lane highway that heads toward 29 Palms.
• Another way is to take mountain roads south of Banning toward Ribbonwoods and Palm Desert, which are prone to having narrow or nonexistent shoulder. That route is perhaps the longest one, which prolongs the risk of getting hit by a vehicle.
• The third way is to run parallel to I-10 on the south side for as long as you can, get to CA-111, and head into Palm Springs. That’s the route I took. It’s relatively short, remarkably quiet, and the only disadvantage is that once you’re in Palm Springs, there isn’t much beyond Coachella but desert. For a runner with a van, that’s not as challenging as it looks and there are a few places to stop, just not many.

I crossed south on Hargrave to just before the Banning Airport. There’s a short paved road next to the airport that runs parallel to railroad tracks. That road dead-ends, but there are a few safe places to cross the railroad tracks, and after maybe a mile or so of stepping gingerly over the large rocks that make up the rail bed, you emerge onto a long-neglected road called Johnson. That’s Johnson in the pictures above with the mature weeds growing through the asphalt.

I followed Johnson past the back side of the inspection state to where it kind of unofficially dumps out onto a roundabout. From there, I took Main St. through Cabazon and Mons until the road ran out.

There’s a short section, perhaps a quarter mile, where the safest and only way for a runner to get to CA-111 is the wide right shoulder of I-10. Technically one could run the left shoulder after exiting Tamarack, but not only would that require running shifting sands on the top of a hill, but you’d still have to be on the interstate, for longer, and crossing a long bridge across the highway to exit onto CA-111.

This is why I say it’s hard to find a safe way out of the LA basin. I took the safest one available, and after not long, I was on the wide shoulder of CA-11 and headed toward Palm Springs (that’s it in the fourth picture above).

It was on the shoulder of CA-111 that I ran across a guy who had for years been collecting recyclables and exchanging them for the few pennies value they had, then had taken the money he saved and bought bicycles for over 100 kids. This was one of the first encounters on my USA run that I had with people out on the road doing good in the world.

Somewhere in Banning I dropped an entire bottle of glucose test strips on the ground. Things like that can put you in a funk for a while on these long runs, so I tried to remind myself it wasn’t really a bad day.

Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon I ran into fellow Type 1 diabetic Matt Kearney, who is a firefighter with the Palm Springs Fire Department. Something you might not know is that it is very, very difficult with type 1 to obtain and hold a job as a first responder. Many towns feel a bit gun-shy about having someone in a lifesaving job whose own life might be endangered by a low blood sugar. So actually working in such a job is a sign not just that Matt’s in pretty tight control, but that people with Type 1 can do pretty much anything if they’re careful, meticulous, and determined enough.

I felt instant brotherhood with Matt.

Just before sunset, I reached the gas station that marked my entry into Palm Springs, feeling pretty good about the world. I took one last photo at sunset, from our hotel, because with the sunset and palm trees, it reminded me of the Eagles’ Hotel California. The icing on the cake was testing my sugar once we were in the hotel room and finding it to be 94 mg/dl, which is very close to normal, despite a stressful day of sucking down calories and trying not to get struck by cars.

2/4/2020: Palm Springs to Coachella CA

From the gas station at the edge of town in Palm Springs, I ran along 111 until I reached downtown, and turned onto Vista Chino. Around 10 AM, I was surprised by the loud growl of a diesel engine behind me and a couple of short, friendly honks. My friend Matt had somehow managed to give me a fire engine escort through Palm Springs!

I cannot tell you what an uplifting moment that was for me. Some of my transconner friends who are first responders or military types occasionally get this kind of VIP treatment, but I never expected it. I had just been happy that Matt showed up the previous day.

Matt and two other firefighters ran with me through the rest of Palm Springs until we reached the border with Cathedral City. We parted ways, and I was on Cloud Nine.

Not long after, I turned onto Ramon and ran toward I-10, picking up the east side frontage road (Varner) in Thousand Palms just past the Agua Caliente Casino. I headed south along Varner (I-10 frontage), and as sidewalk appeared and disappeared into sandy shoulder, I began to get the sense that civilization here was an uneasy truce between people and the desert. My route jumped the highway at Jefferson to the south / west side, and by late afternoon, I was in Indio.

Looking back, I really don’t know where the time went.

Indio, which lies in the gap between Palm Springs and Coachella, was a little seedy. Some of the convenience stores I passed had a number of homeless and sometimes addled-looking people waiting outside. One of the stores I went into for a restroom break had the cashier inside a separate room with bulletproof glass.

That said, once we reached Coachella, we had dinner that same night at El Mexicali Cafe, a little place next to the railroad tracks that looked fairly busy with local patrons. I no longer see it on their menu, but I remember having chicharrons and a fried egg, and that it was awesome.

2/5/2020: Coachella to Mecca CA and Box Canyon

Heading out of Coachella was more of the same: seemingly endless stretches of Indio Boulevard / I-10 business, which got increasingly more desert-like and less developed. We passed a date farm on the right, and Leslie stopped to get me a date-flavored milkshake, which wasn’t bad. It tasted like a cross between grape and chocolate.

The road shoulders soon went to hell in a handbasket. They were steeply sloped and sandy, and just stepping off the road became a challenge, as my feet would often get caught in a shower of sand as the shoulder collapsed where I stepped off the road. I was wearing my desert gaiters, so that helped, but after a while, the absent shoulder and road camber (slant) become quite annoying and put stress on my ankles.

At 6th Street, somewhere around lunchtime, I crossed into Mecca. The shoulders finally came back. We had lunch at a place called Taco Time that was for the most part a hole-in-the-wall, but had the best carne asada I’ve ever tasted, plus some kind dish that was a bit like fried mashed potatoes. Just as we arrived, we were passed by a group of cyclists who appeared to be headed down 66th Avenue toward Box Canyon. We later learned that Box Canyon Road, which is what 66th turns into, was a popular route for cyclists, and we encountered a few of them later in the day.

After lunch, I was underway again, through a section of land that was fairly well irrigated and had crops growing. I was amazed how in the middle of the desert, there were hundreds of acres of crops.

That same day, Ross Wollen of A Sweet Life, an online diabetes diet-focused newsletter, did an online interview with me and published an article about my run and what I ate while out on the road.

The farmland gave way pretty quickly to sandy canyonland.

Box Canyon was beautiful, but it was sunny. The sun is an odd thing. Even in February, it’s relentless. You can be so cold you need a jacket, as you can see in the pictures above, and yet sometimes even with a wide-brimmed boonie hat, it can still bear down on you and make you dizzy. As I looked up to catch the occasional fighter jet flying overhead, when I looked back down I found I had to catch my balance.

Toward the end of the day, I finally emerged out of the canyon and onto a section of Box Canyon Road that would eventually join up with a dirt utility road paralleling I-10 that would be my secret to finally getting out onto the open highways outside the populated part of Southern California.

2/6/2020: Box Canyon to Desert Center CA via Pinto / Power Line Road

We began the day at the western end of Pinto Road, a road defined in only the loosest sense. To reach the very short paved section of the road from Box Canyon, you actually have to drive in sand deep enough to get your wheels caught. So it was off limits from the start for Leslie to follow the same route. Instead, we agreed that she’d hop onto I-10 and drive down to each of the exits in sequence: Chiriaco Summit, Hayfield, Red Cloud, and Eagle Mountain Road.

Just past the Hayfield exit, in the distance across the highway, I could see a huge concrete structure built into the mountainside and wondered what it was. It turns out that the area around Desert Center has a storied past. Back in the early 1900s, some folks had this great idea to divert the waters of the Colorado River into a huge reservoir just north of that structure. It was supposed to form a wonderful manmade lake and perhaps the planners had an idea that development would sprout up around it; I’m not sure. Anyway, the new lake leaked. The rerouted river breached an irrigation canal and hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Colorado River made its way toward what is now the Salton Sea. The project was abandoned and as the Salton Sea had no reliable freshwater replenishment source, it became increasingly salty and stagnant. Today, it stinks like an abandoned fishery and only the most hardscrabble types still live anywhere nearby. Parks, fishing areas and other amenities near this manmade inland sea sea have gone to seed.

The remainder of Pinto Road, including the part where Pinto gave out and continued as jeep trail just north of Power Line Road, was mostly unnavigable by anything other than an off-road vehicle. Some sections were fairly well-packed gravel and some were fairly rocky and sandy, especially near the so-called “washes”, places where flood waters often crossed roads in the rainy season.

Off and on, I’d encounter something noteworthy. One thing in particular that stands out in my mind was a type of lodging that someone appeared to have set up just off the dirt road, which appeared to be little more than a dirt mound covering some kind of structure from whose top stovepipes arose. Sometimes jackrabbits would bound across the trail and off into the desert. At some point, I began to notice some fairly large paw tracks that I thought might be from a mountain lion.

I had scouted this section previously upon arrival in Newport Beach, and had marked in my notes where to turn so I didn’t get lost in the desert; however, it spooked me to see mountain lion tracks and I lost track of my turns. Figuring it couldn’t hurt me to just follow the power lines, I continued on what I thought had been my route. I was relieved when I arrived at the next exit and spotted Leslie.

The sections between the Interstate exits were typically 4-6 miles long. Leslie would meet me at the exits and I’d unload any pretty rocks I saw. For the rest of the way across California and Arizona, having little better to do at times, I became quite the amateur rock hound. After a while, though, with rocks heavy in my waist pack and pockets, I got far more selective, threw some rocks back, and kept the smaller ones.

All in all, I believe it was about 20 miles of poor-quality, sandy jeep trails before Leslie and I joined each other at Eagle Mountain Road. There, I crossed the highway to Ragsdale Road and rain over a little more than half a dozen rickety old bridges until we reached the largely-abandoned former downtown of Desert Center.

Pro Tip: fellow transconners, if you are looking for accommodations in the actual living downtown of Desert Center, there’s an RV park community a bit north at Lake Tamarisk that is clean, friendly, and absolutely charming. It even has a walking trail around the lake its own little fire department.

2/7/2020: Desert Center CA to US-177 & CA-62

Once we left Desert Center, there was very little to look forward to until we reached Parker, AZ. For lack of any better location, we targeted our day’s-end where CA-177 joined US-62 east of Joshua Tree.

I began to see signs for Parker, AZ.

But mostly, it was one long section of desert road. On CA-177, the shoulders were paved for a good ways and mostly adequate. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, and we had planned our start date on purpose to fall well after the rainy season, since during our scouting we had encountered a road closure on 177 due to flooding, which caused significant re-routing in an area that doesn’t have that many routing options to start with.

I spotted a tow truck that reminded me of the Tow Mater character from the Disney film Cars, and out in the middle of the desert, a porta-potty. For the next several hundred miles, all the way to Rodeo, NM, I began to encounter them just when I needed them, and came to believe my porta-potty “juju” was very strong.

I am still amazed that someone had the forethought and diligence to put a fresh roll of TP in a stall in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

2/8/2020: CA-177 & CA-62 to RR crossing west of Vidal Junction CA

We stayed one more blissful night at the RV park at Lake Tamarisk, and returned to CA-177 and CA-62 to continue running.

Desert sunrises are something to behold. The photo above doesn’t do it justice.

Just past the turn onto CA-62, I encountered the Iron Mountain Training Center, a big section of desert where troops had trained for possible desert deployment during WWII. It’s long since been closed, but it broke up the monotony and I was glad to see it.

Once on CA-62, I began to encounter a series of slowly rolling hills that wouldn’t have been a nuisance to run on except for the fact that in most places it was a 2-lane road and they were blind hills. I stayed as far away from the road as I could. In many places, the desert sands had blown over the road and the road was only visible behind and beyond. But the shoulders were fairly wide until just before the entry into Vidal Junction and its lone gas station about 17 miles outside of Parker. Gas there was somewhere around $5.00/gallon, which was more than double the price elsewhere

At around 3 PM I reached Rice, CA, the location of both the “miles from nowhere” sign and the famous “shoe fence” (shoe tree, shoe… structure?!) and some other oddities, including a long stretch of road just north of which was a section where people had spelled out messages in dark-colored rock against the light-colored rail bed. It was cool, crazy and weird, but it also felt a little bit like what you’d get if you awarded art installation slots at Burning Man to the lowest bidders.

We grabbed a snack at the shoe fence, took some photos, and moved on.

It was a bit of a stretch to actually make it to Vidal Junction, so we picked a landmark we could relocate on a map and decided to end the day at a RR crossing far enough west of Vidal Junction that it would make a reasonably full day running into Parker.

2/9/2020: RR crossing west of Vidal Junction CA to Parker AZ

My train juju was nearly as strong as my porta-potty juju. When we reached the railroad crossing for the day start west of Vidal Junction, just as I crossed the tracks, I noticed a lo-o-ong train approaching.

At this point in the run, my feet were still doing okay, but I was starting to feel the accumulated miles. We had planned for a rest day every 10 days or 250 miles, whichever came first, and Parker, AZ was right at the 250 mile mark, give or take a few.

I started to see signs indicating that Parker was within a day’s running distance, and at once I felt both excited and exhausted. As a result, the day seemed to stretch out forever.

Just outside Parker, CA-62 turns onto CA-95, which becomes AZ-95. After crossing a long bridge at the Colorado River, I was back in civilization, ready to get out of my running clothes, take a long, hot shower, and eat the biggest entree I could find

2/10/2020: Rest Day in Parker AZ

After constantly suiting up, facing road hazards, and slogging out the miles for the last 10 days, it felt weird to be off the clock. Leslie and I stopped several times at Crossroads and did our best to fill me up with protein.

Leslie and I took a short walk around town just to loosen my legs, and I spotted a leaf that made me smile. We encountered Melvin Lee, the grandfather of one of my T1D friends, Michell Lee Scott, who turned out to be a pretty cool guy.

The rest of the time I slept at the hotel with my feet elevated and tried to rebuild some of what I had broken down.

Leslie had taken great care of my feet, and despite the constant thread of sand in my shoes, the desert gaiters had kept out nearly everything that might have caused me trouble. But I was beginning to wear the tread off my first pair of Inov-8s, one that I had taken to a cobbler who sewed a continuous line of Velcro around the shoes just above the sole. I was hoping I could make them last through Arizona at least, possibly some of New Mexico, and crossed my fingers at an outside chance they’d last me through west Texas.

For the mean time, though, my well-taped and coddled feet were free of blisters and I had California behind me. I had crossed my first state in the USA run as well as the entire Pacific Time Zone. I had crossed the Mojave Desert on foot and was into the Sonoran and its ubiquitous barrel cacti.

I let that sink in while I dug into my steak.

2/11/2020: Parker to Bouse AZ

There was something about finally leaving Parker that stayed with me. As I headed east out of town past the Running Man gas station (of course I had to take a selfie!), I began to see a little more scrub, cactus, and clouds and a little less sand and unrelenting sun. I can only imagine what that sun would have been like during the summer.

I set my sights on reaching the junction with AZ-72.

The landscape was beautiful. But as in the Mojave, there were few landmarks to establish where I was and where I was going next, so I began to lose track of time. The occasional road sign would inform me I was getting closer to the next town, and mysterious “cow” signs started showing up. And not just one. It was like a crazy person with a paintbrush and a bunch of road signs was desperately trying to warn us all of an impending invasion by bovines.

I realize the purpose of the signs was to let motorists know that there were no fences and to watch for cows crossing the road, but honestly, I don’t think I ever saw even one cow. In fact, the only cow I ever saw on this stretch of road was when I was looking at the road on Google Street View. And I imagine that cow was rather surprised.

I reached Bouse, AZ and its little market / laundromat around 5 PM, a little over an hour before sunset.

Later that night, we returned to the hotel in Parker (closest accommodations) and I opened the care package my friends at Tandem Diabetes had given me in San Diego the week before the run. I was truly blown away by the warm, personal notes from the very real people who worked at the insulin pump company that kept my body alive.

The notes, however, kept my soul alive.

2/12/2020: Bouse to Salome AZ

The road heading out of Bouse was fairly busy. I had seen very little traffic the day before, and wondered at the reason for increased traffic. There were towns along the route called Utting, Bush Pit, and Vicksburg, but they seemed to exist only in the sense that they had a zip code. No general stores, not even a dilapidated or abandoned building to be seen.

Eventually the traffic waned as I got farther out of town.

The day’s big excitement was finally getting off AZ-72 in Hope, AZ and turning onto US-60 and the road into Salome. At the junction, there is a sign announcing entry into Hope. There is also a sign just past the turn announcing that “You Are Beyond Hope.” I’m not a superstitious person, but at the time I thought it was bad juju to take a selfie in front of that particular sign.

The road headed toward Salome was blessed with relatively clear ranch roads of pack sand just a few yards off the highway. They made for fast running.

Around 5:30 PM, heading into Harcuvar, I was excited to spot a rock with some petroglyphs. It got my mind racing about who made them and how long ago, and the remaining 30 minutes or so into Salome flew by. Leslie and I stopped and had dinner at Salome Restaurant, then tucked into our spot at the RV park nearby, where we just happened to be parked next to where another transconner on a bike had set up his tent. But it was chilly and we were both too tired to talk much.

2/13/2020: Salome to Tonopah AZ

The next day was one of cloudless skies and unending roads. After making the turn onto Salome Road heading towards Tonopah, I encountered some serious thorn bushes. It was only after getting some stuck in the soles of my shoes that I realized they were everywhere across Arizona, new Mexico, and much of west Texas. But they seemed worst in Arizona.

A few miles before we reached the intersection with I-10 where we planned to call an end to the day, we encountered an irrigation canal of some sort. The desert in that part of Arizona didn’t seem as well and thoughtfully irrigated as the area around Mecca, CA, and I wondered where the water eventually went.

Shortly thereafter, I reached the junction with I-10, beyond which Salome Road turned into a 7-mile-long dirt road that I planned to tackle the next morning.

2/14/2020: Tonopah to Buckeye AZ

Salome Road heading out of Tonopah and toward the Phoenix area was mixture of dirt and pavement pockmarked with potholes that were difficult to see in the dark. Google Maps hadn’t created a street view for that section, and I had a few turns to avoid, so I walked a good chunk of it to make sure I didn’t run right past the few landmarks I had that were unambiguous from the satellite view.

The sunrise was beautiful. The photos above are unretouched: it really did look like the sky was on fire, and I wondered if anyone else had ever taken the chance to watch it from this forgotten stretch of road.

After seven miles, the pavement returned as I ran past signs for Wintersburg, past a lone house perched on a steep hillside, to the turn at Baseline Road.

Parts of Baseline Road had sidewalk, but that luxury was short-lived.

Baseline Road seemed to go on forever, and it wasn’t the quiet road I remember during our route scouting trip. The area around Phoenix seems to be expanding rapidly, and the road was not only choked with traffic, but the traffic was slowed by the fact that nobody seemed to have thought of installing signal lights. Nearly ever intersection was marked by a four-way stop that left traffic at a standstill.

I presume this was the fault of the same city planner who named one of the streets “393th.”

I ran the sandy shoulder into Buckeye, thankful that I was on foot, until we reached the Shell at the far side of Oglesby Road / Highway 85, where I slowed down a bit to make sure I didn’t miss Mikey’s Mini Mart and our official day’s end in Buckeye. The mini-mart looked a bit dodgy, so we agreed I’d run a little farther through a neighborhood to a building that said Roosevelt Irrigation District. The sun was already low in the sky and I was anxious to get to the hotel and get a good night’s sleep.

2/15/2020: Buckeye to Laveen AZ

The run from Buckeye to Laveen did not go as planned. It started off well enough, then got worse toward the end of the day.

Buckeye Road eventually T’d into MC-85, which I ran for a while. My porta-potty juju was strong as a neared a bend in the road where some construction was going on, and for the most part the shoulder improved.

I was joined in Goodyear by Martha Kennedy Kratchman and her husband John, who originally signed up to drive her chase vehicle and eventually ran with us, then back to the chase vehicle, then drove ahead, then ran back to meet us. He got a workout that day!

I rejoined Buckeye Road further to the northeast (see what I mean about it going on forever?), and crossed the Agua Fria River.

Rivers are weird in Arizona. They’re either there (flood season) or they aren’t. When they aren’t, you encounter bridges over bits of desert that make you think the city planners just had extra money and needed to spend it or lose it. It was dry season, so I just had to imagine the river was actually there.

Originally, our route took a turn on 91st Street and went past the wastewater treatment plant, then on some local roads for another six miles through Komatke, where I took the selfie with the discarded office chair, toward a gas station in Maricopa. Not long after that, I encountered a rather territorial dog, and a cop stopped by. I figured he was going to try to separate the dog from me or warn me about a road closure.

Well, it turns out that the not-very-well-marked road I was on was part of the Gila River Indian Reservation. The cop, who worked for the reservation, said I was trespassing.

That was the last thing I wanted to hear after running six miles past the wastewater treatment plant, but minus those six miles it had still been a 30 mile day.

What I really didn’t enjoy was spending the next four hours at the hotel completely redesigning the next three or four days of the route to avoid Indian lands while not losing sight of turn cues or landmarks such as gas stations, which represented restroom stops I genuinely looked forward to. I was already tired and badly in need of rest. But there wasn’t an option not to avoid the reservations, as some records -keeping organizations stipulate that a route may not make use of illegal or private roads, both categories that my Komatke excursion fell into.

It was harder than I thought, as a sizeable portion of Arizona is Indian lands. In fact, some of the US and state highways that cut across the state do so only by virtue of some rather tenuous easement agreements. A fellow transconner who had taken a similar route through the southwest told me to stay to state highways and stay on the paved shoulder–sometimes easier said that done. But that’s what I was going to have to do.

My beautiful 2800 mile route suddenly became a 2845 mile route. Since those extra miles came before my rest day in Marana (just outside Tucson), I resented it even more.

The Komatke cop had been right; and moreover, he had been polite, and I had no choice but to back my route up to the previous turn, not take it, and start the next day from where I had left off, heading east toward Chandler and Gilbert.

2/16/2020: Laveen to Gilbert AZ

It turned out not to be so bad after all picking things up at Laveen and heading toward Chandler. Though the route was longer and added a little over a day, my new route had considerably more sidewalk and places to stop.

I continued along Baseline (see, it really does go on forever!) to just before AZ-87, then cut through a business park to avoid a busy intersection. It was somewhere near there that I ran into a fellow runner (not in his running clothes, though) who nevertheless ran with me for a mile or so. Then we went our separate ways.

After emerging from the business park, I turned right onto AZ-87 / Arizona Avenue and continued to Pecos Road. The road was nice, but the beating my feet had taken from the previous day’s 36-mile run, added to the current day’s attempt to make up for lost time, annoyed the bone spur in my left foot, and toward the end of the day, I was limping and very ready to be done with it all.

I stopped at the Circle K at Pecos and Val Vista, right around sunset, slightly disoriented due to the fact that I had seen the route only once, in Google Street View, in daylight lighting. It wasn’t the way I preferred to do things.

Just after sunset, I ran into my old high school classmate, Rick Elliott, who came out to greet us. Strangely, it helped my feet feel better.

2/17/2020: Gilbert to Coolidge AZ

I was joined in Gilbert by Type 1 diabetic ultra runner Patrick Votruba, who ran a number of miles with me, then turned around and ran back.

I enjoy all the company I get when doing runs like this, but Patrick was a particularly great pleasure to run with. He knew type 1, he knew ultra running, and he was one of a small number of people who could conceive of what I was doing and why it meant to much to me to do it. He also seemed to be well-acquainted with watching for road hazards.

I didn’t have to think about anything on his behalf. We just ran, for the pleasure of running despite all the inconveniences and downright horrors that type 1 sometimes adds being athletic. We talked about everything until the good running shoulder an out miles later and going farther would have just put him in more weeds or sloped shoulder.

I followed Pecos Road to Power Road, then Rittenhouse, and things quickly got rural again. I hoped that by taking Rittenhouse through Queen Creek and San Tan Valley, I could avoid running into issues with crossing Indian land, which I was now quite jumpy about due to the scarcity of options that didn’t involve Interstate or major highways. I was especially concerned about Florence and the area just outside of Coolidge, because it seemed desolate, just the kind of road I probably wasn’t supposed to be on. But nothing happened, and before long I was across the Gila River and on AZ-287, the Florence-Coolidge Highway.

I had deliberately made each day out of Laveen a little longer than I had wanted, in hopes of making up the lost day. AZ-287 was a bit busy, but I’ve seen worse, and the shoulder was good. I picked up my pace a bit in an attempt to make it into Coolidge before sunset.

The last obstacle was a bridge just before entry into Coolidge. It had an adequate shoulder, but not a wide one. I was sorely aware that if I tripped and fell, I would most definitely fall into traffic, and accordingly, I stayed close to the guardrail.

Unfortunately, that’s where most of the accumulated road junk, including broken bottles, retreads, and loops of wire seem to settle. As I crested the bridge, I tripped in a loop of wire and instinctively reached for the guardrail with my bare left hand. The back of the guardrail was extremely rough and took the palm-size skin off three of my fingers.

I wrapped a handkerchief around my hand and squeezed like there was no tomorrow. When I reached the van by the WalMart about a mile away at the day’s end marker near the Casa Grande Ruins, my fingers were already swollen and I didn’t want to let go of the handkerchief. I could tell they were going to be swollen for a while, and that this was not going to heal quickly.

Leslie went into the WalMart to get some bandages, Neosporin, saline wound wash, Curlix, and other first aid supplies, and I dealt with the painful task of pulling my wedding ring off over raw flesh.

Many thanks to my friend Noggy David Jaen for the Mupiricin Rx. It helped.

2/18/2020: Coolidge to Wymola AZ

AZ-87 was rather rural heading out of Coolidge, and as we continued onto AZ-587 and got closer to the Interstate and the frontage road I planned to run on rejoining our original route, despite the injury to my hand, my nerves calmed a bit.

The road was very quiet as I ran through Randolph and La Palma. Once we passed Eloy around mile 500, rounded the road past the Picacho School, and reached the Shell station in Wymola around 5:45 PM, I started to feel less like I’d get stopped for being on the wrong road.

Along the road I saw a couple riding their bikes, and smiled at the thought that I might be returning to developed areas pretty soon. I was anxious to get in my second rest day.

2/19/2020: Wymola to Rillito AZ outside Tucson

Despite the near-brush with civilization at the Shell station, the area around the Interstate frontage road was still pretty rural as I passed a sign for Red Rock. My route paralleled a railroad line, and occasionally a train would pass by. They were wonderful to look at, but also distracting, as they took my attention away from the road and masked traffic noise.

The shoulder was quite narrow in places on the frontage road, and I found myself looking for long stretches of packed dirt parallel to the road, where I could run undistracted and avoid thinking about traffic for a while.

As I got closer to Marana, I had to cross under the Interstate because the road became one-way heading toward me, and it made it difficult for Leslie and me to meet up.

As I got to Crossroads Trail and then Tangerine outside Rillito, I could tell I was nearing the developed outskirts of Tucson. There was a cool, shaded, blissful stretch running past a cement facility, whose stone entrance I sat down on for a water break. A little bit after that and I was in the suburbs, and nice houses and sidewalk were the norm.

As we reached the QuikMart at Coachline and Silverbell, I decided to push the miles a bit and get my day-end marker as close to the hotel as I could. I ran to the Walgreens at Silverbell and Cortaro, stopped my timers, packed into the van, and headed for Texas Roadhouse and our nearby hotel.

2/20/2020: Rest Day in Tucson AZ

At the hotel, I ran into the couple I had met on the Interstate frontage road who had been cycling. We chatted a bit at breakfast, and they were off cycling again.

Later that morning, I got a sports massage, which was a mixed blessing. I really wanted the knots out of my calves, but I also really wanted sleep. My muscles were so tight that I really couldn’t doze off on the table, and a good chunk of the time I was on edge. As soon as the therapist left, I took a nap.

Something to know about is that after lots of aerobic activity, you can become insulin sensitive. Blood sugars can drop precipitously, as they did in Odessa during my run across Texas. You can pass out, and if very unlucky, not wake up.

It must have been a very deep sleep, because I awoke to Leslie’s concerned voice–she had been trying to wake me up for 10 minutes. I tested my blood sugar and it was far from low.

My conclusion was that I had probably actually fainted from exhaustion.

2/21/2020: Rillito to Green Valley AZ

From Rillito down Silverbell to the turn at the hospital into Tucson and a couple of turns that put me onto 6th Avenue, I was happy to be running in a metropolitan area with sidewalks. South Tucson seemed a bit seedy, and once I was approached by a disturbed-looking person who had a Moses-on-the-mountain look in his eyes and talked in a stream of consciousness about my bright outfit. As I passed Children’s Hospital, a man approached and asked about the run and where he could donate.

Just before exiting Tucson, I noticed there was some kind of rodeo going on on the eastern side of the road. The sidewalk had been coming and going, and the pavement was getting iffy, and I tripped and fell full-force on my elbows. Now if you’re keeping track, this was on top of the previous injury to my left hand, and I felt pretty bruised and a little more than cursed when I got up.

Once outside of Tucson, the sidewalk gave way to shoulder again and 6th Avenue turned into Old Nogales Road.

Somewhere along the way I ran into Steve Henry, who has both Type 1 Diabetes and Cystic Fibrosis. Not everyone realizes it, but if you have one autoimmune disease, there’s a good chance you have another. The only question is how it’s going to be living with more than one autoimmune disease. The most common are conditions like Hashimoto’s, Sjogren’s or celiac. But CF is an auto-immune disease also, and it sucks all by itself.

Let’s just say that Steve has an Iron Will. Since the road shoulder was already difficult to navigate and CF challenges Steve’s breathing, we walked for some time, about three miles if I remember, and it was some of the best fellowship I’ve had.

I had planned on ambitious mileage running all the way into downtown Green Valley, but it was getting cold and the sun was going down, and under the cloud cover that had been building all day, I made it as far as the stoplight just outside town, beyond which the road narrowed and crossed ravines, with little room afforded by the guardrail.

It felt like a wise decision to cut the planned 36-mile day to around 30 and call it a win.

2/22/2020: Green Valley to Nogales AZ

I picked up running again the next morning at the stoplight, and the run into Green Valley, while a little chilly, was pleasant in the daylight. However, the forecast called for rain, and I kept watching the sky, wondering when it was doing to hit.

I hit 600 miles. I would learn to treasure that photograph, because just over 20 miles later, due to a bug in Suunto’s software for the Ambit 3, the watch spontaneously stops recording workouts at 1000 kilometers, approximately 625 miles. It did so faithfully the very next day, February 23rd.

I was concerned about how things would turn out near Amado; specifically, just south of Agua Linda, where on both sides, the Interstate frontage road gave out, and there was a Border Patrol checkpoint.

I had noticed on Google Maps Street View that the section of road in question had a sign directing where bicycles should go, and I thought there was a good chance that the short 1-mile section of Interstate might also be pedestrian legal.

In fact, it was. Nevertheless, I scurried as fast as I could and as far from the road as I could to get to where the frontage picked back up.

A little further south, near Tubac, there was a golf resort. It was a Saturday, and traffic near it was pretty constant. The frontage road that ran past the club was two-laned, with no shoulder and a steep slope, forcing me to walk through the soggy, tall weeds on the uneven slope next to the road.

Getting past the golf course was a pain in the butt and seemed to take forever. Moreover, the clouds were starting to look ominous.

Leslie and I have a rule: I’ll run in rain, but not in thunderstorms; so the question was whether it was going to storm or just rain. You could feel in the way the temperature dropped that it was going to rain soon.

Sure enough, somewhere between Tubac and Tumacacori, the bottom fell out.

I was joined by runner Gary Bochman, who ran the next several miles with me in ordinary running gear.

I was, as always, grateful for his company, since it made the time fly by. And I didn’t want to say a word about how soaked and miserable I felt.

The rest of the run into Nogales was uneventful, and thankfully, dry. As soon as I could, to avoid a dangerous snarl of merging highways north of Nogales, I got off onto Palo Parado and then Pendleton Drive, stopping at the intersection with 289, which heads to a Pilot truck stop near the Interstate.

It was with some resignation that I paused there for the day. I could tell by now that I was not going to make up mileage by trying to run 36-40 miles a day, and resolved going forward to just try to get in 30-33 miles and stop at some place I could find again on Google Maps upon heading out from the hotel.

2/23/2020: Nogales to Patagonia AZ

Having one of my GPS watches stop recording and refuse to record another workout was jarring. But I’d learned to get used to that kind of thing, and at the time I felt that I could just retrieve the first 625 miles from the watch when my run was over and I’d at least have that for documentation. I was concerned with the Err 12 codes that kept repeating in the workout log after it had stopped, a sign of a corrupted workout.

But while not as accurate as the Ambit 3, my Suunto 9 baro was still working, as was my Garmin InReach GPS beacon, which recorded my progress live online for others to watch.

Running the remains of Pendleton Road went reasonably well. The road was poor quality and hilly, but it emerged onto AZ-82 east of Nogales and avoided a lot of traffic.

Somewhere before the turn, I noticed a sign saying “The more I know of man, the more I like dogs.” Then I met a rather lost-looking German shepherd without a collar, whom I nicknamed Dogales, since I had seen him just outside Nogales. Dogales was friendly and playful, but he started to act anxious the longer we ran, and I sensed that maybe he had lost track of where he lived, though he wasn’t sure how far back on the road that must have been. I gave him some water to drink, and eventually, he turned and headed back.

Once outside of Nogales, AZ-82 started to turn narrow, with narrow shoulders. During our route scouting, I had been somewhat concerned about running such roads, but I had chosen the route through Nogales and along AZ-82 over an alternate route out of Tucson along AZ-83 through wine country, because by my best estimation, AZ-83 had 20-30 miles of blind hills and some pretty steep dropoffs, and the road outside Patagonia had maybe six or seven that I was concerned about.

Once I got past a somewhat narrow canyon, the shoulder improved a little, and in the hilly area just west of Patagonia, it widened considerably and was pleasant to run, or would have been if not for the rolling hills. I tried not to look uphill unless I heard traffic, and enjoyed the boost I got going downhill. The day was getting long in the tooth and I was starting to feel a little chilly, so I ran faster.

As the sun headed down over the horizon and I took my last selfie before entering town around 6:15 PM, I looked down at my gloves.

They said Patagonia.

2/24/2020: Patagonia to just past Sonoita AZ

At 2 in the afternoon just outside Sonoita, I met two people, neither of which knew each other. One was Elaine, who was staying in the same hotel, Sonoita Inn, that Leslie and I were staying at. She had come to the area to enjoy some cycling, which is apparently fairly common in that part of Arizona. The other was a fellow transconner on a Surly Long Haul Trucker, heading west. I recognized the type of bike by its distinctive steel frame design and panniers. I waved him down and we exchanged greetings and well-wishes.

Elaine ran with me for a while until the road got iffy again, and I believe I saw her later that day on her bike, when I also met a number of other cyclists.

One asked me how far I was going and where I had started. I said, “2800 miles. Los Angeles.” She gave me a fist pump in the air and rode on.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Road 900 and the Las Cienegas Conservation Area, the shoulder got narrow again. I caught the edge of my shoe on an irregularity in the asphalt on the road, tripped, and fell onto my right shoulder, damaging my Garmin InReach. There was traffic on that road, and I’m lucky that I didn’t fall too far into the road.

I waited for a gap in traffic, picked up my water and electrolyte bottles, and kept going.

I felt a twinge of self-pity. One hand, two elbows, and now my right shoulder and all taken a beating recently. I was beginning to wonder whether I was actually not paying attention, was losing balance, or had some other problem.

But it wouldn’t get solved where I was at the moment. I found a wide spot on the shoulder and looked at my tracker, which had taken the brunt of the impact. The screen was still on, so I plugged it into the charger that night at the hotel back in Sonoita and chalked it up to a lucky strike in a somewhat bad day.

I didn’t know I had rendered the InReach non-functional until the next morning when I tried to start my workout and the device wouldn’t power up. I presume something in the internals of the device knocked the charging contacts loose, but it wasn’t anything I knew how to fix.

Leslie contacted Garmin and they express shipped us a replacement.

If you’re counting, that’s two tracking devices down so far.

2/25/2020: Sonoita to Tombstone AZ and Davis Road

Two days after losing the ability to track workouts on my Ambit 3, I lost the ability to track progress on my InReach. That left my Suunto 9 and the timestamped selfies, which I came to rely on increasingly, given the 9’s inaccurate sense of location and mileage. What I had hoped would serve as corroboration of more accurate tracking was now my only tracking apart from the cell phone selfies.

My Suunto 9 was becoming increasingly inaccurate. When I reached Whetstone at 9 o’clock that morning, at mile 674, the Suunto 9 stated that I had just reached 771 miles. That was over 100 miles off!

I made it into Tombstone about 4:30 that afternoon and the sidewalk began again. But it didn’t last long. A good chunk of the road into Tombstone had narrow, sandy shoulder with thorn bushes.

At that point, I was looking for something positive to happen. Anything.

Just then, Elaine from Sonoita rode by and waved and shouted hello. That did the job.

Later in the day, we met Rick, a type 1 diagnosed in 1968, who just happened to see our van.

Our mileage goals shot, our tracking half-crippled, and our nice little town-to-town itinerary now fully messed up, I continued through Tombstone toward McNeal and the turn onto Davis Road.

It had been getting challenging to find something steady about the run to hold onto, and I realized now that it was those chance meetings and words of encouragement and fellowship that were keeping me going.

2/26/2020: Davis Road to Douglas AZ

First of all, let me get this out of the way: that stuff you see on TV about tumbleweeds in the southwest? True. Coyotes and roadrunners? Somewhat true, except for the ACME explosives and the coyotes holding signs announcing their thoughts.

Davis road went on for a while, and it was windy. Tumbleweeds were fairly common. I turned onto US-191 just past a school and headed south into a headwind.

The road toward Douglas was fairly desolate, the scenery didn’t change much, and there wasn’t much to look at until we got just outside of town, where both the state prison and the Bisbee-Douglas airport were. We had taken this particular road into Douglas to avoid a shorter route that went through a narrow tunnel in Bigsbee. I stopped at the nearest intersection and we decided it was best to pick up there in the morning.

My mind was already on a plateful of tacos at Asadero el Guero, and the hope of getting a new InReach the next morning.

2/27/2020: Douglas to Boss Ranch Road / Apache AZ

At 7:15 AM, the InReach was waiting at the hotel front desk. Leslie figured out how to configure the basics, but it appeared set on 10-minute updates even though we had configured it online for 2-minute updates. Eventually Garmin straightened it out, though like a lot of stuff with Garmin, it seemed more complicated that it needed to be.

We were through Douglas fairly quickly, then onto AZ-80 and the open road. If anything, sections of 80 were more desolate than some of the roads I had been on. The shoulder was better, but there wasn’t much to mark our progress. We were now shooting for the New Mexico state line. Having long since been knocked off our rhythm of running from town to town, around 5:45 PM we picked a spot not far outside Apache where Boss Ranch Road crossed 80 and called it a day.

We stayed the night at a wonderful ranch just off AZ-80 that we found on Air B&B. It was run by two ladies, one of whose husband had been the owner and operator of the property before his death. They were trying to keep the operation alive, they said, but weren’t sure how long they’d continue to do it, given its location and the lack of traffic. I’m just glad it was there when we were.

2/28/2020: Boss Ranch Rd / Apache AZ to Animas NM

The bulk of the day from Boss Ranch Road was spent running the remaining distance to the state line and into the vicinity of Rodeo, NM.

The shoulders on highway 80 improved once we got into New Mexico, and the running was for the most part good. Now and again on the road into Rodeo I kept spotting what looked like military vehicles with long poles mounted atop them, at the end of which were what looked a bit like searchlights. I didn’t see anyone around them, but I did spot a porta-potty that hadn’t been serviced for the last 2 years. I made the stop anyway, and as I emerged, I saw a soldier of some sort getting out of the military vehicle.

I saw more of this as the miles went on, and at least judging by my experiences, I would guess the whole southern half of New Mexico is populated by Border Patrol.

Once I made the turn onto NM-9 and headed toward Animas (strangely, the name of a defunct insulin pump manufacturer), their presence was pretty much constant. At one point, I was doing my best to watch for a gap in traffic so I could relieve myself on the side of the road when I was buzzed by a helicopter. I hope they saw what they wanted to see.

Along NM-9, Leslie and I constantly kept encountering our friends from Border Patrol. At first they were very curious about what we had in the van. Once they were satisfied I really was running across the USA, they seemed to leave us alone, and as we neared Animas, one even asked about our run.

We reached our AirB&B in Animas at 4 PM and I ran the remaining distance into town to establish a start point for the next day that wouldn’t force us into long miles.

2/29/2020: Animas to Hachita NM

February 29th was a day of extremes. It wasn’t exactly a joke that I had taken the selfie in front of a sign that said “Hurt.” My legs were feeling it, and the stretch of running days heading toward Columbus was one of my longest ones, almost 350 miles.

Somewhere close to Hachita, our long-time friends Carol and Kerry Ezell, who moved not long ago from the DFW area to Las Cruces, NM, met us briefly on the highway before promising to see us again tomorrow, with Carol on her bike.

We were super-excited to see old friends, and Carol took the wonderful photo above of Leslie and me. Not only that, but the weather seemed to be warming up just a little, and I ran most of the day in a long-sleeve shirt rather than the shirt-plus-windbreaker arrangement that sometimes overheated me and tended to catch a fair bit of wind if I had it unzipped enough to cool down. The skies were clear and blue but not cloudless, and I was feeling pretty good when we got to the Hachita Food Mart, where I had previously met the owner, Jeff, on a route scouting trip. Jeff’s a long-distance cyclist and is in love with the town. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to towns like Hachita in the long run. So if you’re out there, pay him a visit and buy something.

3/1/2020: Hachita to somewhere short of Columbus NM

I started my day at the Hachita Food Mart. Carol and Kerry had brought us boiled eggs, which Leslie used in my lunches of egg salad, and Leslie went in and bought something from Jeff. It was shaping up as a good day.

Early in the day, it was a little cloudy, but the weather cleared. Carol got on her bike and rode slowly across the Continental Divide, with me running on the opposite side of the road.

We were sorry to see them go, but that special treat made my day, and I was beginning to realize that it was my bonds with other people that helped hold things together during the run.

Making it all the way from Hachita to Columbus would have made it a 44-mile day, and at that point I really didn’t have 44-mile days in me. I stopped running about 20 miles short of Columbus at the Hermanas Grade, and marked the spot in Google Maps for our start point the next day.

Oh! And did I mention, New Mexico sunsets are stunning?

3/2/2020: Into Columbus NM and a little farther

I ran the remaining miles from Hermanas Grade into Columbus the next morning, with the goal of getting maybe ten miles or so past town, wherever that may be. There weren’t really any towns, abandoned gas stations, or even an intersection with a dirt road to serve as markers.

On one stretch or road, truck after truck after truck hauled dark colored steel beams, and pulled off to the south of the road where people were busy at work building miles of border wall. It accentuated just how close to Mexico we were at the time.

My Suunto 9 had gotten to the point where it was useless except as verification that at some time or other, I had run the route I was on. It said I had gone almost 1000 miles, and RideWithGPS said that we were somewhere around mile 890.

I finally decided to ignore my GPS watch and just look at our progress against landmarks whose position and mileage on the route was unambiguous.

That was a challenge. My goal for the day looked clear enough on RideWithGPS: Arena, NM. But Arena had no markers. I took to noticing the mile markers when I left Columbus, and decided our best bet was to shoot for mile marker 102. That was a really poor choice since it wasn’t possible to locate it on Google Maps the next morning. We’d just have to zero out the van’s trip meter and drive the prescribed number of miles until we got closer to mile marker 102. There was a ranch nearby with a somewhat distinctive gate, and we decided to end the day there.

Our adventure trying to figure out how far we really were from anywhere made me uneasy about my mileage for the last couple of days. Coming into Columbus, I thought I had gotten closer. Heading out of Columbus, I could only guess how far we were to the next marker. The markers weren’t the kind of thing you could punch into a nav system or Google Maps, which rendered them useless for daily mileage estimation; and often, my guesses were just wrong.

3/3/2020: Just past Columbus to NM-9 and A-0005 outside El Paso

I began to see markers for the Santa Teresa Point of Entry, 43 miles away, just west of El Paso. I knew one thing for certain, El Paso was farther than that.

We decided to split the remaining distance to El Paso into two days, in hope of getting back to our town-to-town rhythm that made it easier to understand our progress. Somewhere in the middle of all that was an intersection between NM-9 and a dirt road labeled A-0005. That was our goal for the day: 22 miles. We’d seen that the forecast was for rain, and decided that if we made it any farther than that, it was good fortune.

I had made it perhaps 20 miles when the rain started coming down hard. Unlike the rain in Tumacacori, this wasn’t just miserable: it was drenching, and it was starting to affect my stride. Leslie and I conferred in the cover of the van on the roadside and talked about running farther. To do so with any success, I’d need to retape my feet, put on dry clothes and… just get soaking wet again.

With only 23 miles left to El Paso, the tape coming off my feet and blisters being re-exposed, Leslie and I looked at the weather forecast: continued rain for the next several hours, on into the next day. After that, it was supposed to be sunny again.

We decided to take our rest day one day early, stopped the tracker, and Leslie drove us to El Paso.

3/4/2020: Rest Day: El Paso TX

I have no photographs from El Paso. I barely remember the ride into town and finding our hotel.

When we opened the 850-mile envelope in the Tandem care package, there was a note from my friend and fellow Type 1 Blair Ryan, who worked in their Marketing Department. I am pretty sure those aren’t my feet in the picture, but mine didn’t look much different. I was glad to peel off the tape for a day, take the gel covers off my longest toes, and just lie down.

I am sure I slept well. If I recall correctly, close to twelve hours. I remember waking up around lunchtime, very hungry, but feeling much better.

3/5/2020: NM-9 & A-0005 to El Paso TX

March 5th held up to its promise of being a dry day, and the run into El Paso was much more pleasant than my previous running day.

On the north side of NM-9, out in the middle of nowhere, I spotted two largish bushes that were probably mesquite, judging by the thorns, that someone had decorated with Christmas garlands. I found this insanely amusing, and quickly posted on Facebook that I had some really good hallucinations to share (I had a running joke ever since Mecca CA that I was going to post hallucinations so people could see what i was seeing).

Much sooner than I had expected, I reached at T where NM-9 abrubtly stopped just north of Santa Teresa, and to the north the road became a busy four-lane called the Pete Domenici Highway. It had a good shoulder for a long stretch, and where it didn’t, someone had dumped dry straw into the ditch, which made for decent walking with the running wasn’t good.

There was only one section of highway that was a little dodgy, and that was where road crews were working on an area where the highway crossed over a railroad just south of Airport Freeway. I had plenty of room, but out of an abundance of caution, I walked that section.

After that, it was downhill, and the shoulder came and went on Airport Freeway. It finally got somewhat civilized near Santa Teresa High School, and after the turn onto 273, I began to see bits and pieces of what looked like bike trail.

As I turned onto Country Club road, the sidewalk began again, actually did hit the 1000-mile mark, and as I crossed the Rio Grande, I knew I was back in Texas and finally in El Paso.

As I ran along Country Club, I was anxious not just to beat sunset, but to get to our day’s-end marker at the Krispy Kreme just east of I-10.

As headed out for dinner, our entertainment for the evening was figuring out how a pickup pulling an RV trailer had managed to get itself into a rather delicate situation about half a mile from our hotel.

3/6/2020: El Paso to Butterfield TX

I was relieved to reach El Paso for several reasons.

First, because I was rejoining a route I “knew”, at least in the sense that I had run most of it before. Some parts, like the dangerous run through oilfield country and TX-302, I had eliminated by routing through Carlsbad and back into Texas via Andrews, since I no longer included in my objectives a full transit of Texas.

Second, because I was returning to the rhythm of running from one town to another, with just a few exceptions. In any case, we knew what the starting and ending points were pretty well up to the New Mexico border and once we rejoined our original route in Big Spring.

But I was also running El Paso a full two weeks earlier than I had before, and it was windier and colder.

Finally, when running across Texas the previous year, I had picked San Jacinto Plaza for my starting point, as it was the closest I felt I could get to the New Mexico border without having to deal with a lot of traffic.

This time, I was actually entering from New Mexico and starting further north and west.

From the moment I left the Krispy Kreme I could tell this was the El Paso I didn’t know. The first part of my route through town followed Country Club until it turned slowly south and turned into Mesa Street. Mesa was very hilly, and with the wind, it was slow going. The road seemed to go on and on and on, and in my mind, my run from El Paso didn’t actually start until I had turned off Mesa and onto Montana, several blocks west of a Circle K I had stopped at on my previous run across the state.

Reaching that Circle K was a milestone for me: I was finally back on my “usual” route, which followed Montana to US-62 / US-180 and out through the eastern side of town.

While US-180 was a long stretch of road, it gave me some comfort to see familiar landmarks go by: the Whataburger where I had previously eaten lunch with Eric Dutcher and Leslie on my Texas run, and town markers for Las Casitas and O’Shea.

I kept having to remind myself that I was starting farther west and north compared to my previous Texas run, and that running from my current day-start in El Paso to Hueco Tanks was not a 24-mile run, but a 49-mile one. I’d have to stop well short of Hueco Tanks.

The rest of the day’s run was along the wide shoulders of 180 and east past Butterfield. I ran out of sunlight shortly after the street lights discontinued at the far east end of Butterfield, a total daily mileage of 32.5 mi.

3/7/2020: Butterfield to Double-U Ranch west of Cornudas TX

One of the things I had been concerned with during the US run was being out on the road and mentally “out there” so much of the time that I forgot significant events.

The day’s running was pretty uneventful.

Owing to the changed starting point from Hueco Tanks to Butterfield, I wasn’t sure exactly where my day stop would be. I reached the Hueco Mountain Estates sign around 8:30 AM, then there was a Border Patrol station down the road, and then the route was nothing but long, straight roads, the occasional roadside memorial to a construction worker or pedestrian, and an assortment of ranch gates and abandoned properties the further I got out of town.

I reached Desert Haven around 10:30 in the morning, and that was the last marker I encountered for a while.

Our goal for the day was to make it to the Cornudas Cafe, a remote outpost of civilization that was the only indicator that the town of Cornudas even existed. But it was 40 miles from Butterfield.

About an hour before sunset, I had gone around thirty miles and we felt like it was time to stop. We spotted a nice pulloff about ten miles west of Cornudas and took a photo at the gate of Double U Ranch, which I thought my dad might appreciate, as we had a long running joke about buying thousands of acres of remote ranchland and renaming it Muchow Ranch.

My dad was a big supporter of my efforts to raise diabetes awareness, and had been especially proud back in April 2019 when he learned that I had set a record for the fastest known run across Texas (27d 8h 36m). He followed my progress closely.

Usually I’d text them with a brief message about what town I had made it to, how many miles I had run, and what town I was shooting for next.

But March 7th was Dad’s 83rd birthday. This was our exchange.

During the run, he and Mom would worry constantly about my safety. I would reassure him that we were doing the run in the safest way possible and occasionally remind him about all the safety measures we were taking. He asked me if Leslie and I had made any plans for what might happen if we were both hit by a car. I told him yes, we had all that sorted out and not to worry, and told him I was looking forward to seeing him and Mom when I crossed the Mississippi River and ran into the town where I did much of my growing up. I told him we’d take an extra rest day and get together. He had said he hoped he could make it.

In the back of my mind, though, I got the sense that something else was on his mind.

3/8/2020: Double-U Ranch to Salt Flat TX

In regard to the rain, well, that forecast was pushed out until late evening. I could tell from the building cloud cover and chilly wind that we were going to get rained on; just not when.

The remaining ten miles into Cornudas went without event. I got started around 8:30 AM or so, due to the daylight savings time change. I reached the cafe around 11:40 AM or so.

In the distance, I could now see the distinctive shape of Guadalupe Peak, the tallest mountain in Texas. My goal for the day was to stop in Salt Flat, about fifteen miles short of Guadalupe Pass, and try to do the steep run through the pass and back down the following day.

The shoulders were wide and friendly, but it was overcast and windy, and I found myself running in my high-vis rain jacket just for warmth.

I reached the Salt Flat Cafe (once an abandoned Greyhound station and still sporting some of the signage) around 6:20 PM, about 40 minutes before sunset, and called it a day.

Our normal Air B&B arrangement of staying in Dell City was out of the question: the owner of all the rental properties in Dell City had decided to take a hiatus from renting for a while. So that night we drove to the Pine Springs Safety Rest Area at McKittrick Canyon to stay the night.

Then the rain came. And came. And came.

3/9/2020: Salt Flat TX to Pine Springs / McKittrick Canyon Safety Rest Area

After the previous night’s rain, there were only a few clouds on the horizon at my start in Salt Flat around 7:30 AM. I enjoyed the fact that we were no longer in Pacific Time and would soon be out of Mountain Time as well, meaning dawn and our day starts could move an hour later. The clouds boiled off early.

East of Salt Flat are the actual salt flats from which the town gets it name. At street level, they look like vast bony-white sparkling fields of sand. In the 1860s, the then 20-year-old state of Texas actually got involved in a minor war with Mexico over who had the rights to harvest salt from them. There’s a marker along that stretch of road to commemorate the event.

It’s hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to fight over that piece of land.

After passing the salt flats, I was on my way the remaining twelve miles up the slow incline to the base of Guadalupe Mountain.

Guadalupe Pass sneaks up on you. Most of the hills between El Paso and there (there are two of them) aren’t that big, and they come on slowly, so when you see this long road ahead of you sloping slightly up, it’s easy to think it’s just another one of those hills. Then at the base of the pass, the grade increases to about 12% for the next three miles, during which it ascends from around 3000 ft. to 5695 ft.

It’s nothing compared to the Rocky Mountains, I’m sure. But even when you know what to expect, it’s still a workout; and to make matters worse, there’s a picnic table and a scenic overlook about halfway up the grade that makes you think you’ve conquered the mountain when in reality you’re only halfway there.

Something about having run through the pass two times before (once on a training run and again on my run across Texas) made it a little bit more tolerable, and the fact that the sun was out made the wind a little easier to take.

I reached the top of Guadalupe Pass around 2:45 PM, made a long-awaited restroom stop at the Guadalupe Peak Visitors’ Center, and headed down the mountain toward the Pine Springs Safety Rest Center near McKittrick Canyon.

I reached the rest stop around 5:30 PM. This time, no rain, but we decided not to chance it, and instead made the 40-mile drive to Carlsbad for a stay in a decent hotel.

I texted my dad to let him know we had arrived.

3/10/2020: Scheduled Rest Day in Carlsbad–and Bad News

“Get that rest, you deserve it!” turned out to be the last words Dad ever said to me.

At 5:30 AM, just as my wake-up alarm was to go off, Leslie woke me gently to let me know that my dad had passed away late the previous evening, just a few hours after our last text.

There were several unanswered voice messages from my brother and sisters along the lines of “call me” that had not broken through Do Not Disturb. I called them in the order of arrival, starting with my brother Walt, then my sisters, then Mom.

Of course, we were all in shock. Both my eldest sister Vicki and my Mom told me that Dad “would have wanted me to finish the run” and gave me an opportunity to continue running without guilt if I chose not to attend the funeral.

I decided in that moment that first of all, I would most definitely attend Dad’s funeral; secondly, that while I didn’t know offhand what would happen to the run, it would have to happen after I got back; and thirdly, that I could think of no better way to honor him than to fulfill that wish.

But everything in due time. Right now was the time for very, very difficult goodbyes.

3/11/2020-3/16/2020: Hiatus for My dad’s funeral

The 1000-mile drive to Greenwood, MS, where I had once hoped to meet Dad after crossing the Mississippi was at the same time endless and hurried. I spent most of the time corresponding with family members on my cellphone, then later, friends and run followers to let them know what had happened and that I had paused the run for at least a week.

That’s him in the back with my mom, and it’s how I like to remember him: healthy, vigorous, in love with travel and food, and the glue that holds a good family together.

I was touched, even overwhelmed, at the outpouring of sympathy, but something about the process of having to repeatedly acknowledge Dad’s death kept hammering it into my soul. There were times when I couldn’t look up from my phone, and times when I just stared out the window. Those moments came in waves as I thought of something important detail I forgot to mention or some person I forgot to notify.

We called the hotel in Carlsbad and told them we had checked out early and called the hotel in Greenwood to reserve a room. It all felt surreal and mechanical, like putting on your oxygen mask before the plane crashes. It was something to do, but it wasn’t the plane crash itself.

Dad’s funeral was held March 12th. It was heartening in some ways to see family, and a visit had been long overdue. My dad had been a NJROTC teacher during his early years in Greenwood after his retirement from the Navy. Long-time friends and former students showed up all morning during the visitation to pay their respects, and for once, I got to see just how much Dad meant to so many people.

It hit me like a gut punch when the funeral home director announced that they would be closing the casket. I went over to my dad’s side one last time, whispered “Get that rest, you deserve it”, and looked into his face until forced to keep moving. It would be last time I’d ever see it, and I wanted to remember forever the man he had been.

An ultra runner friend told me not long afterwards that the only way to fill a dad-sized hole is to grow up into the man he wanted you to be.

I’m still working on that, Dad.

3/17/2020: Pine Springs TX to Dark Canyon Road outside Carlsbad NM

I resumed running on March 17th, a week after my dad’s passing.

Being back out on the road after the funeral was, in a word, exhausting. I was grateful to be doing something and not lost in thought about the last week’s events, but the excitement I’d anticipated in crossing into New Mexico and running into Carlsbad was now gone. It was just another slog, another day out there. The weather wasn’t great either; it was horribly windy.

At my request, Leslie took a photo of me next to a sign that said “Eddy Canyon Road.” I thought it would be an uplifting tribute to Dad but it just fell flat somehow.

I tried settling back into the routine of texting my mom to let her know how far I’d gone and what I’d seen on the road, but it seemed vain and empty now.

I reached Whites City around 3:00 PM and continued the run toward Carlsbad.

But I didn’t have it in me. We stopped at Dark Canyon Road, ten miles outside of Carlsbad, at 6:00 PM; and before long, I knew that the fanciful notion of a complete day’s running fitting nicely between two towns as start and end points was just that: a fanciful notion, not reality.

3/18/2020: Dark Canyon Rd through Carlsbad to Halfway NM

The roads in and out of Carlsbad weren’t bad. Going into Carlsbad, sometimes there were sidewalks, sometimes sandy shoulder, and sometimes just rocks and weeds. I reached Carlsbad around 10 that morning and made the turn at the McDonalds, then was off toward Halfway NM.

Heading out of town, shoulders were good, wide and flat.

There was cloud cover but it wasn’t the kind that freezes you to the bone by blocking out the sun and bringing the wind with it. Instead, the grayness just hung in the sky. It was just the perfect kind of day for running and thinking, which I did a lot of. I kept looking at the road ahead, expecting rain, but it didn’t come.

I must have stopped near the intersection with CR-31, because I have a picture of it.

3/19/2020: Halfway NM to Sims Rd outside Oil Center / Eunice NM

We were learning to adjust our mileage expectations down to 30-33 miles a day and be happy with it. Our goal for the day was Eunice, NM, home of URENCO, a uranium enrichment facility. Failing that, Oil Center, NM, which had a very nice park that we could spot on a map. Failing that, Sims Road just outside Oil Center. I set off that morning just after sunrise.

March 19th was one of the strangest days I ever experienced on my USA run. The day was for the most part lightly overcast and windy, clearer and calmer in the morning than in the afternoon.

As I reached the turn onto NM-176 around lunchtime, I stopped for a quick lunch where there was enough of a pulloff for Leslie to safely park the van.

There would be spurts of truck traffic from time to time, presumably going to and from either the oilfields, the potassium fields, or the uranium enrichment facility in Eunice.

After lunch, it got windier and the road quality went downhill quite a bit. I spotted a sign that said Marathon Road and thought it was funny. Nobody was going to run a marathon on that road.

Sometimes, the wind would catch my back and push me. I learned to run with my arms at my side, hands pointed toward the ground, to catch as much of the wind as I could and sail it.

Songs came and went from my head, as they usually do: mostly stuff from the late sixties, seventies, and eighties. I think I get this from the the fact that in the early 1980s, I was a radio announcer, and for safety reasons I don’t wear earbuds when I run.

What I remember most strongly from that day was humming Roberta Flack’s song, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, except that in my mind I heard it as “the last time ever I saw your face.” I thought of my dad and I slowed to a walk. I felt a sense of profound loss. I felt his presence in a way that was tangible and real, not ghostly, angelic, or like the hallucinations I was familiar with from my sleep-deprived Austin-to-Corpus run.

We talked for a while. I promised him I’d finish the run, and that I’d leave my running shoes at his gravesite. He said he was proud of me, that he had always been, and that I could do this. Then he said we couldn’t talk any longer, but he’d see me at the finish line.

And then he was gone.

In his place was a feeling that maybe, just maybe, I could finish the run. And now I knew why.

I reached Sims Road, about twelve miles west of the park in Eunice, a little before 5:00 PM. We drove to Hobbs, our “home base” for the next few days. COVID was on our minds, and we had begun to get picky about choosing hotels with good cleaning standards where we could stay for several days. We switched from dine-in to window pick-up, and we were just starting to become conscious of the difficulty in restocking the van at places like WalMart.

3/20/2020: Oil Center / Eunice NM to somewhere outside Andrews TX

Sims Road to Oil Center was relatively quiet. I reached the little park in Oil Center around 1:00 PM, and we took our usual 20-minute lunch break.

From there, the road into Eunice was long and the shoulder was wide, and I started to notice an abundance of washers of all sizes scattered on the road. From that point onward, it came to be a second habit of mine to pick up shiny or unusual looking washers, as I had done with sparkling rocks in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts.

There wasn’t much to Eunice’s downtown, but I did find half a dozen pennies lying on the ground outside Debbie’s Country Kitchen, and it put me in a good mood. And it was nice to have sidewalk for a little while.

As I left Eunice and the sidewalk disappeared, I began to see signs for the Texas state line and Andrews County. But after running some 20 miles from Sims Road through Eunice to the Texas state line, Andrews was still 32 miles away.

Past the Love’s Travel Stop we came upon the Texas state line. I wanted to run at least that far. I laughed when I saw that just on the near side of the state line was a garbage dump of some sort. It seemed that New Mexico wanted it as far from the center of the state as possible. Judging by the smell, I would have wanted the same, but I wondered how Texas felt about it.

I wasn’t up for a 52 mile day, so we found a spot not far past the state line, near TX-176 and Nelson Road, with a distinctive sign that said “Barrow Ranch.” That was about 22 miles west of Andrews, which made a run into Andrews the following day seem reasonable. I stopped there around 6:45 PM and we decided to call it a day.

3/21/2020: Into Andrews TX

The 22 miles into Andrews were fairly quiet and uneventful. The weather was getting misty and a bit on the miserable side, but I was handling it in my rain jacket and winter buff. I didn’t take many selfies, though, because every time I took my hands out of my mittens to take a photo, it would take forever to warm my hands back up.

The cold mist continued for the rest of the day. After twenty-two miles, I decided I had had enough. My blood sugar was low, my legs were cramping, and I was freezing. We stopped in Andrews, got a hot take-out meal, and checked into the hotel.

From there, it was 32 miles to Tarzan, our next destination, and tomorrow’s problem, not today’s.

Meanwhile, Leslie anxiously followed COVID updates in the news. There were beginning to be articles about expected lockdowns in the DFW area, and she was concerned about being stuck out on the road and having to shelter in place somewhere we didn’t actually live.

3/22/2020: Andrews to Tarzan TX

The next morning the weather was better and I felt rested. We started a little after 8:30 AM, and by 3:00 PM, we were twelve miles outside of Tarzan.

Tarzan’s one claim to fame is a place at the intersection of TX-176 and CR-2751 called Tarzan and Jane’s Bar & Grill. It’s got a sign on the side of the building that’s hard to miss.

I reached Tarzan around 6:20 PM in a good mood, ready for the next day’s run into Big Spring. Leslie drove us to the hotel. That’s when she opened up about the true level of her COVID concerns, and the news that some stores were selling out of everything.

We talked over our options: run to Big Spring and pause, try to make it to Abilene, or possibly try to make it to DFW. Each option carried with it a certain amount of risk. We were low on refrigerated supplies but could possibly make it to Abilene. If we did, though, we’d kill several days that could have been spent shopping to stock our own pantry at home, and would likely come up short. If we shopped now, way out in west Texas where people were mostly ignoring the pandemic, maybe we’d have better luck.

3/23/2020: COVID decisions, the return home, and a pause

The next day, we hit three two different grocery stores in Big Spring, both of which had people on a one-roll-per-customer toilet paper ration. Leslie and I shopped separately in hopes of getting a little more of the necessities we had avoided buying while I was trying to burn up the miles.

Remember that wonky issue with the Suunto Ambit 3 quitting not long after 1000 kilometers? Well, as soon as we got home, I tried to synch both Suunto Ambit 3 and Suunto 9 watches.

The image below is the last I ever saw of my workout. Notice the Err:12 in the last image. That’s Finnish for “I didn’t save your workout.”

At least I had had an inkling before that the Ambit 3 might not save my workout. I was genuinely stunned when the Suunto 9 Baro simply refused to acknowledge that it ever existed.

Not that the last “999 miles” photo of the Baro’s face taken around 860 miles was that confidence-inspiring.

We unpacked the van, and I laid my gear out on the living room floor in anticipation of reloading it.

I hoped sanity would return soon, people would stop panic buying, and that I’d be back out at Tarzan in a week.

Then my hope waned to six weeks.

Then June. In late May, I made an announcement on Facebook that we hoped to resume then, but there was a second sharp spike in COVID cases.

Then, in a last false hope, I though maybe July. I had been training all through June in my desert gear in hopes of being ready to run the hot part of Texas at the worst time of year.

I put all these scenarios into our trip planning spreadsheet, which had everything from its own ephemeris to calculate sunrise and sunset and adjust for time zones and daylight savings time, to indirect cell references that extracted hotel information from turn-by-turn cues and amounted to denormalized database, to integrated live and historical weather forecasting from our partner, VisualCrossing.com.

I even had auto-formatting rules that coded the cold or wet days in blue and the hot days in pink (over 80 degrees F) or red (over 90 degrees F).

I finally had to admit that it was too hot, things had not gotten better COVID-wise, and that I just needed to be patient.

In an attempt to teach myself patience–the one skill I realized I had not learned very thoroughly–I took to swimming, which was meditative, and to growing apple trees from seed.

It was a good reminder that things worth doing also take time.

9/24/2020: Tarzan TX to Big Spring TX

A full six months passed, almost to the day, before I had the opportunity to load up, suit up, and get back out on the road. We spotted a lull in COVID cases across Texas and parts of Arkansas, and set our sights for reaching the Mississippi River before another wave hit.

Just before dawn, I paused before the sign I had last seen in March: “Greetings From Tarzan.”

My goal for the day was Big Spring.

I resumed running in Tarzan at 7:40 AM. As I ran down TX-176, the sunrise was, as usual, stunning, tinged orange by the west Texas dust. I entered the town of Lenorah around 8:45 AM and reached the Stripes in Big Spring at the corner of I-20 frontage road and US-87 around 5:00 PM.

Shortly thereafter, we drove to Colorado Springs and our Air B&B, a cottage less than a mile south of our day stop.

This time, we were operating fully under our new COVID protocol: booking through Air B&B, which showed us properties that had been vacant for a week, staying at the same property for as many days as we could, given up to an hour’s drive to our day start or day end, wiping down all surfaces with Clorox Hard Surface Cleaner, and spreading a Tyvek sheet over either a large table or floor so we could lay out our gear and supplies without touching anything. We also booked only single-occupancy properties that had openable windows. In many cases, that meant a cottage or cabin in an extremely low-pedestrian-traffic area.

It had been a long time coming, but it felt good to be back on the road again, running the two-way frontage road next to I-20, and in the Land of Interstate Exit Gas Stations.

9/25/2020: Big Spring to Colorado City TX

I headed out of Big Spring a little before 8:00 AM, missing my desired dawn start by a little due to the drive from Colorado City. But conditions were good: light breeze, sun, and not too blistering hot, at least in the morning.

I reached Coahoma around 9:00 AM. When I was running across Texas, the Dairy Queen in Coahoma was home to a feral momma cat and her kitten. During one of our scouting trips, we stopped by to check on them and the kitten was grown. This time, I didn’t stop at the Dairy Queen. I kept running, thinking good thoughts in the direction of the two cats.

The breeze died off as the day warmed up. I reached Westbrook around 3:00 PM, and Colorado City just after 4:00 PM. By then, temps were in the 90s, with the THI pushing it up another few degrees. The sun was beating down on me and I was walking some spots more than running. I was regularly plowing through my liquids and still drinking hugs quantities when I caught up with the van.

And the next day was supposed to be even hotter.

That night, we had take-out from Kelley Cafe. It is, in the most literal sense of the word, Old School. Kelley Cafe is the brainchild of a former teacher at the converted elementary school. Brenda, the owner, simply converted the old cafeteria into an actual restaurant, rented out some of the old classrooms to local businesses, and used the old gym as a recreational facility for the town.

During my run across Texas, we had stopped there during a downpour and enjoyed an amazingly good homestyle meal. We feared that they might have closed due to COVID, and were anxious to bring them business if they were open at all.

Brenda admits it’s been tough, but yes they’re still there, she’s on top of the town’s carry-out business, and they’re actually thriving despite the odds. The world needs more places like that. Small towns only when we stop feeding them.

9/26/2020: Heat, half day, and Colorado City to Loraine TX

Mostly because I felt like I had had it with the heat, I slept in until 9:00 AM, with the objective of getting as much sleep and food as I could. Once I had lunch (beef Vesuvio at Kelley Cafe), I felt like I could at least walk a few miles, and despite the heat, I was refreshed enough to make it another twelve miles to Loraine.

That was beneficial. I didn’t feel like I had bailed on the day, and I wasn’t trying to beat anyone’s timeline. Twelve miles was good miles, and it put us in Loraine, a little closer to Sweetwater.

It was still plenty hot, and the 12 miles into Loraine were far from enjoyable except for their brevity.

As the frontage road veered away from I-20 and toward Loraine, I ran under a railroad on a narrow road with a bit of a blind curve to it, and had to listen for traffic and time my transit under the bridge. I ran into a townsperson who asked about the run and told me if I were ever back in Loraine he’d buy me a beer. Minutes later, I reached Loraine’s abandoned downtown at 5:20 PM, ran just past it to some stone picnic tables next to the town’s police station, or perhaps it was the town hall; anyway, it had a police car parked next to it. I had remembered that area from my Texas run and it seemed like a good place to stop given our limited goals for the day.

We drove back to the cottage in Colorado City and still had time to wish my older sister a happy birthday.

9/27/2020: Loraine to Eskota Road east of Sweetwater TX

I got started around 6:45 AM in Loraine and was out of town before the sun was up. Loraine really didn’t have much of a downtown, so it was a matter of picking back up at the police station, town hall, park or whatever it was.

I reached Roscoe around 8:45 AM and Sweetwater around 10:30 AM. Leslie had driven ahead to scout a good stopping place and discovered a lone picnic table–with shade–just off the exit to CR-304. She stopped at a Whataburger for pickup and had a mushroom, swiss, and grilled jalapeno burger waiting for me that I wolfed down along with copious amounts of diet root beer we had stockpiled in a cooler in the van.

The day was warm, but not as bad as the previous two days had been.

From Loraine, the next towns were Sweetwater, Trent, and then Abilene. Finishing in Sweetwater would have only put us at 19 miles, and finishing in Trent would have put us at 37 miles, which I wasn’t quite sure I was up for after the previous few days’ activity.

During my training runs for the 223-mile Capital to Coast run, I had tried running in Central Texas in May and discovered that one bad day in the sun can shoot progress out the window for the next several days while you recover from heat stress. So instead of going for Trent, we picked a spot at around 27 miles, about ten miles west of Trent, where the Interstate exited to Eskota Road. It was just past Sweetwater by a few miles and made the next day’s run into Abilene reasonable.

I reached Eskota road around 2:48 PM and decided to get a decent dinner and some extra rest.

It just so happened that this time, we ran into our old friend Brenda, the owner of Kelley Cafe, and managed to get a nice, socially-distanced photo with her. And of course I had the beef Vesuvio…again.

9/28/2020: Eskota Road to Abilene TX, and a TV appearance

We started the day at 8:00 AM, ten miles outside of Trent. Leslie had been talking to KTAB / KRBC-TV in Abilene about trying to arrange an interview once we got into town. We weren’t sure, though, when we’d be in town, and since Abilene (their market) was our days-end goal, it didn’t leave much time to edit the interview and put it into production before the five o-clock news.

Due to the fact that the frontage road ran out where I-20 crossed over a railroad, we also had about 3 miles of backroads and dirt roads to travel to get around it and weren’t sure the crew would find us.

I had just made it through the dirt road section around 9:30 AM and emerged back onto the two-way frontage when Leslie told me that the TV crew had located her and done an interview, and wanted to find me, do an interview as well, and get some shots of me running.

The TV crew caught up with me just outside Trent, near a gas station that was just past a cement-paved section of the almost-forgotten historic Bankhead Highway (yeah, I know: it just keeps finding me).

After the interview, I continued and reached Merkel around 1:30 PM. Leslie parked the van next to a beautiful field of yellow wildflowers and we had lunch and talked about the interview. They had talked to us for a total of about 45 minutes, and a lot of our favorite parts didn’t get included, but I thought they did a great job of summing up what it was like to be out there running, and why.

At around 4:00 PM I reached Tye, on the western outskirts of Abilene, and as I neared the turn for Arnold Boulevard around 5:15 PM, we passed under a bridge along a section of the Bankhead that had been built in 1926. It was still traversable, but it was half-paved, half-dirt, riddled with potholes and wasn’t doing all that well. That said, hanging to the old highway’s route has helped us avoid many deadly multi-lane highways and traffic snarls.

I reached Abilene and finished the day a little after 5:30 PM at the Alon at the corner of Arnold Boulevard and 7th Street.

9/29/2020: Abilene to Baird TX

7th Street in Abilene is not much to talk about. It’s wide and two lanes in either direction, but the shoulder is overgrown with thorn bushes and some pretty unfriendly weeds. I started around 8:00 AM and mostly tried to dodge traffic.

Once I got past that and reached the downtown area around 8:30 AM, there was sidewalk and things quieted down. I ran along 7th past a donut shop and a record store I remembered from the Texas run, until I got to Treadaway and turned south to pick up 11th / CR-36 and head out of town.

I ran past the Zoo and a nice park whose trail I borrowed to get as far as I could toward the underpass at CR-322 / Jake Roberts. For all intents and purposes, Abilene ends there, and I followed the shoulder to my turn onto CR-18 toward Elmdale. There was a gas station just before my turn, then a railroad crossing, and after not long I was back onto the two-way frontage on the south side of I-20.

I started counting off the miles to Clyde, a town where we had stayed at an RV park the previous year during my run across Texas. White’s RV park had a little kitten that seemed to want to be everyone’s friend.

The run into Clyde and then into Baird was, as I had remembered, a bit of a roller coaster of hills. Last year the hills had seemed endless, but perhaps because I was in the area in a cooler part of the year, or perhaps just because I’d been here before, they didn’t seem as noisome as before.

I reached Baird city limits around 4:30 PM, and took a selfie at the Callahan County Courthouse to mark mile 1423 and the official halfway point of my run across the USA.

I continued through Baird until I reached the exit for Finley Road, about 28 miles for the day. We wanted to keep the mileage under 30 for the day since our COVID plan included driving to a cottage on a farm road about 30 miles away in Cross Plains TX and we wanted to be able to locate it before sunset.

Our timing worked out perfectly: we reached the cottage just as the last rays of the sun were peeking over the horizon.

9/30/2020: Baird to Eastland TX

Dawn at the farm cottage was just what you’d expect: serene and beautiful with the sounds of animals waking up. We made the drive back to Finley Road and I continued the run toward Eastland.

That morning, just before leaving the cottage, I decided to open the note from the Tandem team that said “somewhere on the road.” I figured the halfway mark was just about right.

It was a note from Jerry Nairn, who had run the first dozen or so miles with me from Newport Beach. I wondered what Jerry was up to and how the months of nothing but bad national COVID headlines had treated him. I made a mental note to check in with him once I got to the finish line.

It warmed my heart to hear from Jerry, and I hit the road with a little pep in my step. Today was going to be a good day.

I reached Putnam around 10:15 AM. We had discovered during our scouting trip that at Putnam, as had been the case just before Trent, the frontage road gave out at a railroad crossing, necessitating a route-around. I crossed under the Interstate and got onto CR-2945, a quiet two-lane road that took us nearly to the next exit. The same railroad that blocked continuing on the frontage road crossed under the Interstate and ran parallel to 2945 for a while. It just so happened as well that there was a train on it.

Leslie had driven ahead to our next meet point where the two-way I-20 frontage road resumed. Just before the turn on CR-425 to return to the frontage, there was a rather questionable looking railroad crossing, the type that gets semi trucks stuck. The van, apparently had made it over nicely before the train and was waiting on the other side of the Interstate.

As I approached the railroad crossing, the train was just leaving the crossing, and I hopped over to the other side and continued.

My train juju was still strong.

Just after entering the city limits, we hit what could have been a major snag: there was a paving crew on the road up ahead and a “Road Closed” sign just ahead of me.

At about the time I was noticing that and waffling over whether to run it–not an uncommon practice since I was a pedestrian–I got a text from Leslie saying that the road crew had waved her through, that the road was closed for another 3+ miles, and that she’d be waiting on the other side.

For once, I had the road all to myself. But I didn’t want to test my good luck, and I cringed at the thought that we could have easily had to scramble to find an alternate route that would doubtless add miles, so I hurried along the road to get clear of the paving crew.

They waved as I went by.

At around 1:30 PM I reached a picnic area on the south side of the Interstate where Leslie had pulled off and prepared lunch. It was the longest I had waited for lunch in quite a few days, and I was feeling both hungry and a bit rushed by the effort to get past the paving crew.

I no longer remember what it was, but lunch tasted especially good that day.

I reached Cisco around 3:00 PM and unlike the previous year when I’d continued along the frontage to the turn into Eastland, this time I turned at the Flying J truck stop along CR-206 / CR-6. Heading diagonally through Cisco toward Eastland shaved a mile or so off our original route through Texas, and looking back at our forced USA re-route in Arizona, I was glad I had eliminated every mile I could.

By the way, that is the real font on that Cisco sign. It’s not Photoshopped.

In Cisco, I ran into a lady who asked me if I knew Jesus. I told her it was impossible to run across the country and not meet God. She asked me about my run and what it was for, handed me a bottled water, and prayed for healing. I wished her a blessed day and returned to running, anxious to not fall behind on miles again, and at the same time anxious to get done well enough before sunset that we could find our accommodations without a flashlight.

CR-6 wasn’t a bad route, but it was fairly featureless compared even to the I-20 frontage. At around 4:30 PM somewhere near CR-177 I ran past a field full of rusted antique cars, and finally reached Eastland city limits around 6:00 PM. It was 6:30 PM by the time I reached the post office downtown, and I stopped at the Brookshire’s at Main and Seaman 3 blocks past it.

It was a good day. I logged 28 miles, and we even still had an hour to make it back to the farmstead in Cross Plains.

10/1/2020: Eastland to Strawn TX

The next morning I started running around 7:30 AM. Dawn wasn’t what I would call stunning, but I’ve come to appreciate that every one of them is beautiful. Keeping in mind that I’m not a morning person. I run at dawn because I like finishing before sunset. But dawn is a part of the day that many people aren’t up early enough to see, and in just a handful of minutes the color of the sky can change rapidly.

I still had to run the remainder of the town’s restaurant and hotel district, perhaps a couple of miles, to reach the frontage road heading toward Ranger. Just next to Heff’s burgers I spotted a little heartbreaker: a feral kitten who had camped outside to hunt leftovers. She seemed to be doing all right.

From there, Ranger is about six miles away, mostly north, and I reached Ranger without much ceremony by around 10:30 AM.

We had to route through Ranger. Here’s why. First, the Interstate frontage gives out not long east of Eastland, just before the Eastland County Safety Rest Area. The road goes on for a bit, through the next town or two, then it gives out as the road rises up a steep hill and an area of Interstate once called “one of the most dangerous roads in Texas.” (It would perhaps come lower in the last than TX-302 between Orla and Kermit, however.) For the last year, crews have been working to widen the Interstate, move it a bit further south, and build a frontage road paralleling it. But it’s going to be a long, drawn-out process since there’s really no frontage road east of the rest area for miles and miles. Finally, even if one did follow I-20 frontage (which isn’t there) toward the southwest side of Ft. Worth, I-20 joins I-30 in what amounts to a very, very busy tangle of roads, and there are only a couple of ways to enter the Metroplex on local roads.

It’s far easier to head through Ranger, navigate the narrow, two-lane CR-717 toward La Casa, and then head east along CR-207 to Strawn. It’s not shorter, but it’s a lot less hassle. Perhaps a year from now somebody somewhere will be able to take advantage of a more direct route. But not me.

Heading out of Ranger is one of the strangest sights I’ve seen, and unfortunately I don’t have pictures from this year’s run (I do from my run cross Texas): it was signs on the east side of the road in multiple locations that said “Prohibited Area.” Now think about that. If you just want to keep trespassers out, wouldn’t the signs say “No Trespassing”? Since they don’t, what gives? If you look at the area on satellite, there’s nothing but dirt roads, a medium-sized lake, and a house on the northeast side.

I’m always happy to be past that area.

CR-207 into Strawn went on and on and on. Every year I swear that section is windier and sunnier than the last. When I reached the nondescript intersection with CR-16 around 6:00 PM, I was hungry, thirsty, had too much sun for my liking, was tired of the wind blowing at my hat, my feet hurt, and we had our longest drive of the week back to the farm cottage still ahead of us.

The one bright spot in my day: my friend Fiona Taylor’s young son Alexander, who’s been following the run and sharing about it at show and tell, made me this trophy and finisher medal:

Kinda makes my end-of-day physical check-in seem a little whiny, doesn’t it?

At his age, Alexander understands that grown-ups sometimes need encouragement, too, and that is why he is my hero.

10/2/2020: Strawn to Mineral Wells TX

Not long after left Strawn headed north on CR-16 toward Metcalf Gap, I kept hearing this load roaring noise similar to what I had heard in Box Canyon outside Mecca, CA. But I never could see anything. I knew that we were far from any airstrips, so I thought the sound might be some kind of industrial equipment over a low hillside, just beyond my view.

Not implausible, since somewhere between Strawn and Mineral Wells are the far North ends of the Texas Hill Country that runs all the way down to Austin, TX and beyond. But it didn’t seem likely somehow. And no matter how far I ran, it sounded like the noise never got any quieter. I looked up into the sky and couldn’t see any obvious passenger jets, and to be honest, the area isn’t really on anyone’s route.

Then I finally caught sight of a couple of fighter jets. I had to zoom in the absolute maximum amount–which of course makes the picture jiggle–but I was able to catch an image of the noisemaker.

At least that occupied my attention from 8:30 AM-ish to just after 10:00 AM.

I reached Metcalf Gap, where CR-16 T’s into US-180, a wide and nicely-paved US highway mostly gifted with a wide shoulder around 1:00 PM, and celebrated reaching the 1500-mile mark. From there, Palo Pinto is about 6 miles east, and Mineral Wells another 12. Along the way, I could see remnants the 2011 Texas wildfires that destroyed over 1000 acres of trees.

I also found a roadside picnic area in a shaded turn just west of Palo Pinto. It was a brief but welcome rest; and around 4:45 PM, at the far western edge of Mineral Wells, I again encountered remnants of the old Bankhead Highway.

I reached Mineral Wells city limits at 5:30 PM and continued into town past the Washing Machine Museum (around 6:15 PM) to a bank parking lot, reachable from both sides of the now-divided US-180 highway, where Leslie had parked the van. I finished the day some time around 6:40 PM and climbed into the van for the ride to our new “home base” in a restored 1960s-era bungalow in Ft. Worth.

10/3/2020: Mineral Wells to Azle / Lakeside TX

I headed out of Mineral Wells along the shoulder of US-180, reaching the spot where the trail follows the path of an old railroad and crosses the highway by the Vietnam War Museum around 9:30 AM. It was straight highway with decent shoulder until I reached Cool at around 10:15 AM. About three miles past that Leslie had stopped to prepare a hot lunch of soup, and when I arrived, we shared the area with a group of motorcyclists who revved up and left not long after I had finished my soup.

Beyond Cool, there were a few spots where the shoulder narrowed or sloped, or the space between road and guardrail didn’t amount to much, but not many.

It felt like forever before I reached the outskirts of Weatherford around 1:45 PM.

It felt like even longer before I actually reached my turn into CR-730 at the Malt Shop. I have fond memories of meeting T1D friends (hi, Stratton!) and enjoying a hamburger and a malted, a rate treat for someone who has to watch his blood sugar. This year, it was merely a spot on the map, a place to mark a turn, and a chance to get some water at the van before heading north on the hilly section of road that eventually led to Azle, Lakeside, and the northwest edge of the DFW Metroplex.

Just outside Dicey, around 5:00 PM, I spotted a balloon done in the style of the old 1970s “Have a Nice Day” buttons.

I had to smile. But I also had to keep running. The previous year, my stop at the Malt Shop had cost me just enough time to hit Azle’s narrow roads and nearly nonexistent shoulders at sunset. I did not intend to make that mistake again.

I reached the A to Z grocery, a convenience store in Azle, a little before sunset, and for once, had the sense to stop there and call it a day.

10/4/2020: Azle / Lakeside to Ft Worth TX (Western Center Rd & Beach)

We started the day at the A to Z grocery in Azle a little after 7:00 AM. CR-1886 / Confederate Parkway was narrow, and busy at times. For the next ten miles or so, I dealt with the appearance and disappearance of little bits of civilization. A neighborhood would pop up out of nowhere and I’d have a decent flat shoulder or at least mown grass. Then it would be back to narrow shoulder and sloped culverts again. The cars kept coming, no doubt fueled by the little town’s proximity to DFW.

Once I reached the Shell station at TX-199 / Jacksboro Highway, I let out a sigh of relief. All I had to do was get across the bridge into Lakeside and the going would improve significantly. I crossed the highway and ran along the paved sidewalk at the bridge’s southern side, and by 10:15 AM, I was in Lakeside with better part of the day still ahead of me.

As I ran along the highway shoulder, I spotted a couple of large black birds I thought might be turkey buzzards.

By 11:30 AM I was in Lake Worth. Leslie had gotten carry-out at a Burger King nearby and I wolfed down lunch. Fellow type 1 Steve Shertzer spotted our van during our lunch break and posted about it on Facebook. With COVID precautions forcing us to avoid meetups as much as we could, it felt nice to be connected to someone who cared about the same things we did.

I was anxious to get past the narrow, somewhat busy section of Ten Mile Bridge road that came after my turn off the highway and onto Hodgkins. It was getting warmer and I wasn’t enjoying it, and I was also a bit concerned about an upcoming section of the route along Cromwell Marine Road and McLeroy that I had modified from the previous year’s Texas run, as it had looked quiet on paper and during scouting trips.

The road turned out to be not only busy, but absent of any kind of shoulder except tall grass, and on McLeroy, loamy soil. I had to step off into tall weeds constantly and wait for what seemed like a constant stream of cars. On McLeroy, my shoes sank into soil, but at least it wasn’t muddy. That said, I was glad to be off of it.

I reached Saginaw around 3:00 PM, the roads improved, and I met up with Leslie in Blue Mound where McLeroy T’d into Western Center Boulevard for a quick cool-down and refreshment break.

There was a cop hiding his car in the shadow of a nearby church to catch speeders on McLeroy, but it made me nervous to sit for long, so I got moving again.

Looking back, that was probably a mistake. I had been skimping on my cooldown and rest breaks, not getting enough time off my feet. The big blister on my right foot that had introduced itself as a “hot spot” way back in west Texas was now acting up again, and I could feel it pulling as I limped the last few miles.

I had intended to run farther, perhaps to the beginning of the Cotton Belt Trail just east of Watauga, but I didn’t have it in me. I stopped at the Walgreens at the intersection of Western Center and Beach Street, 24 miles for the day, and we took our rest day, as once before, one day early.

10/5-10/6/2020: (Un)rest(ful) Days at Home

We drove home from Western Center and Beach. It was nice to have a chance to sleep in our own bed.

When we arrived, there were a couple of surprises. First, the good news: my friend Tanya Conovaloff at Greater Dallas JDRF had sent me a JDRF MyRide yard sign and a very nice personalized note wishing me luck on the Run Across America.

Now the bad news: we discovered that a motion sensor alarm that had gone off several days earlier had actually been caused by an implosion of the interior panel of our glass patio door, which had sagged into the blinds and caused movement. The outer glass door was fine.

We still don’t know what caused the issue, but we were grateful that it occurred in a double-pane area, so there was no environmental exposure.

I unwrapped my feet, removing the tape and blister pads, and got a good twelve hours of sleep. Leslie ordered some thick orthopedic felt for making new blister dressings, which we hoped would arrive in time for us to drive back from the route and pick up before we got too far from Dallas.

I took two rest days to try to heal my blisters a bit, and ate like a horse.

Meanwhile, we planned to resume running after our next two rest days, this time from Ft. Worth into Dallas.

10/7/2020: Ft Worth to Dallas TX

I resumed running at 7:45 AM on October 7th, a Wednesday.

Traffic wasn’t bad along Western Center, and in the post-dawn hours, the running was cool and quiet. I even had good Porta-potty juju: not far from my start was a construction site (as a COVID precaution, I don’t like to use restrooms at high-traffic gas stations, and to me, Porta-potties seem less risky and better ventilated).

At 9:30 AM, I reached the Cotton Belt Trail in Colleyville about miles away and enjoyed some time away from the road. Eventually the trail rejoined CR-26, well after I had passed the busiest section of the road.

By 10:30 AM I was in Grapevine. Leslie and I made a quick refreshment stop past where CR-26 turned into Dallas Road and entered an industrial district. I made the turn onto Texan Trail (actually a road), passed under a railroad bridge, and turned right at the Great Wolf Lodge to head toward to head onto the paved bike trail that would lead me toward Grapevine Mills Mall.

It was there around 12:30 PM that I encountered Linda Petry Kruse, who had been following the run. Her niece and her best friend’s sister both live with Type 1. She was following the live tracker and had cycled out to where I was to give me some extra company through Grapevine. She rode a little behind me, or sometimes on the opposite side of the road, until I caught up with the van in Coppell. It was good to have someone to talk to as the morning got warmer and sunnier.

When I reached Coppell, I was greeted by two friends: Tanya Conovaloff of the Greater Dallas JDRF office, and by my friend Patricia Daiker, a fellow Type 1 and RN who runs a diabetes burnout program called Better Diabetes Life. She was holding a sign up when I arrived at the van. I also met Erika Slater, who had been following the run online and tweeted about it.

I took a short break for lunch and continued running. A little further down the road, I encountered a couple of girls from a local high school’s media program, who recorded a video interview. It was a welcome break, and they were just as professional as a “real” news crew. Just like the news team in Abilene, they had even made appropriate arrangements to keep social distance during the interview.

As I reached my turn onto Kelly Boulevard in Carrollton around 3:45 PM, it was starting to get warmer. I was glad I had chosen to wear my desert running shirt, despite the fact that at day start it had been a bit chilly. I ran past the Shell station at Trinity Mills Road, where I had stopped the previous year for a water refill and a quick snack. I longed for their air conditioning, but I kept going, reached my turn into Frankford Road, and the last part of the day’s run into Dallas.

I reached the Dallas North Tollway and my day stop at the grocery store on the northeast corner around 6:30 PM.

I was officially off the clock. My rest day had begun. In fact, Leslie and I decided, we’d take two rest days and try to give my feet another break. I went inside with enough gear to change into civilian clothes, unwrapped my feet, and began my usual routine of gathering up dirty clothes, getting a shower, and unwinding–this time without the rush to get gear ready for the next day.

As Leslie was driving around the block to reposition the van in front of the house, the engine died. She was able to restart the engine, but now the Check Engine light was on, and stayed on.

We used our second rest day to take the van into the service department at our local Mercedes dealership. They diagnosed the problem as a bad fuel pump. That didn’t come as much of a surprise, as we had experienced a similar problem during my run across Iowa. This time, they said, they were pretty certain the problem was the fuel pump and not anything that had been through it. They offered to replace the fuel pump, and said it would be ready the next day.

Accordingly, we planned an extra rest day. My feet needed the extra time anyway.

10/8/2020-10/10/2020: Waiting for vehicle repairs

Just about when the repairs were do to be finished, the Mercedes dealership called back to inform us that the fuel pump had actually overheated, swollen, and fused itself to the gas tank–which of course was a special-order $2500 part that would take a few days to arrive and replace.

Don’t get me wrong: I love that van, but I have never been so glad I purchased an extended warranty for a vehicle.

For the next three days, I mostly just rested, ate, and waited on repairs. What had originally been intended as a single rest day was starting to look more like a week.

And after two days, I was getting anxious to be making some progress–any progress–on the run.

10/11/2020: Dallas to Wylie TX, crewing from the Subaru

My feet were feeling good and I had time to kill, so I suited up and Leslie put some supplies that weren’t actually in the van into the Subaru.

I decided that I’d get in whatever miles I could, but was hopeful that I’d make it from Dallas to Wylie, about 20 miles. We didn’t want to push the Subaru that far, as it had been sitting on a trickle charger to keep the battery good, and I wasn’t 100% sure I had connected the trickle charger correctly enough to actually keep a good charge on the battery. The last thing I wanted was to be 35 miles from home with neither vehicle in running condition.

My route from Frankford and the Dallas North Tollway took me farther east on Frankford until it reached Waterford near the University of Texas Dallas’s Richardson campus, at which point it joined up with a training route I was already familiar with running along the bike paths on Renner. Along that bike path is a bench placed there by a family whose son died in a motorcycle accident. That was years ago, but to this day, they always place flowers on the bench.

I allowed myself to relax in the familiar surroundings, and before long I was east of Central / US-75. I reached the Spring Creek Nature Preserve in Richardson around 11:00 AM, the turn onto Murphy Road into Murphy TX by 1:00 PM, and the abstract sculptures in Wylie’s park along Brown Street northeast of FM-544 and Country Club Road around 2:00 PM.

I stopped at the RaceTrac at Brown and TX-78 and called an end to the day around 2:30 PM. At the very least, no matter what happened with the van, we mad managed to move our marker forward and make up for short mileage on previous days.

10/12-10/13/2020: Still waiting on vehicle repairs

The next two days were spent pulling up ragweed from garden beds, going through accumulated mail, and picking up the van.

Then we discovered rather late in the second evening that not only was one of our Dometic refrigerators not working, but neither was the DC splitter we had plugged into our Arkpak. It turned out that the electrical contact on the end of the Dometic’s DC power cord had come unscrewed and stuck in the splitter, which we had thrown into the kitchen garbage and taken out to the alleyway.

Around 10 PM, long after I had hoped to be in bed and gathering sleep for the next days’ run into Greenville, I was digging through the kitchen garbage to find the missing piece of the Dometic DC power cord. After taking the splitter out of the garbage, recovering the part, and screwing it back on, both the splitter and the Dometic worked perfectly.

10/14/2020: Wylie to Greenville TX

By the time I resumed running at the RaceTrac in Wylie, I was more than ready to get going. My route continued along Brown Street to Wylie East High School, then jogged right slightly to continue on Bennett, a quiet tree-lined road that allowed me to avoid a portion of the busy FM-544 that was one of my few ways east out of the Metroplex. 544 wasn’t particularly pedestrian-safe, but it was better than the alternatives and there was only a short section where I had to run on a grassy berm to get to the sidewalk in Lavon. And even that had been mowed.

Along the way there were a couple of gas stations and a Sonic whose parking lots offered some reprieve from running in the weeds.

At 10:45 AM I came upon Jeff’s BBQ, right at my turn for FM-543. They wouldn’t open for another fifteen minutes, but I texted Leslie that I would continue running and perhaps she should backtrack and pick up some barbecue for lunch.

I had just passed the Josephine water tower, which actually comes a bit before the actual town, when Leslie drove by and beeped the horn to let me know she had returned from Jeff’s. She pulled the van over at the next pull-off and we had lunch.

There’s something about barbecue that makes it taste better when it’s cooked on a smoker outside a small trailer than it does when cooked in a commercial smoker in a big building with air conditioning. It was some of the best BBQ I’ve had.

From there, I resumed running the rest of the way along FM-543 until it changed names to FM-596 at the Valero, continued past the Valero and onto a narrow road I had remembered running a year ago on my Texas run. Only this time, I wasn’t nursing a bulging disk and swollen ankle, it wasn’t mercilessly hot, I wasn’t half loping, half limping my way to the Shell at CR-6, and the road was freshly blacktopped and felt like carpet to run on.

We had changed the route a little after running Texas in order to avoid CR-66 out of Caddo Mills, which seemed incredibly busy with no shoulder and steep drop-offs. This time, I ran only a short section of 6 to Caddo Mills.

Along CR-6 I ran past Caddo Mills’s International Order of Oddfellows (IOOF) Cemetery. My dad was a member of the fraternal lodge’s north Mississippi chapter for many years and had worked his way up through the ranks into a position on the Bylaws Committee where he could do one of the things he did best: taking a disorganized administrative mess and make something beautiful and organized out of it that anyone would have been proud to be a part of.

I had looked forward to sending him the photograph above, to let him know I had reached the IOOF cemetery and was thinking of him. Instead, all I could do was think of him lying in one in Greenwood, MS, awaiting my eventual appearance to keep the promise I had made back in Carlsbad.

Once I reached Caddo Mills, I ran a few blocks of CR-66, turned onto CR-36 and crossed the railroad tracks to head toward the Interstate. CR-36 turned out to be irritatingly busy. It was one of the few roads I hadn’t scouted because it represented only a short section of the route. I found myself constantly having to step off the road, and eventually just gave up and ran in the packed dirt of the ditch on the north side of the road.

I was greeted by a collarless black dog who couldn’t decide if he wanted to be territorial or curious. His owners came out and retrieved him a short time later.

I turned onto CR-1903 and the road got less busy, but not by much. Once I reached the Interstate, I was truly glad to be off those roads.

Once on the I-30 frontage road, I headed toward Greenville, reaching the city limits around 4:45 PM. The frontage road turned one-way just past Monty Stratton Parkway. It was far from my preference to run with traffic at my back, and as a matter of general principle I don’t do it. But it was either this route or CR-66, which seemed riskier. I walked through tall weeds for about a mile as shadows lengthened, finally reached the turn onto Wesley, and headed into Greenville’s downtown.

I reached the Central Christian Church across from the Post Office at Wesley and Washington at 6:30 PM, about 20 minutes before sunset.

We drove back home along US-380 and prepared again to move our “home base” for running further east.

10/15/2020: Greenville to Sulphur Springs TX

The run out of Greenville was also a bit of a route change. Previously, we had stayed in a hotel a bit further south and had avoided running through the downtown area, simply skirting most of the town along the south and east sides. This time, I ran from downtown east along Lee street and rejoined my old, familiar route along the I-30 north frontage east of town in Ardis Heights. The morning was clear and sunny, but that was the last I saw of the sun all day.

As almost always seems to be the case, I ran into light mist east of Greenville that threatened to become actual rain if it felt like it. I spotted a sign for a long-gone motel and for a moment marveled at the number of such signs and similar indications of change I had seen since leaving Newport Beach.

I reached Campbell at around 11:45 AM and since we weren’t far from the Campbell Travel Center (gas station), Leslie pulled off a short distance away and I grabbed a snack. I found myself anxious to get moving again because I was still wearing my desert running shirt, now soaked in a mix of rain and sweat, and every time I stopped running I felt cold.

I continued running, warmed by the effort, and reached the rest station at Cumby around 12:45 PM. Both Leslie and I took a short break there to get a real lunch and talk about the rest of the day’s running.

Around 3:00 PM I reached Brashear, where I noticed traffic was backing up on the adjoining highway. It made me glad I was on the frontage and that there were few exits in the area. I half expected to see traffic exiting on the grass and making it to the frontage, but that didn’t happen.

Although it was wet, chilly, and a bit miserable, I continued until the exit for US-67 and Sulphur Springs and reached the outskirts of town by 5:00 PM. I don’t remember it from last year, but this time I noticed that US-67 had wide ditches of packed earth that were pleasant to run upon and stopped only where a creek or culvert crossed the road. It made for fairly fast running, although it was a bit more like trail than road.

Around 6:00 PM ran into my old Type 1 friend and Sulphur Springs Resident Gary Simmons and his wife Amanda, just before visiting the town’s Ministry of Silly Walks sign (I was too tired to attempt a silly walk without holding onto the sign) and glass restrooms.

I continued the remaining 2.5 miles. I was losing sunlight as I got to my turn at Russell, but thanks to the overcast skies that stayed with me for nearly the whole day, I was already wearing my LED Light Vest. I turned it on, made the turn and ran the last little bit of CR-313 / Business 67 toward my final meetup for the day with Leslie at the Days Inn parking lot on the I-30 frontage. As I walked up to the van, it was 6:45 PM and the sun was setting.

10/16/2020: Sulphur Springs to Mt Pleasant TX

I started running the next morning at 6:45 AM, trying to catch the earliest sunlight of the slowly shortening days.

The road was quiet, with decent shoulder for most of the way, at least early on, and the weather was cool but dry. Just past White Oak Junction, the frontage road unceremoniously diverged and became US-67.

I arrived in Weaver right around 10:00 AM and encountered a road crew that had one-laned the road and was directing traffic with a stop sign and a pilot vehicle. Just before that, there were two signs, one of which read Weaver Cemetery. The other said Picnic Area. Sometimes when you’re out there running all day and getting buzzed by traffic, you find moments like this way more amusing than they should be. All I could think of was: ZOMBIES!

I ran past the road crew, using the ditch as they had directed, and once clear of them, continued to the Saltillo Post Office, where I arrived around 11:30 AM. I reached Mt. Vernon around 1:15 that afternoon, where I made the left turn onto CR-37. I don’t remember whether we had lunch in Saltillo or Mt. Vernon, but I do remember that as I ran past Mt. Vernon’s police station, there was a Porta-potty on the hillside just before the road went under a railroad bridge. That is because my restroom-locating juju is strong.

I would come to see that stretch of road again and again, as our new accommodations east of DFW for several days would be Selah Ranch, a Christian get-away whose main attractions included disc golf, community activities, and two secluded cabins that were for rent through Air B&B. The facility wasn’t very busy, so we rented a cabin and it was very nice.

Outside Mt. Vernon and west of CR-2040 I met Bodie. Bodie is a very friendly black lab with a white “southpaw” on his left foreleg. I believe he was someone’s pet, but he was happy with run with me for a while. I gave him some water, told him he was a good boy!, and continued running.

You can’t take them all home.

I reached Winfield around 3:30 PM and just over an hour later encountered a rather large spider who had decided to make his home on a guardrail I decided to take a pass on.

I reached the outskirts of Mt. Pleasant just before 6:00 PM and stopped at the Shell station on the western edge of town near the hotel district.

All in all, it was a good day.

10/17/2020: Mt Pleasant to Dalby Springs TX

I left the Shell station around dawn, ran the remainder of US-67 into downtown until the shoulder ran out at the Valero at Edwards Avenue. From there, I turned north, then east along a residential street that emerged onto Jefferson near a Sonic, retracing my previous route from the Texas run. As I crossed US-67 / 16th Street, I came across a sign that said “Guitars Guns Ammo Jewelry Tools.” For the next 20 minutes, I had Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes running through my head.

I reached the turn onto 14th Street at Jorge’s. I don’t remember 14th Street as being so wonderfully canopied by trees, but you’ll get some sense of how it was from the photo above. Streets like that are one of the things I love about these long runs. You can’t make that in a factory.

14th Street rejoined US-67 a short while later, and for a little while, I enjoyed decent shoulder. A good portion of the remainder of the day was running along the shoulder of 67 (wait for it…the route of the historical Bankhead Highway!) through Cookville and Omaha. It was in Cookville the previous year that I met Cookie, a smart, playful, and extremely loyal stray black lab. According to a man who lived in the area, she had roamed back and forth among a cluster of houses until her partner, another stray, had been hit by a car. I think she missed that companionship. During the Texas run, she ran with me six miles to the Dollar General on the far eastern side of town, near Omaha; we rewarded her with a bag of dried beef and some freeze dried chicken, gave her a big hug, and when we returned to the Dollar General, she was waiting for us. I had given her a big hug that I hoped she would remember along with our little act of kindness, and it nearly broke my heart to leave her.

As I passed the Dollar General, I thought of Cookie and I hoped she was all right. The store had a fair bit of traffic and was only a couple blocks from the Cookville Volunteer Fire Department, and I hoped for the best.

Meanwhile, Leslie drove ahead to Omaha to purchase a surprise treat for me: donuts! We had stopped by Omaha’s donut shop during the Texas run and wanted to make sure to pay them a second visit if we could.

The bulk of US-67 is four-laned in that area; so while the shoulder isn’t much to write home about, if motorists are paying attention they’ll often change lanes to let you run. Nevertheless, it wasn’t my favorite stretch of road, and one of the route modifications we had made after the Texas run was to get me off US-67 sooner.

As before during the Texas run, I got off 67 and ran along CR-3150 / 3314 / Old Mt. Pleasant Highway, into Omaha.

This time, however, instead of continuing on 67 to 98, I turned north at US-259. We stopped near there for lunch from Rear of the Steer (decent, but not as good as Jeff’s BBQ), and throughout the rest of the afternoon, provided that my blood sugar allowed for it, I treated myself to donut holes and bits of a bear claw pastry.

US-259 seemed to be one long section of repeating endless bridges. I have to presume this is because it crosses the backwaters of the Sulphur River, the same river that prevents I-30 from having any frontage road for many, many miles. The bridges made it difficult sometimes for Leslie to find a good spot to park the van, and I had been trying to push mileage for the last few days, so I really didn’t care much for the interminable “bridginess” of the road. The shoulders by the guardrail were never wide enough to make me feel comfortable catching a rest for any period of time, and traffic was fast. In one spot at least, the road was 2-laned, there was no shoulder on the bridge and no away round it, and I just had to wait for a long gap in traffic and run like hell to get to the other side.

Eventually, I was past the bridges and the road dwindled down to two lanes, no shoulder, and a steep embankment. The road was tree-lined, the skies were overcast, and I didn’t have the forethought to wear my LED Light Vest.

Be careful what you wish for.

I reached the turn for Dalby Springs, bout half a mile past Backwoods BBQ (which also appeared to be a gas station), onto CR-561, around 4:45 PM. For a short while, I debated stopping there. Instead, I got the light vest from Leslie and continued on CR-561 along a very quiet road with a chilly breeze blowing. I remember thinking that for the last few days I had felt more of that chill than the all-day sun of west Texas. The season was definitely changing.

At around 6:00 PM, I reached the intersection with I-30 (technically Ward Creek, I think), our stop for the day, and I climbed into the van for the drive back to Selah Ranch.

That night, Leslie and I talked about how the COVID numbers were looking for Arkansas, whether we had found any COVID-safe Air B&Bs along the route that might serve as a reasonable “home base” for the run across Arkansas, and read reports of a possible third wave of infections and the usual accompanying government directives, lockdowns, and panic buying that went with them.

At least, we told ourselves, we had managed another 550 miles across Texas, hopefully to be completed by the end of the next day.

10/18/2020: Dalby Springs TX to Texarkana AR

As usual, I started at dawn, though the clouds made it hard to tell the sun was even up. It was cold and windy. I reached Ward Creek Baptist Church by 7:15 AM, Siloam by 8:00 AM, and then a section of the route I had been unable to scout before, which I was hoping, based on satellite views, was paved. In fact, it was. I turned onto CR-990, where I spotted a painting-like farm structure, then along a series of short paved roads that eventually connected us back to US-67 at Simms near the Post Office, just past the section of 67 that I had found dangerous and wished to avoid.

The remainder of US-67 wasn’t bad, and this time, instead of turning onto 98, we continued toward Corley, which I reached around noon. About half an hour later, I was in Maud, and we paused for a quick lunch.

You’ll notice in one of the pictures that the street sign says Broadway. That’s not a coincidence. When the Bankhead was built, it was hailed as “The Broadway of Roads.” Many small towns changed the name of the road where the Bankhead ran through town to Broadway. And if you haven’t already guessed, we were back on the historic Bankhead Highway.

“Bankhead Highway, I just can’t quit you.”

By 2:30 PM I was in Redwater, still a fairly rustic, rural area. But there is a military facility nearby, and not surprisingly, there was some traffic, which picked up considerably as we got closer to Texarkana.

Just outside Wake Village, there’s a quiet road called Old Redwater Road, which eases into the Metropolitan area without most of the accompanying traffic of a medium-sized city. I reached Wake Village on the outskirts of Texarkana via Old Redwater Road, at around 5:15 PM, and reached the Texarkana, TX city limits at around 5:50 PM.

Sunset was supposed to be around 6:30 PM, so I had about 40 minutes to make the remaining three miles to State Line Road. I met Leslie where Westlawn, which Redwater Road becomes east of I-369, merges onto US-82, and let her know I was going to try to make it to State Line Road. I had already run over 37 miles and if all went well, State Line Road would mark a 39-mile day, the longest since September 24th.

I hauled it as fast as I could along US-82, bore right onto Texas Boulevard where the road T’s, and took a small residential street, 16th, through a dodgy-looking neighborhood that was probably better avoided at sunset. Some kids were playing soccer in a field nearby and the ball escaped the field onto the street. I kicked it back, waved, and wished them a good game.

A few blocks later, the road jogged right-left just a bit onto 14th, and given the waning light, Leslie had taken to driving ahead just a block or two at a time, marking the turns. That was the last of them. Two blocks after that, almost exactly at sunset, I emerged onto State Line Road, between Red Wing Shoes (what better to mark the day’s end than a shoe store?), a liquor store, and the local offices of the Texarkana Democratic Party. Draw whatever conclusions you want.

Finally, we had made it across the largest state in the US for the second time, out of Texas, to mile marker 1800 exactly, and were now officially in Arkansas.

10/19/2020 to 3/1/2021: Second COVID pause

After arriving in Texarkana, my wife (and crew chief!) and I looked at the Johns Hopkins COVID numbers for the deep South. They were profoundly disappointing. I will still a little jazzed after getting in another 550 miles the rest of the way across Texas, and I kept hoping we could make it another 200 miles across Arkansas while we had a good head of steam.

Every time we had to pause: first for my dad’s funeral, then the first time for COVID lockdowns, I felt like not only was my goal of running across the country getting farther away; but also like by the time we had a good window of opportunity to resume the run, we’d lose it in the week or so it took to restock the van and repack my gear.

In the mean time, I tended to the apple trees I had planted from seed during the first COVID pause. The largest of them was now almost a foot tall. That brought me some peace, but it also reminded me that time was passing and I hadn’t continued my run yet.

I stubbornly refused to wear my GPS locator beacon during training runs in order to keep my USA run record as clean as I could. After a tracker failure in Nogales and TWO Suunto watches that both had the same bug of eating workouts after 1000 kilometers, I felt snakebit. Regardless, I clung to the kernel of hope of resuming the run. I no longer entertained fantasies of creating some kind of new FKT or other record, but I still left most of my gear in the van except diabetes supplies and continued my training runs in ratty old gym shorts, shirts, and jackets that I had stopped wearing for good reason (too cold, didn’t fit), and old, nearly-worn-out running shoes. But as winter set in, my mood soured.

3/2/2021: Texarkana AR to Stamps AR

Before resuming my run, I wanted to carry on a tradition made popular in the Facebook USA Crossers group. A number of years ago, a kid gave one of the USA Crossers a $5 bill to use “in case of emergencies.” That fiver was passed to another transconner from the original recipient as a sort of “good luck on your run” token. I received it back in February 2020, and with only 1000 miles to go and a good chance of finishing, I signed and passed the $5 bill along to Steve Meyer.

We were also starting to amass quite the team of mascots, including a crazed-looking pepper we had nicknamed Dr. Pepper (to represent Texas), a Mickey Mouse plush toy and Coco the Diabetic Monkey (a joint venture of Disney and Lily Diabetes), as well as one of several plush toys we kept finding on the runs: a small yellow duck we nicknamed Duck Fiabetes. Finally, fellow Type 1 Tode Jovanosky, who had been following the run from North Macedonia, sent us his nation’s flag and asked us to carry it to the beach.

We had every intention of doing so, and for some reason, when March 2, 2021 came, I felt like we could. After spending about a week packing and stocking the van and double- and triple-checking our daily mileage plan and cue sheets, both Leslie and I felt ready to go.

I set out from State Line road in Texarkana, AR right around sunup, and snapped the first picture above of the quiet residential street I would follow back to US-82, a highway I intended to follow, with rare exception, all the way through Arkansas, Mississippi, and into Tuscaloosa, AL.

It wasn’t long before we were beyond the city limits and back out in open country. Right around lunchtime, I passed a crumbled old building that looked like it might have once been a general store. That was the America I had seen a lot of in the first 1800 miles of my run, and it instantly restored my sense of acquaintance with the open road.

There were the occasional odd things, such as the largish bone I encountered mid-afternoon, but for the most part, things were quiet.

One of the adaptations we had been forced by COVID precautions to make was to locate well-ventilated lodging (usually with windows that could be opened), wipe the hard surfaces with disinfectant, and spread out a sheet of Tyvek on which to put our luggage. We also brought a CO2 monitor so we could determine when the air originally in the property had been more or less replaced with fresh air from outside. This extra prep time meant that I could no longer as a practical matter target 40-mile days, which I didn’t much like anyway, and given the months-long COVID delays, I had grown accustomed to things just taking a little longer. Now my focus was simply to finish, without particular regard to time, while still running the day’s miles and not walking them unless the terrain demanded it.

I reached my initial goal of Lewisville, AR a little early, around 3:30 PM, and we made the decision to continue running to Stamps. Leslie drove ahead and saw an ambulance going the other way. She texted me to make sure I was okay, which I was, and we fell into the habit of proactively notifying each other we were safe when we saw such things. I reached Stamps just before 5:00 PM, stopped my tracker and GPS watches, and Leslie and I drove ahead to our Air B&B outside Magnolia AR. It was a 36 mile day and I was happy.

3/3/2021: Stamps to Village AR

Heading out of the Air B&B in Magnolia, we encountered early morning fog in some of the low-lying places, and I was concerned that I’d be running in it, which meant wearing my lighted vest, a sometimes-necessity that added weight and a layer of clothing that sometimes kept away the chill and sometimes left me feeling a bit too warm. Fortunately, by the time I started around 7:30 AM, the fog had already either cooked off or I was running in places that were high enough or windy enough to not hold it for long.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Buckner, I encountered a surveying crew and chatted a little bit with them, since my brother-in-law had been a surveyor and I could appreciate a little of what they were doing.

I continued east until I almost missed the turn onto US-371, then turned and headed south. At around 10:30 AM I saw a railroad and a train approaching the crossing from a distance. I made it across in time, although I had to pick up my pace a bit. I texted Leslie to let her know “My train juju is strong.”

I reached Magnolia and the beginning of sidewalk about half an hour later. There was a painting on the side of one of the buildings downtown depicting Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow. Regrettably, my “yellow brick road” gave out not long after I exited Magnolia. It was a pattern I’d long since come to recognize, but the first time I had seen a metaphor for the journey.

I ended the day’s running at Village, AR, at the gas station at the intersection with AR-98.

3/4/2021: Village AR to Hillsboro AR

I started the day in Village, AR at the Citgo, about 15 minutes after sunrise, around 6:45 AM. It was quiet and cool, but my legs were a little tired from the previous day and I was starting to get the sense that if I kept putting in what were for me long mileage days, I was going to pay for it sooner or later. It took me almost 2 hours to get to Marysville, which is just a road sign with a town name on it next to the intersection of US-82 and AR-57. Nevertheless I pressed on.

Around 11 AM I reached the South Arkansas Regional Airport, one of my few landmarks, and reached El Dorado, which the locals pronounce El Do-RAY-do, about two hours later. The shoulders were good for the most part and it made for pleasant running.

I didn’t want to push the distance any farther than about 30 miles, as we had taken up the practice of using the same Air B&B as “home base” for a few days, and the farther we got from Magnolia, the longer the drive was going to be and the less time I’d have to get a hot shower, supper, and get to bed in time to drive to the starting point and do it again. I know that’s not much more than 50K, but after the funeral and the two COVID pauses, I wasn’t nursing any fantasies of trying to set any records.

In this part of Arkansas, there is almost nothing that makes for a good landmark, so around 33 miles, we spotted a small side road that Google Maps showed had a named street sign, aimed for Red Gaddy Road, and ended the day resolved that we’d probably be able to find it again. We learned later that that was Hillsboro, and I think, pretty much all of it.

3/5/2021: Hillsboro to Crossett AR

My mornings in Arkansas were cool and sometimes damp, but not rainy. Generally overcast, and that kept a bit of chill to the day that took a while to cook off, if at all. I started my morning at the Citgo and ran through some beautiful country with more of the tall pines I had first started encountering in eastern Texas.

A little after 10 AM I was in Strong, AR, a small town that had a few stores and a flea market. My little sister is a bit of a garage sale aficionado, and given the name of the place, I had to snap a photo of “Ann Tee Keys.” There was also a very attractive smelling food truck BBQ joint across the street called something like “Big Boi’s.” I came very close to stopping by.

There were a few narrow bridge crossings I had known about from previous scouting trips, but for the most part in reality they weren’t as scary or as numerous as they had been in my mind.

The rest of the day went fairly quietly…except for around 3:30 PM, just outside of Crossett, when I heard a loud screech behind me and jumped instinctively into the ditch. A woman had from the looks of it been texting, drifted into the westbound lane behind me, and swerved to avoid hitting me, steering her car into the muddy ditch on the south side of the road. I went back to check on her. Her airbag had deployed. A passer-by had already approached the car to check on her. I asked if she needed anyone to call 9-11. She said no, she was shaken but all right, and the stranger reassured me that someone was already on the way. She seemed more concerned about telling her husband she had wrecked the car.

I was a little shaken myself, and ready to get off the road.

At around 5 PM, I reached the outskirts of Crossett. As we were still on daylight savings time and we had a bit of a drive to the Air B&B in Fountain Hill, we called a day stop at approximately 34 miles at the Quick Draw convenience store.

3/6/2021: Crossett to Donbey / Montrose AR

The night of March 5th in Fountain Hill was probably one of the worst lodgings Leslie and I have ever experienced short of outright renting a room in a fleabag motel. The bed was horribly uncomfortable, the room was drafty, and the water in the shower stayed hot for only about 5 minutes at a time. The house felt like it had been built in the 1970s, not quite finished, then left that way. None of that insight, however, was allowable under Air B&B’s review policy.

It was a relief to get going the next morning. I was cold and uncomfortable and even running on blisters, which thank God I wasn’t yet, would have been an improvement.

As usual, I began running as close to sunup as we could manage without having to awaken before 530 AM (it usually took me about an hour to get “geared up”, and another 20 minutes or so to get to the day’s starting location.).

Here and there I could see signs of the effects of the strong winds and weather that had been threatening the area off and on. Leslie and I were watching the forecasts closely, as I was greatly conscious of the fact my dad’s birthday, then 3 days later, the anniversary of his passing, were approaching. I didn’t want any weather delays, and was prepared to run in anything short of a thunderstorm. But the downed trees made me nervous.

Approaching noon, As I began to see signs for Hamburg, I started to realize that I was gradually getting closer to the Mississippi River. I was already 150 miles across Arkansas’s 200-mile width. I reached Hamburg around 12:30 PM, which boasted two gas stations and a brief respite from running on US-82.

The day had its highs and lows. Someone sent me a meme showing the longest possible run across the globe, starting in Cape Town, South Africa and ending in Magdalan in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia. I laughed and commented to them that the route would go through Sudan and the Gaza strip, and maybe Pete Kostelnick was up for it. Turns out Pete had seen that meme a million times before and was kind of tired of it. I think I know why.

Unlike Texas, there hadn’t been as much obvious news media interest in the resumption of my run across the US as I had expected. Around 2 PM, a reporter from the Crossett newspaper showed up out of nowhere to do an impromptu interview. But not even my hometown newspaper or TV station had shown interest…yet. A year ago, WABG had said they wanted to do a studio piece when I came through town. But that was before COVID, and as I got closer to Greenwood and in need of an answer, we heard nothing from WABG. That put me in a bit of a funk. If they did call, it would probably mean pushing the deadline tighter on getting to Greenwood and my dad’s gravesite by March 10th. If they didn’t call, then clearly whatever interest there had been had evaporated as the months had gone by; and I began to think nobody would notice me finishing the last 1000 miles of what had been not only an epic run, but a physically, psychologically, and emotionally draining one as well.

Then later in the afternoon I started to think about my dad. I had allowed some anxiety to build up about making it to Greenwood, MS, where he was laid to rest almost a year earlier, so I could keep my promise to leave at his gravesite the shoes I had worn running across the US’s three deserts (Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan). During the roughest time a week after his death, I had felt his presence strongly. He had said he was proud, that he knew I could finish. But neither of us could control the weather, and a couple days of thunderstorms would make me break my promise.

I reached Snyder AR around 4:30 PM. Leslie and I debated whether to try to reach the fork in the road where the highway at Montrose separated, the right side going over an overpass bridge with no shoulder, the left side heading into town. That would have been 36 miles. But I had an hour and a half of sunlight left, and that would put me at the intersection of US-82 and CR-151, about 3 miles outside of Montrose proper. I was never quite sure whether we had made it to Montrose or Donbey, but that’s where we stopped for the day. It was findable.

And THIS time when we returned to the Air B&B in Fountain Hill, at least I knew to not start the shower until I was ready to get in.

3/7/2021: Donbey / Montrose AR to Greenville MS

I resumed running the remaining three miles into Montrose proper around 7:30 AM. The air was cool, and after about 40 minutes I found myself in the tiny town’s residential area. I could hear the sound of a distant train and it reminded me a little of the town in Mississippi where I had lived during my teenage years. I also saw the first squirrels I had seen in a while, since Dallas, in fact. I was in a good mood.

As I approached the train tracks on the east side of town, I saw that the train I had heard before was long and fairly close to the crossing. I had just enough time to dart across the tracks and to the other side. This sort of scenario had occurred enough times before on the run that Leslie and I had a special name for it: “good train juju.” (We also had “”Porta potty juju”, but that is different).

I had good train juju that day, and as I continued past the tracks, made the slight jog to the right and down a quiet road that was home to a small BBQ sauce making business (what was it with BBQ sauce, anyway?), I could feel my pace quicken. This was the last leg before the Mississippi River.

I reached the western edge of Lake Village around 11:00 AM, and we took a quick curbside pickup lunch break at the McDonald’s. The river seemed so close now, but it was still another nine or so miles away. As I ran the remaining stretch to the bridge, my mind was buzzing like a bee: would I need my hat’s chin strap on the bridge? How fast would traffic be? Would my blood sugar spike as it had in the past when I was in high-stress situations? What time would it be when I finally found myself in Mississippi? How long was the bridge and how soon would I get there and then be off of it?

I sang to myself as I often did, because sometimes it calmed me and helped set the pace (I didn’t listen to music because it drowned out the sounds of approaching traffic and distracted me from what was around me). A tune came to mind that I hadn’t heard in a long while: the Alan Parson’s Project’s “Time“, from the album Turn of a Friendly Card. It was an accident, perhaps, that when I got to the lyrics “who knows when we shall meet again, if ever?” that I was suddenly overcome with a wave of sadness and thoughts about my dad. Later in the afternoon, I learned that my brother and one of my sisters (probably both) had been visited by similar thoughts that day. At least I wasn’t alone.

Somewhere outside Lake Village around 1:30 PM I spotted a sign that said Greenville MS was only 16 miles away, and I knew a good portion of that was east of the Mississippi River, as distances were usually measured from town center to town center. I was almost there.

Just before 3 PM, I reached the western side of the Mississippi River bridge into Greenville, one of only six pedestrian-safe crossings of the Mississippi River (south of Memphis, there are only the bridge into Greenville, a pedestrian bridge along an old railroad track into Vicksburg, MS, and Louisiana Hwy 10 into New Roads LA). Now only the bridge remained.

I could have probably gotten by without the chin strap, but as a double measure of caution, I not only lowered the chin strap into place, but I fastened the hook that dangled from it into the zipper pull of my jacket. I did not want to lose my precious bright orange Shelta boonie hat! I snapped four fast photos while on the bridge and hoped that one of them turned out.

The bridge turned out to be 2.5 miles long. I got sandblasted by approaching semis. I ran as close to the railing as I could. And then, at 4 PM, I was in Mississippi. I ran a little farther into town, stopped at a CEFCO near Harbor Freight Road, and called it a day. It was a 35 mile day, beyond what I had hoped to do, and I was relieved to be past the bridge and off the emotional roller coaster. I felt certain now that I would reach my father’s gravesite before March 10th. I had 3 days left and only 60-ish miles to go. Even if WABG called and there was a 1-day delay, I’d be able to make it.

3/8/2021: Greenville to Stinson Road / Big Sunflower River, Moorhead MS

I started again around 7:30 AM, and before long cam across Greenville’s “Welcome ot Greenville” sign. Through Greenville, there was at first a little bit of sidewalk, then narrow shoulder, then I hit the town’s commercial district and was able to run through parking lots of local businesses for the most part until I got to the east side of town, where US-82’s reasonably wide shoulder picked up. At times the shoulder narrowed, but the berm past it was pretty flat and it was good running.

Somewhere just past Greenville I reached the 2000 mile mark. The last time we had celebrated a mile marker had been at mile 1500 in Metcalf Gap, at the intersection of CR-16 and US-180 just west of Palo Pinto TX. That had been before our second DOVID pause (October 18 2020–March 2 2021) and it seemed like so long ago. Now we were down to 845 miles to go!

At around 11 AM I made it to Leland, MS, Muppet creator Jim Hinson’s birthplace and home of the Kermit the Frog Museum. Leland is informally known as the “birthplace of Kermit the Frog.” There’s not that much else to Leland. Once I got past the gas station at the eastern edge of town, I was back out on open road again.

I reached Indianola around 4 PM.

WABG never did call, but Leslie had finally gotten a response from the Greenwood Commonwealth, my home town newspaper, and they sent a reporter out with a camera to get some photos of me running along US-82 outside Indianola, about half an hour before I reached Stinson Road, just past the Big Sunflower River bridge around 4:30 PM.

The bridge basically has no shoulder, so you have to wait for a gap in traffic, which isn’t the easiest thing to do on a major US highway. Eventually I caught one and made it across. But the sun was slowly lowering in the sky.

Leslie and debated getting in another 3 miles to Moorhead, which would have put us at a healthy 33 miles for the day, but it would have put me finishing at 5:20 PM, we still needed dinner, and we had to find our next Air B&B in Cleveland MS half an hour’s drive north before dark, clean it, and get ready for the next day’s run. Since I was hoping to make it to the cemetery before dark the next day, I wanted to start early, and it just didn’t make sense to kill an extra 45 minutes for completeness’s sake and get to bed late.

3/9/2021: Stinson Road / Big Sunflower River, Moorhead MS to Greenwood MS

As it was, we got a little bit of a late start anyway. It was 8 AM when I set out, but I felt optimistic about my goal of reaching the cemetery with plenty of time to spare. By my calculations, it was maybe 25 miles. The morning was as I remember many Delta mornings: a little overcast, a little damp, a little cool, perfect weather for hunting or fishing. Ever since leaving Texarkana, getting here had ben my short goal. I kept telling myself that whatever happened after today was gravy. Apart from my dad’s posthumous promise to “see me at the finish line”, there was no timeline I had to meet…yet. The finish line was still a little under 1000 miles away. So when I reached Leflore County about half an hour later, I knew I was in the home stretch for this part of the run, and relaxed a little.

At around 11 AM I reached the campus of Mississippi Valley State University. MVSU is one of America’s HBCUs, or Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It’s known, among other things, for its marching band’s uniforms and on-the-field moves, coordinated like clockwork. While not quite at the level of Grambling’s band, it’s a sign to be seen. Their uniforms are traditionally green and white, and at times they’ve been known to add flourishes to their gear from time to time.

I was running past the campus dressed in my bright orange running shorts, bright yellow and orange SeeMeWear windbreaker and bright orange wide-brimmed boonie hat and Oakleys when a guy in a car rolled down his window and said, “Alright! Valley State!” I think we were both disappointed when I turned around and he saw an old white guy. I guess my one-the-field moves aren’t what they used to be, or the absence of a musical instrument gave it away.

I grabbed a quick lunch in the van–I had started to treat my lunch breaks like only slightly longer fuel breaks, often limiting them to 15 minutes, in order to try to bank some miles–and around 1 PM I was met on the highway by an old high school classmate and good friend Belinda Knox Morrison. Despite the masks, we exchanged hugs and my mood improved considerably. She walked with me for about a mile until the road shoulder got a little questionable, and shad to get back to life anyway.

I continued running into Greenwood. When I got to the “welcome to Greenwood sign”, I had forgotten that the road into town crossed a bridge with no shoulder whatsoever. I hadn’t marked it on my cue sheet, so despite the fact that I had spent my teen years in that town and knew it well, and despite the fact that Leslie and I had scouted the route, the bridge hit me by surprise. I waited for what seemed like forever for a gap in traffic, but US-82 on the west side of town is the main way into town, so it was a long while before the chance came, and even then I had to run like hell to beat approaching traffic.

I made it across the bridge with just a little room to step off over the guardrail. At that point, I was a little confused as to whether I had passed my turn at Claiborne. I paused for a few minutes, trying to figure things out. Then I remembered that I had altered the route on the previous scouting trip to avoid the steep drop-offs on the western end of Claiborne, approaching it instead from the US82-45 bypass before it went over the bridge.

I continued running, bore right at the fork that would have otherwise taken me down Park Boulevard, and made a left just before the bridge to the hospital, onto the residential part of Claiborne. I ran along the levee parallel to the road, as the road itself had little shoulder and could be fairly busy at times. I made it to the old bridge across the Yazoo River and to the downtown area south of the river by 3 PM.

All that was left was to run down Johnson past my old elementary school, past Madison Avenue where I done a good bit of growing up, and to the cemetery.

That part of town has either gone downhill or I remember it more fondly than the reality. Our old house burned down in a fire. My old elementary school has changed names. So much for “going home.”

Google Maps shows the Oddfellows Cemetery as being just past that section of town. It’s not. It’s at least another three miles. In the back of my mind, I think I knew that, but I had managed to explain to myself that during the funeral, I had simply misremembered how far we had to drive to get to the cemetery. In short, I thought I had been making good progress when I arrived at the OLD Oddfellows Cemetery by around 3:30 PM, but I had another 45 minutes to go.

I finally reached the NEW Oddfellows cemetery around 4:20 PM. I had an hour and a half to spare before sunset. I had made it. Gone were my fears of being locked out, arriving after dark, or some other issue occurring. I ran the remaining distance into the cemetery to my dad’s gravesite. Leslie, who had arrived early, pointed out where I needed to go.

At around 4:30 on March 9th, 2021, I said some words privately to Dad. I told him I had kept my promise and would, as he had said, “see [him] at the finish line.”

I left my desert running shoes (the Velcro strips sewn along the top are for attaching sand gaiters) and took off the race bib I had worn until my arrival and put it with the shoes. Leslie went and got a 2 gallon Ziploc from the van and I put them both into the bag so they’d be protected from the elements for a while. As a final gesture, I left one of my four logo running shirts, the one I had intended on giving him when I came through town.

I thought it would be a great weight off my shoulders, but I just knelt there and cried for half an hour.

3/10/2021: Rest day and visit with Mom in Oxford, MS