the Roam

I’m sweaty, stinky and covered in dirt. I might look like a construction worker, a homeless man, a threat to your property or privacy. A mar in front of your manicured lawn.

The reactions I receive tell me more about the people I see than what they think they know about me. I’ve been jeered at from cars. I’ve had people stare straight at me from their porches as I politely wave and then I watch as their eyes squint in suspicion and they fail to return the gesture.

I’ve also had people shake my hand, chat me up about my life, their life and my journey. People have given me places to sleep and offered me food and water. An older couple pulled off the road yesterday and asked me if I needed money. I would like money of course… but I couldn’t bring myself to say yes to the question of needing it so I said no, but thanks and waved them on their way.

A man riding his bike up and down Route 40 in West Virginia stopped twice to talk to me. He used to live in California. He didn’t seem to be doing too well on the socioeconomic scale and his teeth made me wish for a more equitable health care system but he was one of the friendliest people I’ve met. Talking to him kept my spirits up even as later that day a family in a car attempted to make fun of me at a stop light.

Truck drivers give me wide berths and a wave and I’ve seen people in pickups swerve and accelerate towards the shoulder before backing off at the last minute, thus proving their dominant maleness.

Taking on the role of a homeless wanderer, though well supplied and supported from afar, has been enlightening. It can bring out the best and the worst in people. Thank you to everyone it has brought out the best in. The churches I’ve camped next to along the way, the first person who was kind to me on my second night on the road when I was camping for the first time and feeling so incredibly alone and far from home.

Selfishly I say, as I walk 2900 miles in their shoes, we should do better by those we deem lesser. Hopefully I still feel this way when I finish the journey and *fingerscrossed* return to being financially productive and living in my beautiful apartment with my lovely girlfriend and moody, but wonderful cat.

I’ll try to remember this trip every time I’m ready to selfishly deny something to someone else be it on the street or on the ballot.

Day 17

Day 18

p.s. Special thanks tonight to the kind folks at Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church and Pastor Linda for welcoming me into your church for the night. I feel really guilty about being introduced to the health class that was in session when I arrived and when I was asked about my diet… I had to reveal that every time I see an opportunity to buy a milkshake I take it and usually buy two.