Beyond the Blog Day 10 (May 7): A Moving Encounter

The pace of activity accelerated today as we approached our home base of Concord.   This was familiar territory from longer bike expeditions on the Spencer Mountain region.  Jason and I checked out of the hotel in Shelby because I would actually be staying at home that night, which was also exciting.   I had not seen my family in 10 days, and Cheryl in a week.   Home would be more of a challenge than I anticipated, however (more on that later).

The other big change for this day, besides our tribe changing once more, was that two F3 brothers would be rucking with me the entire day.   As I said in my post for this day,  “Their presence and support was uplifting and made the day go by much easier”.  Heatstroke was training for an epic GoRuck event (which he crushed) and Anvil was going for a rucking PR (which he crushed).  It was just great having these guys as we made our way through the countryside.   Traffic wasn’t too bad as we made our way from Oak Grove to a route I thought would take us right to Bessemer City.   I read the map wrong, however, and the three of us ended up heading out into undiscovered country.  On this road, we found a collection of men’s boxer shorts about every 100 yards.   They looked clean, but it was the regularity of finding this underwear that mystified us.   We came up with all sorts of explanations as to how some poor guy lost his entire inventory of boxers as we waited for Jason to find us using Life 360.   He eventually did, and we re-calibrated our route and headed off, crossing into some beautiful hilly land via a small but freshly paved road.   Conditions were ideal as we got to Bessemer City, and at this next stop was the encounter that, for me, was the most meaningful event of the entire Ruck.

Jason had been parked roadside, close to a mobile home neighborhood.   The boy’s father had seen the CAN signs and asked about the event, keenly interested because his son is autistic.  Jason told him I’d be arriving in a few minutes, and in that time, the father went back home and retrieved his wife and son (I actually never met the father).  The 12-year old son, as I said in my blog post for that day, was one of the nicest kids I’ve met.  When we first met, he immediately told me the circumference of the earth as well as how far it was to the sun.   We talked about heavenly bodies for awhile and then chatted about school and other stuff.  This child, and his family, was the entire reason for doing the Ruck.   I chatted with his mom and she shared all of their challenges with keeping him in school, and the lack of resources available.   While it was hard for autistic parents before, I can imagine that the pandemic made their home situations and school issues even worse.   Their plight is one of the fundamental missions of Champion Autism Network, and it made us all feel like we were in the right place at the right time.   While the CAN team is working with this family trying to help where they can, there are thousands of other families who are running out of options.   If only we could reach them all.  But in the meantime, interacting with this particular family, while they have their challenges, was reaffirming our entire purpose.

At Bessemer City, Jason handed me off to Keith, a long-time friend of 20+ years with whom I have trained for many events.  We said our goodbyes to Jason and we all know that our experiences together made a deep impression.  The Ruck had a way of doing this.  

Keith is an incredibly experienced athlete, with 12 Ironmans and 20+ Boston Marathons to his name.   A few years ago he had both hips replaced, and after some tough recovery, he is back to riding and running, the latter with his talented young son.   Keith knows about ground support and he was awesome, stopping every mile or so and guiding us through some tricky intersections.  We were starting to hit some pretty busy roads as we drew closer to Charlotte, headed through the town of Dallas on our way to Spencer Mountain.   This is one of Keith’s favorite biking areas, so I was especially glad he was crewing for us on this day.

Heatstroke and Anvil were hanging tough.   Heatstroke had been training for awhile and easily kept pace.  Anvil was a little farther back but still unstoppable in his determination.   The day had thrown plenty of challenges at us, as well as a memorable encounter, but by 4 pm we were finishing up at at our Spencer Mountain terminus.  It was an incredible day, and as the four of us kicked back (and I enjoyed a cold one), I reflected on how lucky I was to be among such men.

Keith returned me to my home and it was a wonderful reunion, although tough to get out of “rucker” mode and immediately back into “dad” mode.  This would be a challenge all weekend and eventually, on Sunday, I just stayed at a hotel for everyone's sanity.