I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that my blog posts are happening less frequently since the accident. When I made the decision to start this travel blog way back in November of last year (wow, has it really been that long?), I don’t think I realized just how ambitious a goal that was. Writing is hard enough to begin with; throw in all the extra fluff that makes it worth reading and it becomes harder still. Then, once I’ve got a solid story in mind, I have to find a place with a stable internet connection, available power outlets and a comfortable place to sit in order to get it downloaded from my head and uploaded to the internet (in some parts of this country, that’s asking a lot). Finally, it doesn’t matter if I’ve dreamt up the most captivating tale anyone could ever hope to hear but if I don’t have the energy to tell it – and tell it right – then what’s the point?

That’s the root of my problem these days: finding the energy. Back when I started this journey, the biggest demand on my energy reserves was avoiding hypothermia. But now, most of it goes into repairing my damaged body – specifically, the thirty-odd pounds of muscle I lost from being confined to a hospital bed and wheelchair. As it turns out, the process of rebuilding thirty pounds worth of person is enormously taxing. Here, I’ll give you an example:

Every day, I wake up in the morning – whether it’s in the back of the truck or a plush hotel bed – sore and stiff because the majority of my muscles are in a constant state of being torn apart and sewn back together, kneaded like a loaf of bread at the molecular level. You don’t think about how many muscles your body uses just to remain in a still, standing position. Muscles in your legs, core and even your back work together constantly to maintain balance and posture. Take a single step forward and you’ve just engaged the majority of some 600+ different muscles that are connected to your skeletal system- just about everything from the neck down. For three months, I rarely, if ever, used most of these muscles but now, I’m suddenly asking them all to wake up and work together again. Think back to the most intense workout you’ve ever done. Remember how you felt the next day? I feel like that. Every. Single. Morning. Oh, and God-forbid I forget to take my methadone pill the night before, then it’s twice as bad.

That’s another fun fact about my recovery: I take methadone now - the very same methadone prescribed to heroine addicts. Add to that the fact that a month’s worth of the prescription equates to one-hundred and fifty pills (including the occasional extra dose “for breakthrough pain”) and you can imagine how much fun it is trying to get a hold of that quantity of those meds while traveling across state lines, looking the way that I do (all pale, frail and wobbly). Methadone has a crazy long list of side-effects, most of which I either do have or have had at one point or another. Fortunately, most of them have subsided by now but a few decided to come along for the trip, including (but not limited to) chronic fatigue.

So when you combine all that with the summertime heat (the temperature in Fresno yesterday was 105 degrees) and the pressure that comes with long-distance traveling in general, you can understand why I rarely feel up to the task of preparing a blog post. Hell, the only reason I’m up for it today is that I managed to sleep in until 11:30 am and then took a two hour nap in the middle of the afternoon.

Alright, now that I’ve got the excuses out of the way, let’s see if I can’t squeeze out a story worth reading here before I fade again.

Throughout the course of my recovery, there was always the looming question of what would come next. Would I finish my trip to Washington or return to Tennessee? With all of these mounting hospital bills, could I even afford to continue the trip? And perhaps most importantly, would my still-recovering body even be capable of traveling?

I weighed a thousand different pros against a thousand different cons but ultimately, I decided that I needed to finish what I started – I would go to Tacoma and then figure things out from there. But I knew that the trip would be different this time around. Drastically different.

I had intentionally held off on planning the final leg of the trip for as long as possible, in part because thinking that far ahead felt like hubris. Over the course of four months and ten-thousand plus miles, there would be plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. I’d long held on to the idea that my truck might break down in some random town, forcing me to pick up a local job to pay for its repair and then, suddenly, it’s forty years later and I’m married with grandchildren in Thomas, West Virginia. Whoops.

But a life like that was not to be. Three months almost to the day from my departure date, I had made it as far as New Mexico with no real hangups to speak of, so it was there that I felt confident enough to finally design the last leg of my journey. If I’d made it that far, the rest of the way should be a breeze, right? As Chris and I cruised south down I-25 in his old Ford Bronco, just north of a small New Mexico town called Las Cruces, I sat in the passenger seat with a tattered, spiral-bound atlas spread across my lap. I was apparently in the process of tracing several different routes through California when the rear tire blew out, sending the Bronco into a sideways roll across the dusty median like a tumbleweed bound for oncoming traffic. There’s a photograph in the police report, presumably taken by a New Mexico state trooper, that shows the crumpled Bronco, upside down on the pavement, with a trail of broken glass, shredded bits of rubber and dirt-covered camping supplies stretching well beyond the frame of the photo. But, right in the center of that picture, sprawled out in the middle of the dusty median, is the atlas, no doubt still opened to California. As the officer continued snapping photos of the crash site, a pair of ambulances were wailing toward a Las Cruces emergency room. At that moment, there was a real chance I wouldn’t make it to California – or anywhere else.

But I survived and so, too, did that atlas. At the moment, it’s sitting beside me on a weathered wood patio table, shaded by a teal parasol that matches the shutters of the Majestic Yosemite Hotel almost (but not quite) exactly. I’m multitasking today – working on my blog and planning a route through the Sierra Nevadas in eastern California. Much like myself, the atlas survived the accident with only a few tears and bits of residual dirt to show for it (dust still spills from certain pages and likely forever will, at least until I’ve visited all 50 states). With the exception of only minor details, I have now finished planning that final leg of the journey and, as I write this from the hotel pavilion in Yosemite Valley (don’t get too excited, I’m sleeping in the parking lot tonight), it seems surreal to think that I’m already halfway through the final month of the trip. Barring any more major catastrophes, I expect to be in Tacoma by July 1st and, with that, my epic cross-country road trip will be complete.

So for my next couple of posts, I thought it would be interesting to explain how this final leg of the trip has been different from the rest, now that I’m two weeks back on the road. As my mother told me, in a final word of caution before I set out once again: “Just be mindful of the fact that you’re traveling in a different body now. It’s not always going to do what you tell it to do.”

I left El Paso on a Friday morning to little fanfare. Chris and his family had graciously offered to let me stay with them after I was discharged from the hospital, back when the air of charity that typically follows a tragic accident was still thick and flowing freely. But, as one month became two, their willingness to tolerate my company seemed to wane. They spoke to me less and less over time, my attempts at conversation often met with polite yet detached responses. I felt like a piece of heirloom furniture – a china cabinet, maybe. Cumbersome, yet fragile; acknowledged only when guests came to visit and when someone needed to vacuum around it.

They say that nothing brings out a person’s true character like tragedy. For as long as I’d known him, Chris had proven himself to be a dependable-enough guy in the context of urban exploring, which was the only context in which our friendship had ever been tested. But poking around abandoned buildings without getting injured and/or caught requires qualities of character that don’t necessarily prove useful when applied to the pressures of the real world, such as caring for a seriously injured friend.

Within our little group of comrades, Chris had never exactly been one to stand up and take charge of a situation – and that’s fine, not everyone has to have the qualities of a leader. But while I feel that his offer to take me into his home came from the right place, it might not have been thoroughly thought-out. It quickly became evident that Chris had assumed his wife and mother-in-law would take care of me, just as they take care of him (the man of the house, he is not). They, in turn, assumed (and rightly so) that my care should fall on him; I was his friend, after all. So, as a result, I often found that my physical and emotional well-being fell through the cracks during the one time in my life when I most needed a reliable shoulder to lean on. Needless to say, those were a long couple of months.

Perhaps then, it should not have come as a surprise that, on the day of my departure, I struggled alone to load the last few boxes of supplies into my truck in the late morning heat. My ankle and knee are always working against me now, more so on this particular day as I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the medication to kick in. I worked as quickly as the pain would allow, trying to stay on schedule in order to make a 10am physical therapy appointment – my last one in town. Though Chris and his family knew I was on a tight schedule, no helping hands came out to assist me. In fact, Chris didn’t even bother to wake up in time to see me off. Feeling like I should at least let someone know I was leaving, I knocked on his mother-in-law’s bedroom door and thanked her for her generosity. And then, just like that, I left.

The geographic region surrounding El Paso and Las Cruces never held much appeal for me and it sure as hell doesn’t now – Texas has the highest speed limit in the country but I still couldn’t get out of there fast enough. But before I could truly begin the final leg of my journey and head out toward unfamiliar roads, I had one last stop to make. It was an errand I wasn’t looking forward to but one that I knew would haunt me if left untended. One digit at a time, I carefully entered the long string of GPS coordinates from the police report into my phone. After a moment of searching, an unassuming stretch of interstate I-25 appeared on the screen with a tiny red pushpin icon centered over a point just south of mile marker 18. It was, within five feet of accuracy or so, the site of the accident.

Chris and I had discussed the events of that Sunday afternoon many times in the three months since it happened and, obviously, he still feels guilty. Who wouldn’t? As the driver, he still feels like he could have avoided the outcome in some way, even though everyone, including myself, has assured him that the outcome of the situation was beyond his control. From a legal standpoint, the act of rolling a vehicle is technically the fault of the driver - “over-correcting,” as it’s called. It’s a similar concept to how rear-end collisions are always the fault of the second car “following too closely,” despite the exact circumstances that led to the wreck.

As details of our accident continued to trickle in and some semblance of a complete picture started to form in my mind, a subconscious part of my brain kept trying over and over again to blame Chris; it’s a fact that I’m not proud of but it’s true. I think maybe it’s human nature to want to hold someone responsible when a tragedy strikes, perhaps because we prefer to subscribe to ideas of “cosmic karma” in order to divert our minds from the reality that life is a statistical lottery of both good and bad – it’s just a matter of time before your number is up. One thing I’ve learned from the accident and subsequent hospital stay is that this idea of randomness in life absolutely terrifies people - if I had a nickle for every time someone said to me “Everything happens for a reason,” I’d have enough money to cover these medical bills. I was never a fan of that expression but I absolutely detest it now.

I wanted to blame Chris for my injuries and my misery and for losing Gabby but I couldn’t figure out how. Truthfully, I just wanted to blame anyone because I thought it might lessen the pain. But I couldn’t. Sure, Chris hadn’t always been the most reliable guy but a screw-up of this magnitude seemed beyond even him. So even though I wanted so badly to put the blame on him, logically I couldn’t do it.

But. Deep in my mind, a lingering doubt remained. One that I would never be able to shake unless I went there and saw the crash site for myself.

Using the photos from the official police report as my guide, I slowed down as I approached mile marker 18, heading north. Even though we had been traveling south toward El Paso at the time of the accident, the vehicle had come to a stop in the far northbound lane after crossing four lanes of traffic and the center median to get there. The point at which the vehicle came to rest was roughly where the New Mexico state trooper had parked while he filled out his report; it was the same spot in which I now parked my truck, on the shoulder among clusters of desert brush. To my right, dozens of tumbleweeds had wedged themselves between the barbed wire fence of the adjacent property, having blown eastward across the highway much like we had. Though late in the day, the desert sun beat down intensely as I struggled to climb out of the truck - my left leg still has limited mobility due to the injured knee, so getting in and out requires that I manually push and pull that leg to where it needs to be. I dropped my feet down into the dirt of the shoulder, sending up a cloud of rust-colored dust that clung to the compression wraps on my legs.

The dust was the reason I knew I was in the right spot. Across the width of the median, dozens of sets of tire tracks could still be seen in the dry, desert soil where traffic had been diverted off of the highway and around the flipped Bronco, as well as the field of debris that was once our camping gear. Because this part of the country receives so little rainfall, the tire tracks were still visible as if they’d been put down that very day.

Though the tracks of a hundred redirected vehicles now obscured our own, I knew what other clues to look for. Squinting into the sun, I watched for a gap in the oncoming traffic before limping across the freeway to the center median.

As I reached the inner shoulder, I felt a crunch underfoot and glanced down. Pebbles of broken glass lay scattered through the weeds, mixed with the crumbled pavement at the edge of the road. I wondering if this could be from the Bronco but I didn’t need to wonder long. Nestled between clumps of grass was a delicate looking decal of an AR-15 assault rifle that had formerly been displayed with pride on Chris’ rear window - I recognized it immediately because I remembered rolling my eyes at the sight of it while we were loading our gear on the day before the ill-fated camping trip. The sticker had held its shape due to the fragmented bits of safety glass still clinging to its backside.

I scanned the ground around me for any additional pieces of familiar debris. Piece by piece, the jetsam of our accident emerged: the white twist cap of my thermos; the spigot to my water jug; the head of my tripod. All faded from three months in the desert sun but still unmistakably mine.

(Source: The author's own)

These bits of roadside trash stirred little more than curiosity in my mind – that is, until I inadvertently stepped through a pile of sun-bleached dog food. Small shards of plastic were intermixed with the kibbles, evidence of the container’s violent impact as it was ejected from the (by that point) rolling vehicle. I starred at that spot for a long time and let the tears come – I didn’t care, cars would be passing too fast to notice. This could have been the spot where it happened. It was absolutely the site of my worst injuries, as the vehicle bounced upside down on its passenger side, crushing me in the process. But this might very well could been Gabby’s last moment, right here where I stood.

A freight truck heading south blew past me, sending a swirling cloud of sand into my face, pulling me back to the present. Where the truck had passed, I noticed a familiar view, one that I remembered from photos in the police report.

Cut across both southbound lanes, I could still clearly see a pair of curved gouges dug out of the asphalt from the far lane, increasing in depth as they curved closer to the median. I imagined the Bronco veering toward me, its shredded rear tire cutting away at the pavement, likely sending out a fountain of sparks as the rim gouged out a divot some fifty feet long into the faded asphalt. I stood there, at the edge of the pavement and turned back toward my truck. It happened so quickly, just as Chris always said. The distance from where the vehicle left the pavement, flipped once, then again and landed upside down, skidding into the far lane, couldn’t have been longer than a couple hundred feet. It would’ve been over in an instant.

I stood there in the median and imagined what it must have felt to be in the driver’s seat that day. I let Chris’ fear become my own (I still have no memory of the accident). The truck jostled around us as we careened across the median at over seventy miles an hour. Oncoming cars approached in the northbound lanes – we’d be face-to-face with them any second. From that vantage point, I don’t think I would’ve noticed that there was a slight rise from the median to the pavement - my only thought would be to avoid hitting those cars (and possibly 18-wheelers) head-on. That little rise plus the forward momentum of the Bronco would all but guarantee a rollover. I would’ve pulled the wheel away, possibly too far given that one of the rear tires had essentially disintegrated, though at that point I may not have even pieced together what was going on. Pulling the wheel even a fraction of an inch too far might have been the difference between regaining control and flipping the vehicle but there’s no way I could’ve predicted the outcome with so much happening at once. As I struggled to pull the wheel, the truck tilted, and then it fell. I watched it happen in my mind. I felt it. I put myself in Chris’ position as best I could and I realized, right there in the middle of the dusty New Mexico highway, that I couldn’t blame him for what happened that afternoon. He made the best decisions he could, just as I would’ve done. Just as I think anyone would’ve done.

Everything doesn’t happen for a reason. It just happens. The most we can do is to accept the good with humility, the bad with grace and learn from them both. My body is still damaged and will be for a long time to come, but the scars in my mind will only heal by facing what inflicted them. I can’t blame Chris for what happened that day and I hope that, eventually, he will let go of his guilt. We’re still alive and, if we follow the doctors’ orders, we shouldn’t have any lasting ill effects. That’s about as positive an outcome as you can expect from situation like that.

Though I surely left a few demons there in the dust as I pulled back onto the freeway, I can’t say that was the last of them. But any weight I can cast off now will help me moving forward, especially as I make my way west; I hear gas in California is over four dollars a gallon now, so the more I can lighten this load, the better.

I instructed my GPS to take me through the high New Mexico desert, toward Flagstaff and Sedona. Intent on leaving as much negativity behind as possible, I made myself a promise: from here on out, I would always look ahead with optimism and handle each day as it came, one at a time. Not only would I be traveling in a new body but also in a new season, both of which would shape my route and my decisions as I picked up where I’d left off back in February. With Gabby’s urn safely tucked into the center console, we turned away from the familiarity of I-25 and headed west toward the unknown. It was time to try this thing again.

To be continued...