Several of my friends have embarked on what I like to think of as patriotic quests, in which they explore our country through their special interests and hobbies. For example, a high school friend, Kelly, who is—like me—an inveterate beer-drinker, visits microbreweries wherever she travels, in order to (literally) imbibe the local culture. A grad-school friend and former roommate, Tom,1 is a professor of English. He and his wife and son spent his sabbatical year in an RV, traveling around the country to national parks. And a former colleague from my teaching days, David, who used to teach AP US History, is visiting the capitols (and capitals) of all fifty states.
I find these quests fascinating.2 What motivates people to take on such demanding projects, and what do they learn along the way? So I asked my friends Ken and Margaret, and they kindly agreed to be interviewed about their own patriotic adventures. The responses below have been edited for space and to conform to Chicago style.3 Enjoy, and happy Fourth of July!
Ken, the Sports Fan
I have written before about why I love sports (especially football); sports provide a wholesome outlet for our natural tribalism. Sports fandom unites us across political divides and fosters healthy hometown boosterism. Games also offer a welcome distraction from current events. For the past couple of years it has been a treat to discuss sports with my online friend Ken (and not just because he was rooting for the Timberwolves before they were eliminated from the NBA playoffs this year). Ken recently completed an immensely cool project, to watch a baseball game in every major-league ballpark in the US.
Ken’s quest began as a joint venture with his father:
My dad used to do baseball road trips with a friend of his a long time ago, before I was born. They never made it out west, but they’ve done most of the East Coast and the Midwest. … In 2009, when I was about twenty-five years old, we decided to do [a trip] ourselves. That summer, I met him in Chicago, where he was already visiting his mother. We saw the Cubs, the Brewers (Milwaukee is only a one-and-a-half-hour drive from Chicago), and the White Sox. Then we headed east for the Detroit Tigers and Pittsburgh Pirates. We were going to end it with the Washington Nationals, but rain intervened.
After that, we didn’t do another one until 2015, when I decided I wanted to tackle the five California teams. It was easy enough to stay in Anaheim and see both the Angels and the Dodgers. Plus, San Diego (Padres) was only about one-and-a-half hours away. Then we drove up and stayed with [my dad’s] brother in Oakland, where we could see both the A’s and Giants.
The trips gave Ken the opportunity to explore new parts of the country and spend time with friends. A “New York/Boston/Philly combination … was easy: Just take buses and trains to each city. I stayed with a friend in New York for a few days, where we saw the Mets.” On the other hand, the “Miami/Tampa/Atlanta combo … involved a lot more planning, driving, and hotel stays, but I did it over a nine-day span, even including a few minor-league stops in Fayetteville and Greensboro, North Carolina.”
Whew! Unsurprisingly, when I asked Ken what he had learned from his quest, he responded, “I learned that I’m pretty good at planning trips and finding deals.”
Margaret, the Marathoner
Margaret is a friend from grad school and is now a professor of English at a university in California. She has accomplished a truly extraordinary feat: She has run a marathon in all fifty states. (About halfway through her project, she added a more doable and dare I say more enjoyable goal, to visit a brewery in every state.) Her fiftieth marathon was the New York Marathon, which she completed on her sixty-first birthday!
Margaret told me that running marathons has helped her to cope with life’s challenges, including a messy divorce:
I would say, “Once I sign up, I show up. Once I show up, I lace up. Once I lace up, I finish up.” I would often tell my students, “I’m not a winner; I’m a finisher,” and to me that was much better. Finishing [so many] marathons in my late forties and early fifties helped me to feel like I could deliver for my kids. … The marathon for me has become not only a way to get “through” things and to “get over” things, but also to envision new things I don’t easily dare to dream.
She added that “Deciding to run all fifty states was not really just one decision”:
Running morphed into a way for me to stay strong as a single mother. I learned of the 50 States Marathon Club. … I naively thought at the time, “How hard could it be?” For some reason, having thirteen full marathons under my belt and three states already done, I thought of forty-seven more states as not that many. … I would run a marathon in each state, learn as much as I could about a place in a long weekend, grabbing a pasta dinner the night before a race (the beer in each state came along later, once I saw all the great breweries in Eugene, Oregon). But when things got worse with the divorce, the marathon switched from a “strong woman” theme to an “I will survive” theme. I was no longer … trying to get a feel for the nation or its people in a long, sweaty weekend, I was instead finding fifty states of me.
I asked Margaret what she has learned from her quest:
I learned that spectators, people on the sidelines, are critical support. … One older man, seemingly a veteran, was a spectator at the side of the course clapping his hands and saying in time, “Left leg, left leg, left leg,” And I got it! I threw out my left leg, and my right leg just followed! He had cut the marathon in HALF for me at that point. It also became a metaphor I used at work. … We work so hard at things, and I learned that sometimes “half-assed” is good enough, if that is all you can do. Throwing out my left leg taught me that, as my right leg just kind of swung along for the ride.
Many people use running distance as a way to survive or come back. [One of my favorite memories] was when a team of formerly obese people were walking up hill faster than I was running. They were wearing t-shirts proudly announcing the thousands of pounds they had lost between them, and though they were still overweight, they had plenty of confidence and sass when they responded to my question, “How are you walking faster than I am running?” They responded, “Because WE TRAINED!”
You never know who will pass you and who you will pass. I have passed many fit men in their twenties and thirties, some of whom were crying in pain. I too have cried on some marathons, and not always from physical pain. I learned in my faster days to never be cocky, for though I could sometimes pass young fit folks, I was also once passed by an old blind guy running with no cane—just his son calling out the potholes and shifts in the pavement.
It’s great to finish what you start. If you start a dissertation, finish it. If you start a relationship and it’s not a good one, finish it. I knew that by starting a quest like this one, I had to finish all fifty states, whether or not I was fast or wealthy or trained up enough.
There is more to the USA than the two coasts and that blessed city in the middle—Chicago—where my marathons all started. I can see why people live in the states I once never even thought about. … We in Southern California often see our state as “the best place to be,” but [on my current trip] to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I have met several people who say the same thing: “I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” they say of this place with the four seasons and not nearly as much nightlife as we enjoy on the coasts. But one can’t live one’s life for weather or concerts or nightlife. I loved seeing the states that are home to the strangers I will never meet.
Margaret is sharing her love of running with the next generation. When her daughters each turned ten, she ran a half-marathon with them:
Crossing those half-marathon finish lines with my daughters were some of the best feelings I’ve had: I felt that nothing and no one could stop them from their better journey. They were on their way! … Maybe if I am fit enough and have a grandchild someday, I will run with that child when they are ten. I was faster than my daughters when they were ten, but if I can run as a grandma, I am sure my grandchild will be faster than I will be then. I actually look forward to that, and I have started to run short distances again so I don’t totally lose it, in case that day comes when I can run with the next generation.
Margaret offers a final bit of wisdom:
The marathon saved me, the way my daughters saved me and made me. … The miles are in me now. And they can never be taken away. There are mile markers in me, and all my memories outside the marathon are mingled in, inseparable, from the runs I’ve done.
How about you, readers? Do you have a patriotic quest, or any other sustained, challenging, and meaningful project? And how are you going to celebrate the Fourth of July? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
For reasons that are probably obvious, this week I reread George Washington’s Farewell Address. I encourage everyone to check it out. I was particularly struck by this quote:
[I]t is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
Tom writes an eloquent and thought-provoking Substack, Perplexed Jew, which I highly recommend.
Maybe this is because I have a quest of my own, to hike to the summit of as many mountains as I can before my knees give out or we move back to the US. As of this week, my summit count is thirty-nine.
Wonderful stories. Ken is my spirit animal.