About 10 years ago now, the summer of 2013, I spent a few months on a work & travel visa with some friends living in Chicago.
After some jobs that a friend had lined up pre-trip fell through, a friend & I were left stranded, jobless & with just a few hundred dollars to our name to get us though the first weeks in a new city & …
About 10 years ago now, the summer of 2013, I spent a few months on a work & travel visa with some friends living in Chicago.
After some jobs that a friend had lined up pre-trip fell through, a friend & I were left stranded, jobless & with just a few hundred dollars to our name to get us though the first weeks in a new city & rent for an apartment. Luckily we were 6 in total so we were never really in too much trouble there.
Anyways, we did what any guys in their early 20's would do when they get bad news in a new city, we went drinking, to the nearest watering hole; Tommy Nevin's. A few beers in & we were already asking the bar staff if they had any jobs available.
Maybe it was the generous tip, but we got asked back in the morning, when our heads had sobered up & any conversation could be at least somewhat coherent. We ended up working there the entire summer & having more fun than our friends. Those summer jobs that fell through? Cleaning the locker rooms & bathrooms in a prestigious golf club. Good money. But long hours & none of the stories we had working in Tommy Nevin's.
Anyways, all of this is a roundabout way of explaining how I stumbled across a book that summer that lit the fuse to start running. Sitting on a book shelf in the apartment we rented was Ultramarathon Man, by Dean Karnazes. It's 10 years since I read it but in it he talks about the freedom of running & how no matter what the day job was, the stresses of life or of raising a family, running was his secret weapon. This stuck with me for years & I still think of running as a secret weapon, to be enjoyed!
"Happiness though, cannot be measured in monetary terms. My job paid the bills; my running satisfied a deeper passion. Limping into the weekly meeting, dehydrated, stiff, & on the verge of collapse, my heart was fulfilled. I couldn't ask for anything more."
What a cool, cool story, Andrew! I’m a fan of Karnazes’ work too -- I love the origin story of how he took up running in the first place. The places (literally and figuratively) that running has taken him still blow me away.
Hi Terrell,
About 10 years ago now, the summer of 2013, I spent a few months on a work & travel visa with some friends living in Chicago.
After some jobs that a friend had lined up pre-trip fell through, a friend & I were left stranded, jobless & with just a few hundred dollars to our name to get us though the first weeks in a new city & rent for an apartment. Luckily we were 6 in total so we were never really in too much trouble there.
Anyways, we did what any guys in their early 20's would do when they get bad news in a new city, we went drinking, to the nearest watering hole; Tommy Nevin's. A few beers in & we were already asking the bar staff if they had any jobs available.
Maybe it was the generous tip, but we got asked back in the morning, when our heads had sobered up & any conversation could be at least somewhat coherent. We ended up working there the entire summer & having more fun than our friends. Those summer jobs that fell through? Cleaning the locker rooms & bathrooms in a prestigious golf club. Good money. But long hours & none of the stories we had working in Tommy Nevin's.
Anyways, all of this is a roundabout way of explaining how I stumbled across a book that summer that lit the fuse to start running. Sitting on a book shelf in the apartment we rented was Ultramarathon Man, by Dean Karnazes. It's 10 years since I read it but in it he talks about the freedom of running & how no matter what the day job was, the stresses of life or of raising a family, running was his secret weapon. This stuck with me for years & I still think of running as a secret weapon, to be enjoyed!
"Happiness though, cannot be measured in monetary terms. My job paid the bills; my running satisfied a deeper passion. Limping into the weekly meeting, dehydrated, stiff, & on the verge of collapse, my heart was fulfilled. I couldn't ask for anything more."
What a cool, cool story, Andrew! I’m a fan of Karnazes’ work too -- I love the origin story of how he took up running in the first place. The places (literally and figuratively) that running has taken him still blow me away.