{"id":19111,"date":"2017-10-17T20:21:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=19111"},"modified":"2017-10-17T20:21:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:21:45","slug":"october-17-2017-my-body-flies-over-the-ocean-and-a-mind-and-soul-forever-voyaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=19111","title":{"rendered":"October 17, 2017 – My Body Flies Over The Ocean … and a Mind and Soul Forever Voyaging"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sitting in seat 21K, a window on the three person starboard side of a British Airways Airbus A380 en route to Los Angeles.\u00a0 I don\u2019t normally request windows on long hauls as I like to be able to get up and stretch my legs yet I double checked my Orbitz purchased ticket and sure enough I was always in this seat.\u00a0 I am trapped by a sleeping fellow on the aisle and a dozing woman between us.\u00a0 My legs are cramping up and killing me but there\u2019s no easy way to extract me from this location.\u00a0 I am instead hoping against hoping, psychically willing my seatmates to need to get up so that maybe I can too.\u00a0 So far my powers of mind control are as weak as a disgraced sham televangelist.\u00a0 I say disgraced because if I were a televangelist faith healer at the height of my powers I\u2019d long since have gotten these two to rise to their feet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long, strange trip, this European Tour.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been to four countries, run four different weekends, and been to five different cities (wait \u2013 six!\u00a0 Hello, Paris proper and fairytale Bruges!).\u00a0 Hanging out with Mom in Disneyland Paris seems like a lifetime ago.\u00a0 But thankfully there\u2019s plenty of photographic proof that that happened, and me in a fake moustache and flowing tash to boot.<\/p>\n

Brussels and Bruges proved a medieval theme park unto their Belgium selves.\u00a0 I regret flying to Croatia instead of taking a bus \u2013 I suspect that indulgence cost an extra fifty euros and required a longer journey anyway due to airport security requirements and baggage services.<\/p>\n

Zagreb wasn\u2019t what I imagined but held fast to the awesome ability of humanity to work its way through the crucible of war and emerge a better, freer society.<\/p>\n

As for Budapest\u2026 well, Budapest.\u00a0 I was tired by then, in so many ways.\u00a0 The miles both on the getting from Point A to Point B and at 42.195K per weekend on foot had taken a heavy toll.\u00a0 My broken English had faltered and failed and I don\u2019t know if I was short-tempered because of the distances logged or because of the people I was encountering, but Hungary became a bridge too far.\u00a0 Several bridges on the marathon route, actually.\u00a0 I\u2019m still smarting on the side from the cramped stitch in my side that developed running there.<\/p>\n

And this long flight home, with seemingly never ending layovers and a delay on the tarmac at Heathrow, both in the terminal and sitting in this infernal seat 21K, have beaten me ever more into an achy, breaky body and soul.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad to have done this long haul through Continental Europe.\u00a0 I have traveled far, seen many things, made some good memories with Mom and me individually\u2026 and some not-so-good memories that perhaps as time passes will see their edges rounded off and made more humorous than aggravating.<\/p>\n

Post college I used to write \u201cincidentals,\u201d summary stories of the misadventures of a 20-something buffoon questing for Hollywood fame and fortune and finding failure by a thousand paper cuts\u00a0 Somewhere along the way, as I found myself working in of all things international healthcare and child and adolescent psychiatry, I decided I would run a marathon.\u00a0 It was a stress relief and I thought I\u2019d do one and be done with that forever.\u00a0 Almost fifteen years later, I\u2019ve gone back through the London Heathrow airport I so often used to be rushing through on business, this time as a full-fledged tourist but still rushing.\u00a0 What am I running to or from?\u00a0 What am I searching for?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to say\u2026 despite still writing variations on \u201cincidentals,\u201d though now of the bumbling idiot abroad (or even a fool wandering his home country\u2019s backyard), I don\u2019t reflect too long or hard on me.\u00a0 I dare not gaze too long into my soul out of fear for what might look back.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why I keep running.<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, as this European adventure draws ever so slow to a close, as I double fist my mini-bottles of wine because the flight attendants can\u2019t be bothered doing drink services too often\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026there is one truth that is abundantly clear.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I will run again.<\/p>\n

The road calls.<\/p>\n

Both to my soul and to my shoe\u2019s soles.<\/p>\n

Run, Kevin.\u00a0 Run.<\/p>\n

Long may I do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sitting in seat 21K, a window on the three person starboard side of a British Airways Airbus A380 en route to Los Angeles.\u00a0 I don\u2019t normally request windows on long hauls as I like to be able to get up and stretch my legs yet I double checked my Orbitz purchased ticket and sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}