May 20, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Ranger Kielak set out across America, many of his friends and family were concerned about the people he'd encounter along the way. It turns out, their concerns were unfounded. Here's Ranger with the story of the good and beautiful people he's encountered along the way, and why exactly he chose to do the walk in the first place.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from a man on a long walk across the
country and a big mission.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We met up with him when he.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Came through our hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. Were located about an
hour due south of Memphis. We had two basic questions,
why and how. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
So my name is Ranger Keelac I am Well. I
was born and raised in a small town in northern
California called Chilcoot. It's about half an hour northwest of Reno, Nevada,
just inside the California border. And in twenty twenty two,
I texted my now fiance and said, Hey, I want
to walk across the country.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
She said, all right, what do we need to do?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And I took my first steps out of the Atlantic
Ocean March tenth of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
California Man a California mano.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A California man who is walking across America made his
way through Central Arkansas today.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
My college experience was rough.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Ever since I was little, I was like, Oh, I
want to be an animal doctor, like I love. I
loved animals. I started off one to be a feline veterinarian.
I remember even there's like the little notes app on
like the old Microsoft computers.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I would read all these books, read.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Cat fancy, and I was trying to write my own
book about cat care when I was like twelve.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right, so my dad, you know, oh, great job, kiddo,
keep writing. Uh huh, yeah, you'll do fine.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I was just I know, one hundred and ten thousand
percent sold on being a veterinarian, like unshakeable. That's what
I was going to do, no questions asked. Every time
anybody ever asked, I'm going to be a veterinarian. I'm
going to go to UC Davis. They're the number one
school in the world for animal science. And I was
top of my class, you know, of twelve people. But
still it was a thing, right. The first crack in
(02:04):
the foundation came a couple months before graduation when acceptance
letters went out. I was waitlisted for UC Davis. All
I remember just bawling in my room, just like I
can't believe it, Like how could they say no to me?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This? And that? Like I thought, I killed the essay.
So I send in the.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Weightless application kind of like that last fight to get
in about a month later, I got a letter back
that said I was accepted to the university.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I was off the waitlist. I did it.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
During the first day of orientation, they sat down all
these animal science majors in a big old auditorium and
they said, you know, you guys are the best of
the best, like really hyping us up, like not just
anybody can get into Davis for animal science.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This is the hardest major to get into.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
And then they said, okay, raise your hand if you
want to be a VET. All two hundred and fifty
of us raise our hands, except for like two or three.
All right, awesome, advisors raise your hands, and like, you know,
eight or ten whatever advisors raised their hands, and they said, great,
statistically speaking, that's how many of you will actually get
(03:16):
into that school. And they had the advisors kind of
place around the room in different areas so you could
really see you have a very small chance of actually
making it right. And that was kind of like the
oh no moment of this is going to be way
harder than I thought it was. I thought getting into
Davis was the hard part. I think I got put
(03:36):
on academic probation. My second or third quarter at Davis
went to the advisor's office and we said, okay, let's
go ahead and switch from animal science to animal science
and management, basically animal science and business. And then the
end of sophomore year, after getting put on academic probation
again and fighting to get off of it, it was
(03:57):
just kind of just decided two years into being in
the that maybe this wasn't the route for me.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
After all. A lot of tears were shed in her.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Office, and a lot of that was this is who
I am, that's what I'm supposed to be. This isn't
the legacy that I was supposed to leave. I really
just got caught up on that because I knew that
our time on Earth is finite, like there's a very
specific time that we're gone. We get put on the
(04:26):
gravestone like this day to this day, with a little
dash in between. And I figured, well, there's all these
people in the history books, all these people that are
you know, the people that did all these cool, great,
amazing things, like they're still talked about. They did something
that was bigger than themselves that I guess awarded them
the opportunity to extend that second life as long as
(04:49):
possible to kind of paraphrase it, every man dies twice,
the first time when he stops breathing, the second time
when someone says.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
His name for the last time.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
That really got me caught up in that idea of
kind of like living for that second life. But what
really changed that getting caught up between that space between
first and second death. My grandfather, Papa Larry, he was
(05:19):
diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And what really tripped me up was well,
they lived in Oklahoma. I was still in California, so
I didn't really get to see what was really going on.
I had a basic understanding of the disease.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
What it does. You know, you forget things, You get
very forgetful. Haha.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It didn't really hit me what was going on until
I visited my nana and uncles after he had passed
away and really started to hear you know, oh, he
forgot who he was, He forgot who we were. It
attacks different parts of your brain to the point that
you your fight or flight kicks in, until the point
that it doesn't. You can't even eat, you can't sleep like,
(05:56):
you can't function like a normal person anymore. And that
is kind of when that shift started happening for me.
I was so caught up with that idea of being
remembered after I'm gone, to the point that I was
drunk at some party one since someone was like.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh, what's your biggest fear?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
It's like spiders, snakes, And I was very serious, like,
my biggest fear is not being remembered after I'm dead.
And when I'd heard what was going through, like what
was happening for Popularity and what Nana Rose was going through,
I kind of realized, you know, you could live your
entire life focus on the time when you're not even here,
and in the last years of your life, you could
(06:37):
quite literally forget who you are. I could kind of
see how that trajectory that I was on, I was
already forgetting who I was. So in twenty eighteen, right
around the time that my grandfather had passed, there is
(06:57):
an artist, a singer named Mike Poe Nor. He's singing
songs like Cooler than Me. I took a pill and
a beza and in twenty eighteen I saw, you know,
some of his social media posts that he was walking
across the country, and it was just like this crazy
story of perseverance of this guy doing something that felt
impossible for me. I remember thinking, Man, I wish I
(07:19):
could do something like that, like that'd be so neat.
But I'm not insert all these reasons, right. I'm not
a multimillionaire. I don't write songs for Maroon five and
Justin Bieber. I don't have a crew of people that
can help me. I don't have a shuttle. I can't
do it.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's just not
for people like me.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Every once in a while kind of think of it
and think of his walk and look at some of
his posts, and when I would listen to his music,
that's what I would think. And right around the end
of twenty twenty, maybe getting twenty twenty one, I saw
that a couple of other guys had done the walk too,
And what I really gathered from that as I was,
you know, sitting doing whatever I was doing in twenty
(08:10):
twenty two, I think I was working in a bar
or at a vineyard at the time, was just like, Man,
all of those reasons that I had as to why
I couldn't do it were kind of bs, Like these
guys are, you know, just graduating from high school, didn't
have any kind of crazy backing, didn't have all these sponsors,
(08:31):
didn't have really anything that was on that list that
Mike had, and they still did it themselves. So there's
a Mike Posner quote from one of the songs. My
reasons are excuses for not being who I meant to be,
and that coupled with that realization kind of made me go, oh, no, like,
(08:57):
this isn't the cards for me, this is for people
like me. But yeah, that's kind of how it got
into my head, what got those excuses out. And then
twenty twenty two, like I kind of mentioned earlier, I
think August is when I texted my at the time
girlfriend currently fiance and said I want to do the walk.
(09:17):
I really want to do this, and she was just like, great,
what's the first step? And from that point on it
was just focused on getting to March tenth, twenty twenty four,
and quite literally taking the first steps.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
When we come back more of the story of the
man who walked across America and stopped in our studio
in Oxford, Mississippi to talk about it here on Our
American Stories, and we returned to our American Stories and
(10:12):
with Ranger Keelek's story. When we last left off, Ranger
was telling us about the events leading up to him
deciding that he needed to find out who he was
again rather than title chasing and attempting to create a
legacy for himself. For legacy's sake alone, Let's return to
the story.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Only my closest friends and family knew about it. Leading
up to it, I still had a day job. I
didn't want them to think that I was half in,
half out, even though I kind of was, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But I gave my notice.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And then the very next day is when I posted
about the walk and I started telling everyone about it.
But the more logistical side of it, I noticed that
a lot of people went east to west. A lot
of people and social media from what they had posted,
had a cart and a backpack. I saw that the
general advice was start early spring, finish kind of summerish time.
(11:11):
I ended up picking Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as my
starting point, and I picked Pismo Beach, California as my endpoint.
I picked Myrtle Beach kind of just because I saw
some pictures. I thought it was pretty, I thought it
was cool, Like it just kind of made sense and
I mean I've never been to South Carolina, the states.
(11:32):
I mean, I haven't really been on the East coast
at all, So I was like, anywhere I go, it
is going to be cool for me. Leading up to it,
I had a lot of concern from friends and family
about the state of the country. Are you sure you
want to do this? Like we're worried about the people.
We're worried about someone hurting you or robbing you're you know,
all these negative things that could very well could happen
(11:54):
at any point, right, And I guess from day one,
one of the mantras that I tell myself every day
is there's good people out there. And that's kind of
what I focus my attention on, is, you know, be cautious,
keep your head on a swivel, you know, all the
normal safety things, right, But at the end of the day,
like there are more good people than there are people
(12:15):
with ill intentions. It's just been proven true every single day. So,
I mean, what was it. I think it was the
day after I left a little town called Saluta in
South Carolina. That morning, probably about two or three miles
in this pickup truck kind of just whipped out in
front of me and stopped. The guy ran over to
me and was like what are you? Are you the
(12:37):
guy that I saw on the page? And I was like,
what are you talking about? And he's like, oh, I
saw that there's a guy walking across like it's you whatever,
And we just kind of struck up a conversation for
a few minutes. And he is a first responder for
the area. I can't remember if he was EMT or
fire specifically. I think in that area it might be
your little bit of everything. But he was telling me
(13:00):
and his face was a little bit messed up, and
he was telling me that he got really injured on
the job when it like damn near lost his life.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
You could tell he was all scarred up.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And he was just telling me his story and how
he was in the hospital for twenty four days and
it was just this crazy recovery and he told me
that what got him through it, and he kind of
compared that to my journey. He's like, there's going to
be terrible days. There's going to be moments where you're
thinking like why the heck are you doing? Why am
I doing this? Why'd I do my Like I should
(13:31):
just quit right now, and His thing was, if you're
still breathing, you're still.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Fighting, and to never quit.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And he said that, and he pointed out his wrists
and he had these bracelets on, and he took them
off of his arm and gave them to me, and
it says just that that never quit, still breathing, still fighting.
Ever since then, I haven't taken them off. I have
one to where other people can read it easier. I
have one to where I can read it easier. And
(13:58):
my third day of walking up in this town near pd,
South Carolina, I had no idea where I was going
to sleep that night. I was about twenty miles in
for the day. It was starting to get later in
the day. I think it was like two or three
o'clock in the afternoon, and I just walked into this
coffee shop. I asked the lady if she knew of
anywhere I could set up a camp tent or a
(14:19):
tent for the night. She said, no, but try the
outdoor store next door. And I walk in there. I
tell the gentleman that owns the shop what I'm doing,
and immediately he was just like, well, I have extra property,
Like I have a couple of acres next to my house.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Do you want to just set up there? Like after
talking to him for.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Just a few minutes and I kind of was just
like like why help. He's like, well, you just seem
like a good guy, Like you're out here raising money,
you're doing these things. And you know, the American Legion
Veterans of Foreign Wars organizations, I'm not a veteran, just
as a side note, they were very very helpful throughout
Alabama and Georgia, and you know, they were just you know,
(14:59):
there was a Veteran of Foreign Wars chapter that got
me a hotel room for a couple of nights, another
American Legion guy that just sponsored a couple hotel rooms,
another one that let me stay in a shed for
a few nights. And the guy that got me hotel rooms,
they had an Airbnb that they're gonna let me stay in.
But he messaged me. I got like the hey man,
(15:19):
bad news. Like you can see the little appetizer of
the text of a long text that's going to ruin
your day. Basically, right, it was the hey man text
is what I call them. Hey the people in our
VRBO or Airbnb whatever it was, extended their stay so
you can't stay in it anymore. But we already got
you a hotel room here, we got you a hotel
(15:41):
room in this next town. We're gonna pick you up,
we'll drive you around, we'll get you supplies, this and that.
They could have easily said, hey, man, our plan fell
through your sol sorry, but they were willing to just
kind of go out of their way, I don't know,
put in the work before even contacting me, which helped
me a bunch when I was, you know, fifteen miles
in when I got the text for the day, Like
kidding me, there's people that have given like one hundred
(16:06):
something dollars just on the side of the highway. I mean,
I'm sure some people don't know what I'm doing. They
just assume I'm some homeless guy, which is also like
even crazier that they're just hey, here's a twenty, Hey,
here's a ten, here's a whatever. And I always think
it's like really sweet when I see somebody like reach
into their like quite literally grabbing whatever is in their
pocket and hand to get over without even.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Looking at it.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
And people have done, you know, they give me like
three or four bucks. But like that's just like such
a genuine like whatever is in this pocket is yours.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Even just coming into Oxford, there was a police officer
that stopped and you know, I heard the horror story
or like not horror stories, but like people that walk
across the country get pulled over by cops, right mostly
for like while in this check, somebody called the cops
on them because I'm pushing a baby stroller, right, so
they assume, oh, there's a kid in there. There's this
crazy man walking in the side of the highway. And
I was like, okay, gotta get my like, get my ID,
(16:59):
get my what. But he pulled over and was like, hey,
are you the guy walking to California. I said, oh, yes, yes, sir,
I am. He said, great, I'm going to turn around.
I'm going to go to the gas station about mile
up the road, grab whatever you want, tell them that
I came by, like I'll go talk to them right now.
I'm going to come back tomorrow and pay for all
(17:20):
of it. And I was like, no freaking way. And
it was great because you know, I'd already restocked, like
I had everything I needed and I just got like
some snacks, like an energy drink or something. But again,
that was just someone from the community going out of
their way to help me in their own in their
own way. Everywhere you go, you hear the horror stories,
(17:44):
like that's the first thing people say, kind of like
defining good people by their worst days. I mean, I'm
sure people when they hear them from California have all
the stories they've made up in their head or what
they've heard about.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
The horror stories. You know, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I've been called nai if, I've been called ignorant, but
I really do believe that there's good people much more
so than bad. My perspective has been validated one hundred percent.
I've gone through what would be like the bad areas
of certain neighborhoods, and I'm not in areas that long.
Like I haven't had any negative experiences, and I'm sure
a lot of that is also just like a like
I'm a big white dude, like six foot something two
(18:21):
hundred something pounds, like I look crazy right Like people
don't you know, they would probably think twice before messing
with me, if anything, but soccer moms and people on
their way to and from church or doing what like
going out of their way to stop and you know,
give me a water, give me a snack, an extra,
you know, a few bucks. Like it's just been insane
(18:43):
how generous people have been.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to ranger
Keeleek for sharing his story, sharing his journey and stopping
by on his walk across America with a and my goodness,
what he thinks about America, we do too. That it's
a good country, filled with good and decent people everywhere,
and that yes, there are people of ill intent, as
(19:09):
he put it, but the news tends to lead with that.
The story of the man who walked across America, well,
just to do it, and I think to prove his
thesis if the country is a good place, and of
course to raise some money for charities his story. Here
are our American stories.
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
story from a man on a long walk across the
country and a big mission.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We met up with him when he.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Came through our hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. Were located about an
hour due south of Memphis. We had two basic questions,
why and how. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
So my name is Ranger Keelac I am Well. I
was born and raised in a small town in northern
California called Chilcoot. It's about half an hour northwest of Reno, Nevada,
just inside the California border. And in twenty twenty two,
I texted my now fiance and said, Hey, I want
to walk across the country.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
She said, all right, what do we need to do?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And I took my first steps out of the Atlantic
Ocean March tenth of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
California Man a California mano.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
A California man who is walking across America made his
way through Central Arkansas today.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
My college experience was rough.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Ever since I was little, I was like, Oh, I
want to be an animal doctor, like I love. I
loved animals. I started off one to be a feline veterinarian.
I remember even there's like the little notes app on
like the old Microsoft computers.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I would read all these books, read.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Cat fancy, and I was trying to write my own
book about cat care when I was like twelve.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right, so my dad, you know, oh, great job, kiddo,
keep writing. Uh huh, yeah, you'll do fine.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I was just I know, one hundred and ten thousand
percent sold on being a veterinarian, like unshakeable. That's what
I was going to do, no questions asked. Every time
anybody ever asked, I'm going to be a veterinarian. I'm
going to go to UC Davis. They're the number one
school in the world for animal science. And I was
top of my class, you know, of twelve people. But
still it was a thing, right. The first crack in
(02:04):
the foundation came a couple months before graduation when acceptance
letters went out. I was waitlisted for UC Davis. All
I remember just bawling in my room, just like I
can't believe it, Like how could they say no to me?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This? And that? Like I thought, I killed the essay.
So I send in the.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Weightless application kind of like that last fight to get
in about a month later, I got a letter back
that said I was accepted to the university.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I was off the waitlist. I did it.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
During the first day of orientation, they sat down all
these animal science majors in a big old auditorium and
they said, you know, you guys are the best of
the best, like really hyping us up, like not just
anybody can get into Davis for animal science.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
This is the hardest major to get into.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
And then they said, okay, raise your hand if you
want to be a VET. All two hundred and fifty
of us raise our hands, except for like two or three.
All right, awesome, advisors raise your hands, and like, you know,
eight or ten whatever advisors raised their hands, and they said, great,
statistically speaking, that's how many of you will actually get
(03:16):
into that school. And they had the advisors kind of
place around the room in different areas so you could
really see you have a very small chance of actually
making it right. And that was kind of like the
oh no moment of this is going to be way
harder than I thought it was. I thought getting into
Davis was the hard part. I think I got put
(03:36):
on academic probation. My second or third quarter at Davis
went to the advisor's office and we said, okay, let's
go ahead and switch from animal science to animal science
and management, basically animal science and business. And then the
end of sophomore year, after getting put on academic probation
again and fighting to get off of it, it was
(03:57):
just kind of just decided two years into being in
the that maybe this wasn't the route for me.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
After all. A lot of tears were shed in her.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Office, and a lot of that was this is who
I am, that's what I'm supposed to be. This isn't
the legacy that I was supposed to leave. I really
just got caught up on that because I knew that
our time on Earth is finite, like there's a very
specific time that we're gone. We get put on the
(04:26):
gravestone like this day to this day, with a little
dash in between. And I figured, well, there's all these
people in the history books, all these people that are
you know, the people that did all these cool, great,
amazing things, like they're still talked about. They did something
that was bigger than themselves that I guess awarded them
the opportunity to extend that second life as long as
(04:49):
possible to kind of paraphrase it, every man dies twice,
the first time when he stops breathing, the second time
when someone says.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
His name for the last time.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
That really got me caught up in that idea of
kind of like living for that second life. But what
really changed that getting caught up between that space between
first and second death. My grandfather, Papa Larry, he was
(05:19):
diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And what really tripped me up was well,
they lived in Oklahoma. I was still in California, so
I didn't really get to see what was really going on.
I had a basic understanding of the disease.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
What it does. You know, you forget things, You get
very forgetful. Haha.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It didn't really hit me what was going on until
I visited my nana and uncles after he had passed
away and really started to hear you know, oh, he
forgot who he was, He forgot who we were. It
attacks different parts of your brain to the point that
you your fight or flight kicks in, until the point
that it doesn't. You can't even eat, you can't sleep like,
(05:56):
you can't function like a normal person anymore. And that
is kind of when that shift started happening for me.
I was so caught up with that idea of being
remembered after I'm gone, to the point that I was
drunk at some party one since someone was like.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh, what's your biggest fear?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
It's like spiders, snakes, And I was very serious, like,
my biggest fear is not being remembered after I'm dead.
And when I'd heard what was going through, like what
was happening for Popularity and what Nana Rose was going through,
I kind of realized, you know, you could live your
entire life focus on the time when you're not even here,
and in the last years of your life, you could
(06:37):
quite literally forget who you are. I could kind of
see how that trajectory that I was on, I was
already forgetting who I was. So in twenty eighteen, right
around the time that my grandfather had passed, there is
(06:57):
an artist, a singer named Mike Poe Nor. He's singing
songs like Cooler than Me. I took a pill and
a beza and in twenty eighteen I saw, you know,
some of his social media posts that he was walking
across the country, and it was just like this crazy
story of perseverance of this guy doing something that felt
impossible for me. I remember thinking, Man, I wish I
(07:19):
could do something like that, like that'd be so neat.
But I'm not insert all these reasons, right. I'm not
a multimillionaire. I don't write songs for Maroon five and
Justin Bieber. I don't have a crew of people that
can help me. I don't have a shuttle. I can't
do it.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's just not
for people like me.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Every once in a while kind of think of it
and think of his walk and look at some of
his posts, and when I would listen to his music,
that's what I would think. And right around the end
of twenty twenty, maybe getting twenty twenty one, I saw
that a couple of other guys had done the walk too,
And what I really gathered from that as I was,
you know, sitting doing whatever I was doing in twenty
(08:10):
twenty two, I think I was working in a bar
or at a vineyard at the time, was just like, Man,
all of those reasons that I had as to why
I couldn't do it were kind of bs, Like these
guys are, you know, just graduating from high school, didn't
have any kind of crazy backing, didn't have all these sponsors,
(08:31):
didn't have really anything that was on that list that
Mike had, and they still did it themselves. So there's
a Mike Posner quote from one of the songs. My
reasons are excuses for not being who I meant to be,
and that coupled with that realization kind of made me go, oh, no, like,
(08:57):
this isn't the cards for me, this is for people
like me. But yeah, that's kind of how it got
into my head, what got those excuses out. And then
twenty twenty two, like I kind of mentioned earlier, I
think August is when I texted my at the time
girlfriend currently fiance and said I want to do the walk.
(09:17):
I really want to do this, and she was just like, great,
what's the first step? And from that point on it
was just focused on getting to March tenth, twenty twenty four,
and quite literally taking the first steps.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
When we come back more of the story of the
man who walked across America and stopped in our studio
in Oxford, Mississippi to talk about it here on Our
American Stories, and we returned to our American Stories and
(10:12):
with Ranger Keelek's story. When we last left off, Ranger
was telling us about the events leading up to him
deciding that he needed to find out who he was
again rather than title chasing and attempting to create a
legacy for himself. For legacy's sake alone, Let's return to
the story.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Only my closest friends and family knew about it. Leading
up to it, I still had a day job. I
didn't want them to think that I was half in,
half out, even though I kind of was, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But I gave my notice.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And then the very next day is when I posted
about the walk and I started telling everyone about it.
But the more logistical side of it, I noticed that
a lot of people went east to west. A lot
of people and social media from what they had posted,
had a cart and a backpack. I saw that the
general advice was start early spring, finish kind of summerish time.
(11:11):
I ended up picking Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as my
starting point, and I picked Pismo Beach, California as my endpoint.
I picked Myrtle Beach kind of just because I saw
some pictures. I thought it was pretty, I thought it
was cool, Like it just kind of made sense and
I mean I've never been to South Carolina, the states.
(11:32):
I mean, I haven't really been on the East coast
at all, So I was like, anywhere I go, it
is going to be cool for me. Leading up to it,
I had a lot of concern from friends and family
about the state of the country. Are you sure you
want to do this? Like we're worried about the people.
We're worried about someone hurting you or robbing you're you know,
all these negative things that could very well could happen
(11:54):
at any point, right, And I guess from day one,
one of the mantras that I tell myself every day
is there's good people out there. And that's kind of
what I focus my attention on, is, you know, be cautious,
keep your head on a swivel, you know, all the
normal safety things, right, But at the end of the day,
like there are more good people than there are people
(12:15):
with ill intentions. It's just been proven true every single day. So,
I mean, what was it. I think it was the
day after I left a little town called Saluta in
South Carolina. That morning, probably about two or three miles
in this pickup truck kind of just whipped out in
front of me and stopped. The guy ran over to
me and was like what are you? Are you the
(12:37):
guy that I saw on the page? And I was like,
what are you talking about? And he's like, oh, I
saw that there's a guy walking across like it's you whatever,
And we just kind of struck up a conversation for
a few minutes. And he is a first responder for
the area. I can't remember if he was EMT or
fire specifically. I think in that area it might be
your little bit of everything. But he was telling me
(13:00):
and his face was a little bit messed up, and
he was telling me that he got really injured on
the job when it like damn near lost his life.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
You could tell he was all scarred up.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And he was just telling me his story and how
he was in the hospital for twenty four days and
it was just this crazy recovery and he told me
that what got him through it, and he kind of
compared that to my journey. He's like, there's going to
be terrible days. There's going to be moments where you're
thinking like why the heck are you doing? Why am
I doing this? Why'd I do my Like I should
(13:31):
just quit right now, and His thing was, if you're
still breathing, you're still.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Fighting, and to never quit.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And he said that, and he pointed out his wrists
and he had these bracelets on, and he took them
off of his arm and gave them to me, and
it says just that that never quit, still breathing, still fighting.
Ever since then, I haven't taken them off. I have
one to where other people can read it easier. I
have one to where I can read it easier. And
(13:58):
my third day of walking up in this town near pd,
South Carolina, I had no idea where I was going
to sleep that night. I was about twenty miles in
for the day. It was starting to get later in
the day. I think it was like two or three
o'clock in the afternoon, and I just walked into this
coffee shop. I asked the lady if she knew of
anywhere I could set up a camp tent or a
(14:19):
tent for the night. She said, no, but try the
outdoor store next door. And I walk in there. I
tell the gentleman that owns the shop what I'm doing,
and immediately he was just like, well, I have extra property,
Like I have a couple of acres next to my house.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Do you want to just set up there? Like after
talking to him for.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Just a few minutes and I kind of was just
like like why help. He's like, well, you just seem
like a good guy, Like you're out here raising money,
you're doing these things. And you know, the American Legion
Veterans of Foreign Wars organizations, I'm not a veteran, just
as a side note, they were very very helpful throughout
Alabama and Georgia, and you know, they were just you know,
(14:59):
there was a Veteran of Foreign Wars chapter that got
me a hotel room for a couple of nights, another
American Legion guy that just sponsored a couple hotel rooms,
another one that let me stay in a shed for
a few nights. And the guy that got me hotel rooms,
they had an Airbnb that they're gonna let me stay in.
But he messaged me. I got like the hey man,
(15:19):
bad news. Like you can see the little appetizer of
the text of a long text that's going to ruin
your day. Basically, right, it was the hey man text
is what I call them. Hey the people in our
VRBO or Airbnb whatever it was, extended their stay so
you can't stay in it anymore. But we already got
you a hotel room here, we got you a hotel
(15:41):
room in this next town. We're gonna pick you up,
we'll drive you around, we'll get you supplies, this and that.
They could have easily said, hey, man, our plan fell
through your sol sorry, but they were willing to just
kind of go out of their way, I don't know,
put in the work before even contacting me, which helped
me a bunch when I was, you know, fifteen miles
in when I got the text for the day, Like
kidding me, there's people that have given like one hundred
(16:06):
something dollars just on the side of the highway. I mean,
I'm sure some people don't know what I'm doing. They
just assume I'm some homeless guy, which is also like
even crazier that they're just hey, here's a twenty, Hey,
here's a ten, here's a whatever. And I always think
it's like really sweet when I see somebody like reach
into their like quite literally grabbing whatever is in their
pocket and hand to get over without even.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Looking at it.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
And people have done, you know, they give me like
three or four bucks. But like that's just like such
a genuine like whatever is in this pocket is yours.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Even just coming into Oxford, there was a police officer
that stopped and you know, I heard the horror story
or like not horror stories, but like people that walk
across the country get pulled over by cops, right mostly
for like while in this check, somebody called the cops
on them because I'm pushing a baby stroller, right, so
they assume, oh, there's a kid in there. There's this
crazy man walking in the side of the highway. And
I was like, okay, gotta get my like, get my ID,
(16:59):
get my what. But he pulled over and was like, hey,
are you the guy walking to California. I said, oh, yes, yes, sir,
I am. He said, great, I'm going to turn around.
I'm going to go to the gas station about mile
up the road, grab whatever you want, tell them that
I came by, like I'll go talk to them right now.
I'm going to come back tomorrow and pay for all
(17:20):
of it. And I was like, no freaking way. And
it was great because you know, I'd already restocked, like
I had everything I needed and I just got like
some snacks, like an energy drink or something. But again,
that was just someone from the community going out of
their way to help me in their own in their
own way. Everywhere you go, you hear the horror stories,
(17:44):
like that's the first thing people say, kind of like
defining good people by their worst days. I mean, I'm
sure people when they hear them from California have all
the stories they've made up in their head or what
they've heard about.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
The horror stories. You know, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I've been called nai if, I've been called ignorant, but
I really do believe that there's good people much more
so than bad. My perspective has been validated one hundred percent.
I've gone through what would be like the bad areas
of certain neighborhoods, and I'm not in areas that long.
Like I haven't had any negative experiences, and I'm sure
a lot of that is also just like a like
I'm a big white dude, like six foot something two
(18:21):
hundred something pounds, like I look crazy right Like people
don't you know, they would probably think twice before messing
with me, if anything, but soccer moms and people on
their way to and from church or doing what like
going out of their way to stop and you know,
give me a water, give me a snack, an extra,
you know, a few bucks. Like it's just been insane
(18:43):
how generous people have been.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
And a terrific job on the production and storytelling by
our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to ranger
Keeleek for sharing his story, sharing his journey and stopping
by on his walk across America with a and my goodness,
what he thinks about America, we do too. That it's
a good country, filled with good and decent people everywhere,
and that yes, there are people of ill intent, as
(19:09):
he put it, but the news tends to lead with that.
The story of the man who walked across America, well,
just to do it, and I think to prove his
thesis if the country is a good place, and of
course to raise some money for charities his story. Here
are our American stories.
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