BY ANDREW GUMBEL
LOS ANGELES - It did not look like much, this sloppy burger joint on the wrong side of the tracks in San Diego, but to Rob Garside it was very heaven. After 32,000km of rough road, with little to sustain him but willpower and his own feet, he could not hide his excitement at being back in a First World country, one with smooth asphalt, parking meters, functioning telephones and only a minimal risk of intestinal upset.
"I'm sorry if I'm incoherent," he babbled apologetically, "but it's been a long time since I spoke in English."
He sounded like a spy coming in from the cold, or an adventurer emerging from the jungle. And, in a sense, that is what he was. Better known as the Running Man, Garside is setting out to be the first person ever to jog all the way around the world. So far, he has covered four continents in 3 1/2 years. And there has scarcely been a dull moment.
He has been mugged in Pakistan and Panama, shot at in Russia, arrested and thrown into jail in China. He nearly froze in the snowy wastes of Tibet, had to be rescued from the searing heat of the south Australian desert, felt his body begin to rot in the humid fog of the Amazon jungle.
Once, an SAS man taught him how to squeeze water out of toads, in case he should find himself dying of thirst. He has lost computers and digital video cameras, not to mention countless pairs of running shoes. And he still has three continents to go.
Last week, he pounded the last few hundred kilometres of Mexican road and crossed over into the United States at the Tijuana-San Diego border post. Apart from a nagging tooth abscess he has not had the time or the money to get treated, he could not have been a happier man.
Arriving at Dick's Last Resort on the southern edge of downtown San Diego, he gratefully glugged down a glass of fresh milk and looked around admiringly at the hubbub of Americana all around him - waiters with arms full of cheeseburgers and fries, lunchtime drinkers raising beers and Cokes chock-full of ice cubes, even a couple of local television news crews.
"This is good. It feels very good," the wiry 33-year-old said later, picking uncertainly at a chicken salad. (Fear of fly-borne diseases dies hard).
It is a peculiar sort of determination that pushes the Running Man. Five years ago, he sold his house in Manchester and most of his possessions, reducing his life to the contents of a single medium backpack.
At times he has been so broke he has had to depend on the kindness of others simply to keep himself fed and sheltered. His venture has been largely self-financed, and although he has picked up sponsorship and royalty fees from the video footage he has shot along the way, money has always been a means to an end, not a goal in itself.
Partly because of his misadventures and partly because of the sheer discomfort of much of his journey, the open road has been not so much romance as sheer dogged obsession. "It's the simplicity, the rawness of it. It's not about corporate logos. It's about people and living life."
He is the first to admit the absurd side of what he has undertaken: even his hairiest moments are shot through with wry humour in the retelling. When, for example, he recounts how a band of gypsies took potshots at him in the suburbs of Moscow, he cannot help dwelling on how slow he was to realise that the loud bangs he was hearing were directed straight at him.
"What did you do when you felt the bullets whizzing right past you?" I asked.
"I ran," he replied.
"But you were running already."
"Well, I ran faster."
Running has got him out of just as much trouble as it has landed him in. Most of the attempted muggings he has endured he has thwarted simply by being swifter than his assailants.
In Tibet, when the sight of his recording equipment made the Chinese authorities suspect he might be a spy, he found himself taken into custody, but simply sneaked out of the police building where he was being held (the door to his room was unlocked) and kept on running, sleeping in garages and other out-of-the-way places to escape detection.
More often, he was on the receiving end of human kindness: families who volunteered to share their evening meal with him and offer him hot water and a bed, or night-shift staff at police stations - particularly in the Indian subcontinent - who provided the same sort of hospitality. More often, too, the greatest danger came not from other people but from the elements and from Mother Nature. After collapsing in Australia's Eyre Peninsula and being rescued by a local policeman, Garside still refers to the desert as "the place of death." The Amazon he calls a "green hell;" the night-time sounds of animals killing other animals continue to haunt him, as does the stench of the fungus attacking his feet beneath his rotting sneakers.
All of that is behind him now, at least for a while, as he plans his three-month tour of the US.
Once America is over, he has to figure out a way around Antarctica - a matter of money as much as logistics.
And then there is Africa.
If Garside makes it back in one piece to Piccadilly Circus - the place where he started in December 1996 - he intends to take a break to write a book based on his trip.
That, however, is the future. Right now he will happily settle for a dentist, a comfortable hotel room, a warm shower and a few more chicken salads.
- INDEPENDENT
Running Man pauses in heaven for chicken salad
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