What If We're Not Supposed to Know Everyone?

I think I need more RAM for my brain or maybe just a hard reset

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: a lot of people all at once.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.

---

Ingredient List

Usually this is where I put my inspirational reading or listening choices for the week, but it’s been such a busy week that I haven’t found much time to dive into anything. However, if you’ve found anything interesting, please leave it in the comments!

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Stone Soup

Despite what I will write in the main course for this week, I want it to be known that I spent a lot of time with a lot of people down in Austin, Texas, and it’s truly incredible to see how much my life has changed over the past six years. It’s unbelievable how many special people I’ve had a chance to connect with and interview and talk to about running.

On Wednesday, I got the chance to interview the greatest American ultrarunner ever, Scott Jurek, the main character in “Born to Run,” one of the most iconic running books of all time. I think of him often when running at home on the Appalachian Trail, which he ran the length of in 46 days back in 2015, at that time a fastest known time for the trail. I got to ask him what it was like to run on the pile of rocks in Rocksylvania, and how he did 59 miles a day on it.

What’s crazy is that when I used to play in a band, back before I ever ran, I used to get a whole stack of library books before tour so we’d have something to read. And one of the books was the Best American Sportswriting for that year. And one of the stories was about this race called the Badwater 135, which ran through Death Valley in the dead of summer.

I was in awe, and would tell people at parties about these weird runners, how these people existed and how they’d run with blood-filled socks, all sunburnt to death and soles melting off the bottoms of their shoes.

The person who won that race in 2005 was Scott Jurek, who was sitting beside me on Wednesday, a poster child for Midwestern kindness as I asked him about growing up in Minnesota and shared our common love for fishing and blowing things up and burning our trash for chores.

I mean, what a wonderful and strange trip.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

The Main: Breakfast Burrito

This past week, I was in Austin, Texas, for The Running Event, an annual trade show for– you guessed it– the running industry. It is a massive event that occupies the entirety of the Austin Convention Center– as the running boom continues full steam ahead, so does the floor plan. As the editor for the world’s top running shoe and gear review site, I and my team are sought after by brands to schedule meetings at their booths, so that they can show us what’s coming in 2025. Everyone from Adidas to Nike to Asics to On… and on. One guy from a Chinese brand (Upper Void) even showed up at our hotel lobby to put product in our hands (I love it by the way, thanks James).

James came by our hotel at 8 a.m. on Thursday morning, the final day of the two-and-a-half day event. We arrived in Austin 36 hours before that. In that span of time, here is what happened, condensed as best as I can (just get through it, I promise it’ll be worth it): 

On late Tuesday afternoon, we checked into our hotel, where we immediately ran into Eli from On in the lobby, and chatted for a few seconds. I went up to my room to change before going on a run. Randomly ran into two guys from Puma, in charge of running footwear, Conor and [     ]. Chatted for a few miles until [      ] became Damion in the course of conversation, which of course, I should have remembered, since this was the fifth time we’ve met. We also look like long lost brothers. Sorry, Damion.

From there, I headed to an Asics party where I talked to Bob (thanks for being a subscriber to Suppertime!), Mack, Kat, Karen, Frank, Paul, Brian, Chase, Nicole, and Drew. Also, Laura Green and Michael Ko, planting my pitch to them about doing a public roast of running influencers. A time to air all grievances, to speak the unspoken. It would end lives and careers, but it would be glorious.

After getting back to my hotel room, our lead trail reviewer Taylor arrived to share a room, then Jarrett, because they overbooked the hotel and he had to crash on the very squeaky and very uncomfortable pull-out couch bed. 

Early the next morning, I went on a run with Floris, a friend who is the co-founder of Path Projects (great brand, check them out), and Billy Yang, a documentary filmmaker and all-around great guy. That was the first time I met him, and he was wearing those Ray-Ban glasses that record everything, so I couldn’t tell if I was having a conversation or being interviewed. I guess we’ll find out. Side note: if you’re ever in Austin, do yourself a favor and get up and go for a run along the river and over the bridges of the Lady Bird Trail, it’s absolutely stunning.

After that, I dropped by the Nike pop-up to grab some shoes from Cheyenne, and on the way back I ran into Raz from the Running Sucks Substack, Don from Speedland, Lars from Saysky, Marc from Swiftwick, and [ ] and [ ], runners I’ve met multiple times across multiple states who lived in Austin. [ ] and I talked about baseball again, and how the new outfield dimensions at Camden Yards will help the Orioles’ chances at signing pitchers and/or right-handed hitters. I also saw [ ] again, who was part of the Chicago Marathon pace group that I led last month. At the hotel for breakfast, a guy named [ ] stopped me to tell me that he loves what we do. Apparently I met him last year. Great guy.

Are you as tired as I am yet? Almost done.

After breakfast, we headed over to the convention center, where we had meetings all day long, filled with PR people and product line managers and designers. Danny, Miya, Alina, Nikhail, [ ], Kevin, Dave, Matt, Mackenzie, Patrick, [ ], Bekah, [ ], [ ], Todd and Conor and Damion (remembered it this time), Erin, [ ], and Guitian. Did a live podcast from the Satisfy booth with ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek, but also chatted with Brice, Tommy, Michael, and Max. Talked with [ ] who I met earlier this summer and then at the Chicago Marathon and looked at his name tag before I remembered it was Zac from Under Armour. 

Almost to the finish line, hang in there.

In between all that, I ran into roughly 50 other people whose names I may or may not have remembered, whose faces I probably did, but whose context in my life I probably did not. 

Had dinner at Via 313 pizza, where we didn’t see anybody we knew (though ran into a handful of people on the way there and back).

Thursday morning we went on an Asics and Kofuzi group run where we ran into more people. Seth, a former reviewer for us, and Val Allman, Olympic gold medalist. Had a couple breakfast burritos, something hugely popular in Austin that should be hugely popular everywhere. There’s just no excuse for them not to be ubiquitous in America.

Quickly showered and then changed before we came down to the lobby, which brings us back to James. Another new name in the Robbe Rolodex, and we were only halfway done with The Running Event.

Let me tell you– my Rolodex is full, and has been for some time.

The collecting of names and faces began at the public library in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, when I met Shane as we both sat on the floor at the weekly story time. We were both four and he was born exactly a week before me, something I still remember and celebrate, even though he died a few years ago. There was also Richard, the kid who lived down the block, whose mother Tina wore pajamas for seemingly every occasion, and walked in bare feet in every season of the year, the warmth from her perpetually lit cigarette somehow radiating down to her toes in the dead of winter.

And then it was off to the races.

Elementary school, sports teams, middle school, youth group friends, high school. College, but a small one, which means it was easier to meet people. Things were still concentrated, to a degree. Then the internet. Myspace friends and Facebook friends and even followers on Xanga. Workplace friends and managers and bosses that continued through nearly two dozen jobs.

Then I joined a band. For the next six years, we played over 700 shows in 44 states, and at all of those shows we met someone new. If we weren’t sleeping in the van, we almost always crashed on someone’s couch, which meant that every night we met someone new that we needed to remember for the next time we came through town, so that we’d have a place to sleep in Columbia, South Carolina. Every evening we’d play with several other bands, most all of them forgotten in the bottom corner of some Xerox-ed show flier, high school kids that had a couple good summers of playing pop punk before becoming accountants and nurses and retail managers.

My phone is still full of contacts of which I have no idea who they are (but if you want Matt Thiessen of Relient K’s phone number, I have it). I’m always terrified I’m going to accidentally call someone like Kevin Arkansas or Mike All Get Out and have to explain how I have their number, who I am, and ask how they’re doing in life. I hope they’re doing great, by the way. Especially Kevin, who always threw the best apartment parties in Fayetteville (I think).

Over that time, I met thousands upon thousands of new people. Friends of a girlfriend in Grand Rapids, acquaintances on rooftop parties in Brooklyn, family members of fans in Tyler, Texas. 

After that, there was the “getting married and having kids” era, meeting their friends and parents of their friends and teachers and coaches and so on. At the same time, I got into running, which led to meeting more people. More people than I’ve ever met in all of the other things combined. It’s like in Minesweeper, when you click on a block connected to a bunch of other empty blocks, and suddenly the board opens up into a whole other dimension.

Just this past week, I walked down Sixth Street in Austin past a venue I played 15 years ago where I met people I’d never remember again, just as I was walking to another venue for a Brooks after party, where I would meet people I’ll never remember again.

This doesn’t even account for all the Uber drivers who I became friends with on Facebook or whose numbers I have on my phone, or random strangers I allowed into my life for no other reason that I’m just curious and interested in people, like the caretaker of the Hebrew cemetery that I always run through, who I now stop to talk to in the morning, who I now give shoes to because hers were worn through the toes, who I now am thinking I should invite over for Christmas dinner because she seems lonely.

She lives a mile north of me here in Baltimore, on the grounds of the cemetery. In Baltimore, she’s kind of far away, but where I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, she’d practically be our next-door neighbor. And those would be the people you knew.

My grandma, who lived a mile away from where we grew up, she had 15 brothers and sisters, so she was already pushed into the deep end of knowing people as a child. But that was pretty much enough. She went to a one-room schoolhouse, then eventually got a job at Hershey’s Chocolate where she worked for almost her whole life until she retired in her sixties. She knew her immediate family– who always and still drop by at any given moment– a handful of co-workers, the small congregation of her church, and the farmers in the surrounding area.

But she and my grandpa knew them all. Like, really knew about their lives. What part of their tractor wasn’t working or how their roof was being reshingled or how Aunt Betty had a cough for the last two weeks. The weather and its affect on crops and the fluctuating prices of cattle at the livestock auction. Mundane details that, as a kid, seemed like the most boring thing in the world when they rehashed it all around the dinner table while drinking pots of Folgers coffee on a Sunday afternoon.

Every once in a while, someone would move away or go to another job, and they’d wish them well, tell them it was great working with them, and that was that. They just never saw them or spoke to them again. My grandparents didn’t keep tabs on what cousin Sheila in Chattanooga was doing, unless she chose to call them and let them know, which sometimes happened. Life moved on for everyone. They didn’t meet business acquaintances from Dubai or Berlin or Shanghai and expect to remember their face and/or current state of business affairs two years down the road. Why would they?

Their world existed– and still exists, for my grandma– within a small circle on a large map. Seasons moved slowly, seeds were planted and crops were harvested, and time passed. Eighty-two years and counting.

And then there’s me.

I love meeting new people, hearing new stories from all corners of the world, from businessmen to bartenders. Over the course of one day last week, I had a great conversation with the founder of Hoka about footwear and another interesting conversation with a rideshare driver about Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson and what it’s like to drive between Dallas and Amarillo (we both agreed that it’s six-hour drive that takes two days). I loved both of those conversations equally.

But my life is also filled with one-touch relationships. A reply on Instagram, a nice-to-meet-you handshake at a group run, a like on a post and a notch in my memory that Matt from California made it to the top of a mountain in the Austrian Alps. So many of these relationships, collected in a big-ass junk drawer right in the front of my brain. I open it daily and deposit another person somewhere between the bag of used batteries and the loose paperclips and the broken tape measure.

I can’t help thinking that as much as I love all these people and am grateful for the depth of experience and broadening of viewpoints and horizons, maybe, just maybe, it’s not supposed to be like this. Maybe I’m not evolved enough yet, that I have one foot stuck in the world of screens and parasocial relationships and the worldwide reach of the internet, while the other foot is warming itself by a campfire late at night somewhere on a prairie with my small band of nomads, calloused and dirty from tracking down a meal all day long. Everyone talks about community, about “finding your tribe,” as if that can fall under an umbrella as wide as the earth, a parachute to cover any location found in Google Maps. But maybe my grandparents had it right all along. Maybe we’re just supposed to gather beneath a thimble and talk about the thing that happened down the road or the new neighbor a mile away or what kind of pie is for dessert.

I often find myself thinking of J.D. Salinger, who spent his younger years writing some of the greatest short stories and novels of the 20th century, including The Catcher in the Rye, my favorite book and the namesake of my firstborn son. If literary rock stars ever existed, he was one of the frontmen of the genre. And then it all became too much. Maybe it was the lingering effects of PTSD from his time in World War II, maybe it was the weight of expectations to produce hit after hit, or maybe it was the general crush of fame and all that comes with it. I suspect it was all of that in pieces, but it was mostly the loudness.

The cacophony of all the experiences rolled into one another, the voices of everyone he met and continued to meet, so loud that he couldn’t hear himself or the characters waiting to be written. So he just stopped. Stopped writing, stopped giving interviews, and mostly stopped going out, except maybe for groceries.

I don’t know if I could do that. I’d miss the people, or at least my people. I’d miss discovering what’s out there, how the world is changing and how people are doing amazing things to move humanity forward. I want to be a part of that.*

But sometimes I think it’d be nice to shut the heavy wooden door on the front of the cabin and tend to a fireplace, to invite a few friends over around a dinner table and talk about the week– not grand dreams or adventures or one-up stories, but just what happened– to say “wow, it’s really raining outside,” to go to bed with the sound of it the storm against the leaves outside and the roof above, to walk into the garden in the morning and see which flowers are heavy with the weight of last night’s downpour, to notice which ones are touching their faces to the ground, waiting for the sun to pull them back up.

---

* Please, if you ever do see me in public, I want you to say hello. I’d rather attempt to make space in my junk drawer (even if I may forget) than miss out on knowing you.

Summer concerts are cool though

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

Pretty sure I covered everything I did this past week in the earlier courses, so– as you can imagine– it was nice to be home.

Other things I’ve written or edited this past week:

• The Best Road Running Shoes of 2024 / Believe in the Run’s Best in Gear Awards

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. You can listen to this past week’s episode here.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

---