Thoughts From The Trail

Anyone else tired of the winter weather we’ve been experiencing? To say it’s put a dent into my running routine would be an understatement. I took a couple of weeks off after the Military Bowl 101 Mile Freedom Run, which was followed up with the Frozen Sasquatch 50k 8 days later, and the Run 2 Read Half Marathon the day after that. My legs were trashed. I went out and ran 2 weeks later, then the bad weather came in, and the kids have basically been home the past 2 weeks, so I haven’t been able to get out as much as I’d like. I did start at CrossFit Morgantown 2 weeks ago, to start working on my core and endurance, as they know I am in it to just help with my endurance running life, but the staff and owners have been super supportive and helped me move into it slowly. My wife has joined me as well, which has been awesome for us to get back into the gym together again.

I won’t keep this post long, however, I did have a story to share and maybe one of the readers out there can help out. I haven’t put anything out about this yet, as we tried reaching out to Verizon Corporate PR people to see if they would have any response or provide help, but we’ve not heard anything back, so before I head over tot he local Verizon Wireless store, I thought I would reach out here to see if we could make something happen with this.

During my 101 mile run to the military bowl, as I was making my way out of DC and heading up to Annapolis, I came to a spot I remembered from my run across America when I crossed the same bridge almost a year and a half earlier. For almost the entirety of my run from Shepherdstown to Annapolis, I basically ran the same path I ran on the last 3 days leading up to my finish at Annapolis. A lot of memories came flashing back as I made my way along the C&O Trail and past the Marine Corps Memorial, the Washington Monument and other great structures along the way. As I was making my way out of DC, the night was getting cold, but I continued to press on, excited to once again be traveling on a journey to honor my heroes.

As I was heading north and crossing Largo Rd while running along Central Ave., I passed over the bridge and waited for a vehicle to come off of Largo and head south on Central. I noticed something lying in the section between the exit ramp off of Largo and the southbound Central Ave lane, but wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me since I was about 19 hours into my journey, or if there was something actually lying there. After the path cleared, I ran across the Largo Rd. exit towards the shiny thing in the median. I picked up what looked like an iPad in a Otterbox case, and the case and screen looked to be basically undamaged. My assumption is that someone placed the device on their roof while they were filling up with gas or something, and it fell off while making the sharp cloverleaf turn onto Central Ave. heading towards DC. I didn’t attempt to turn it on as I was trying to save time heading to the finish, so I just clutched it in my cold hands for the next mile or so until I arrived at the awaiting RV.

Once inside, I made the comment to my wife “You never know what you’ll find on these runs”, and for those of you that followed me along my run across America, you’ll remember I found some strange and seedy things along the way. I handed it to my wife, and started to eat while she started messing with it. It had no cracks, the case looked to be in great shape, and she pressed the power button.

It turned on.

A Verizon Wireless 3G symbol popped up in the upper left corner, and alerts started popping up on the screen for games that it seemed like a young kid would play. She turned it back off, and that brings us to today.

It’s been a little over a month since I returned home, and have tried to reach out to numerous phone numbers with PR and media relations at Verizon, and haven’t received one phone call back. We want to return the item to the rightful owner, but wanted to see if we could tie the story into the journey. With the run being focused on honoring and supporting those who have served us, and giving back by raising funds to support Operation Welcome Home, I figured it would be a great tie-in to continue giving back. Verizon donated a Wifi device for us when we made the run across America, helping my kids stay connected to their classmates with Skype and other tools, but I found it odd to not hear anything back from them. I just want to return he device to it’s rightful owner.

If anyone out there has a contact at Verizon Media, let me know. I will head over to the Verizon Wireless store here in Morgantown by next Tuesday if we haven’t heard anything, so they can track down the owner. I’m not trying to get anything out of this except to get the device back, and was hoping we’d have another good story to tell. When I have lost something of value in the past, someone was kind enough to return the contents to me when they found it, and I am just trying to continue to give back.

If anyone out there has a contact, please let me know. Thanks!

Continuing to Serve!

Jamie