Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Chapter I: Mission San Francisco de Asís to Mission Santa Clara de Asís

I have a theory about pain: it is increasing with a decreasing rate. In other words, it is bounded from above. When you experience something painful in your life it hits you very hard at the beginning but as time passes and the pain increases, you feel less impacted by it. You adapt to it and you live with it. When I start running long distances, I can see this theory in practice. The pain grows and gets worse and worse but it always seems that there is an invisible ceiling that bounds it and this makes me not to give up because I know that the pain cannot exceed my capabilities to cope with it. That is how I run.

On that summer day of September 13, 2015 when I stopped cycling and return home, I could not think about anything but my big running journey. I changed quickly and got out of the house for the second time that morning, this time on foot. I ran down Fillmore Street until I got to Market Street. From there I ran on Church Street to 16th street and finally I go to Mission San Francisco de Asís. It is located on the corner of Dolores Street and 16th street. The main entrance through the gift shop is on Dolores Street. However I entered the building through a small door in the back of the building on 16th street. When I entered the main room, the choir was practicing for the Sunday mass. Inside the church was empty and dark. I sat down on a bench and listened to the choir.  It was a very good feeling to be there in that moment in my life and at the beginning of that big journey. I always liked the spirituality and was drawn into the religious beliefs about the God and its relationship to my daily life. Few minutes passed and the choir finished their practice. The church fell into a deep silence. I got up and walked my way toward the main door. As I was going to open the door to exit, someone called me from behind “Good morning!” I looked back and saw a smiling face of a guy dressed in a beige suit. I smiled back and nodded. He extended his hand and shook mine warmly. Then he took a look at my running outfit and asked “are you coming from a run?” I laughed and said “Not yet, actually I am going to start a big one. This is my birthday today and I’m going to run from here to Mission Santa Clara on El Camino.” His eyes widened as he tried to digest what I just told him. He could not believe it so I explained to him what my running goal was. “Happy birthday!” he said and then asked “how “young” are you?” I laughed and told him I was turning 34. Then he hugged me and told me that he will pray for me, that he will keep me in his prayers that day in the church and that I should come bac next week when I finished my run and tell him about it. Randy, as he introduced himself to me, became my anchor that day. I could picture him praying for me at the church and this became a powerful image that kept me running that day. If what I experienced on my bike earlier that day was a sign for me to start this running mission, Randy became the confirmation of it: a random guy in an empty church, who was sincerely amazed by my running idea and promised to pray for me. Before I left the church I visited the old chapel, the only intact mission in the chain of 21 California missions that has even survived the big earthquake in San Francisco in 1906.

I got out of the mission building around 10 am and started running to Mission Street. Running or cycling on Mission Street from north to south of San Francisco is a unique experience that I have done several times. As you go down you can see the San Francisco Latin community stretched along this long street: lots of taquerias and fruit shops with walls covered with murals. Cross streets are numbers, then country names (there is even a “Persia” street) and then finally you reach Daly City on the top a hill. As many other areas of San Francisco, Daly City has its own microclimate. It has been foggy almost every time I have been there. Just before entering Daily City, there is a big Lucky supermarket where I stopped and got a snack. After Daly City, Mission Street becomes El Camino Real and goes all the way down to San Jose. At the beginning there are some cemeteries and memorial parks (Cypress lawn and Golden Gate cemetery). Then I reached San Bruno and Millbrae where the airport is located and then after that there are small towns (about 3 miles) until you get to Redwood City. By the time I got to RWC I was exhausted and hungry. It was around 4 pm and I knew that there is a big Wholefood market on the corner of El Camino and Jefferson Street. All along the way to there I was thinking about a nice pizza place inside this store. I knew they had a very good furnace pizza. I was imaging a delicious fresh vegetarian pizza coming out of oven for my mid-run snack. So I gathered all energy I had and pushed myself hard to get to Wholefood market. When I entered, I could not believe what I was seeing. They had closed off the pizza section for construction. This was the biggest disappointment of that day after all those spiritual highlights. I got some humus and fruits instead and continued my run to Menlo Park when I received that text message from Xiaojing. Now I had to finish the journey and go back to see my friends. 

I was near Mountain View when my phone rang. It was my younger brother, Shakib, who wanted to say happy birthday. I told him what I was doing and told him that I still had about 10 miles to go. It was good to hear a familiar voice as I was losing all my energy and motivation. I was extremely tired and exhausted but there was no way that I quit and gave up. I had to finish it even if I had to run very slowly. So for the last 10 miles I tried to run but what actually was going on was like you see a very old man jogging in the park. I could barely take a step or stretch my legs enough to make a full step but whatever it was, I was going forward and the distance was getting shorter and shorter. I was frantically checking the distance on my phone. Every 0.1 mile was a big achievement, and there I learned a big lesson for my future runs: no matter how far the distance is and how unreachable it looks, it is composed of many small steps each the size of 1 meter or less. You won’t achieve your goal if you don’t take all of these small steps. There is no shortcut, no way around it. You have to take all of these thousands of steps to get there and although all I just said seems trivial and obvious, it is not obvious at all in practice. In other words, there is no impossible goal as long as there is a feasible path to that goal. Every small step in a long journey counts and bears equal importance. I did everything I could to finish my mission that day: I ran, jogged, walked, and dragged myself along El Camino and finally I got there. Mission Santa Clara is located on UC Santa Clara’s campus. I got to the campus few minutes before 10 pm when it was dark and no one was around. I pulled up my map to find the location of the church. As was walking along the path that Google map was showing me I kept my head down and was not paying attention to my surrounding. Finally I figured out the route and followed the blue dotted path on my phone until I got close to where it was supposed to be the Mission. I looked up and here it was a beautiful old building standing in front of me. I could not believe it. I had reached my first mission-to-mission goal after struggling for 12 hours. I saw the beautiful building and then I collapsed. I lie down right in front of the church and looked up into the dark sky. There was no star blinking at me but one, the one that rises from south and has been used by travelers throughout the history to navigate the endless deserts of the Middle East. That was my star, Canopus or Soheil.

I called Xiaojing. The party was over and the guests had already left. I had missed the party but I did not care about that anymore. I was happy that I had started what I always wanted to do and I wanted to share it with my good friends. After few minutes, Xiaojing came after me and found me standing on the street shaking and shivering. It was a hot summer night but I was feeling so cold. I got in her car that was packed with her stuff ready to move back to Atlanta. “Do you have something to cover me? I’m freezing.” She found a blanket and covered me with it and drove back to Palo Alto. We got to Mirte’s house around 11 pm. They sat me at the kitchen table and brought me food and drink. I could not have asked for anything more. “I think you have to eat eggs” Mirte said while she was running to pour me some more soup. “…and also beans, I have these Chilean super cool beans.” She said as she was looking for more food in the cabinets. For an hour or so she took care of my exhausted body, gave me everything she found in her kitchen. That kitchen and her hospitality became an integral part of my mission runs after that night. She opened her heart to me and embraced my mission project as like no one else. After that night, her cute apartment in Palo Alto became in a sense my running headquarters for the couple of my future mission runs.


Date: 13 September 2015
Duration: 12 hours
Length: 48 miles (77 km)
Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/7oM7e1G4Kt/

No comments: