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Two True Stories Of Adventure On Reddit

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"Rush." Oil on 25"x 25" canvas. (Jenny Hoard/jenniferhoard.com)
"Rush." Oil on 25"x 25" canvas. (Jenny Hoard/jenniferhoard.com)

This week, we have two amazing tales of adventure and derring-do, brought to you by one very lucky Redditor, and two very adventurous Redditors.

I feel like we need to get in the mood for this. How about an Indiana Jones GIF?

OK! Let's go.

Act I

It's every traveler's nightmare: Realizing you've lost something. Like, say, your passport. Susan, aka /u/bibimbopbop, tells Ben and Amory what happened:

It was the morning of the day of my flight, and I was feeling a little bit of anxiety about how much how I would be able to fit all the stuff that I had accumulated into my small carry-on. I was going through everything and I slowly began to realize that my passport was not in my bag. So I was trying to not panic immediately, but eventually I went through everything and it just wasn't there, so I really panicked. I was like, holy crap, what do I do?

It was a Saturday. Susan called the American embassy, but they said no one could help her until Monday -- the day she had to be back at work.

She called the hotel she'd been staying at in Kyoto. They had her passport! But... she was 300 miles away in Tokyo and had to get on a plane in 8 hours. No way she'd make it to Kyoto and back in time to catch her flight.

In an act of desperation, she posted to Reddit.

Waiting in the wings was /u/OneForkShort... aka Vince. He was also on vacation in Japan and was just hanging out a Starbucks, drinking coffee, browsing the internet, as you do.

He sees Susan's post and thinks, OK, I've got nothing else to do. I'm in Osaka, not too far from Kyoto. I'm up for an adventure. He responds on the thread, and after a bit, Susan calls him.

"He immediately picked up and he just sounded like he was completely ready and willing to accept the mission," she says. "And there was no time wasted on the phone."

"... It's almost like he was waiting for my message on Reddit to accept an adventure."

Vince springs to action. He posts on Reddit and Instagram, documenting his trip with epic music in train stations where dance troupes are whirring in circles.

 

Susan and Vince decided to meet at Tokyo Station, where she can catch an express train to the airport in Narita. But the station is huge. It still took them about 10 minutes to find each other once Vince got there.

After a hurried conversation and many thank yous, Susan rushed onto the train... only to find out she was on the wrong train.

"Then I was like, holy [expletive]. After all this, I still might miss my plane!" Susan says.

But reader, she made it. And she later went back to her post to find that there were a lot of spectators cheering her and Vince on.

Susan paid Vince back for the train ticket and said the next time he's in New York, beers are on her.

"I honestly think most people wouldn't say no to a reasonable help request," says Vince, who is extremely modest.

Act II

Ross Simpson, u/Yoitsyokka, wants someone to go on an adventure with him. A very specific adventure.

After a meeting with his boss, where he got rave reviews for his work, he came home and thought about what he was doing with his life.

"I'm living this corporate lifestyle, and maybe this isn't exactly what I want," he says. "And then when I went home, I was just about to go to bed and I thought, I'll put this post on Reddit and see if anyone is crazy enough to come and join me, and yeah, that was the start of everything."

So yes, he's looking for someone(s) to run with him from the UK to Sicily, Italy, which is actually about 1,780 miles.

His plan is to sell all his worldly possessions, run from his home in Canterbury to Dover, take the ferry over to Calais, France, make a semi-circle around Lake Geneva, into the Alps and then down into Tuscany, through Sienna into Rome, go past Naples, hop on a ferry to Sicily and run the coast road to Palermo.

He's guessing it will take him about 102 days, which would require him to run about 16-17 miles per day.

But Ross... are you a runner?

"Well... I thought of myself as a runner," he says, laughing.

Thanks to help from the running community on Reddit, he feels pretty good about his plan. He leaves May 1 and still doesn't have anyone who's committed to go the whole way with him, but he's posted on r/running, as you can see below. Check out the post for links to his social media accounts, the charities he's raising money for and his gear list.


Thanks to Redditor /u/Dusty_Old_Bones for this week's artwork, titled "Rush." You can find her online at www.jenniferhoard.com and on Instagram @jenny.hoard.


We're on Twitter at @endless_thread and on Reddit as /u/endless_thread. Subscribe to the podcast with Apple PodcastsStitcherRadioPublic or RSS.

Headshot of Meghan B. Kelly

Meghan B. Kelly Multi-platform Editor
Meghan is the multi-platform editor for WBUR.

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