🇺🇸 Old Boy

Hello Adventurers, 

In the mind’s eye, the tumbleweed somersaults for eternity. But in reality, it probably hits a snag. At least at some point, whether drifter desires are fully satisfied or not. And for me, this stoppage came in early 2025 by way of duty and desk—done to rally behind my wife’s longstanding dream of owning a house. And done for work, the work to make it happen.

To make good on an IOU in default, I took a big swing and somehow scored a dream gig with a powerhouse global firm. It is big leagues stuff—where I’m a bat boy among heavy hitters. And to rise to the occasion / the level of my colleagues, I’ve had to step up—no days off, no vacation, just total commitment to the gig. A self-imposed immersion that’s entirely necessary, done to prove myself and earn the opportunity.

“Clients first. Firm second. You third.” An unspoken line became a line to toe and one to embody, and a marching order with bodily consequence—greater sedentariness, from stepping down the step count to make space for the big gig. Basically, long hours inside an office haven’t been conducive to conducting long treks outside. This year, it is what it is. Until it isn’t next year, which is when I predict I’ll have a better footing on things. As such, you prolly won’t hear much from this newsletter ‘til then.

Anyway, the job recently dispatched me to Fargo, North Dakota to go service a client at the end of a work week. There, I gave myself a week-early, half-weekend birthday present—tacking on a Midwestern Saturday marathon (i.e. give me an inch and I’ll take 26 miles). It wasn’t what I wanted as gift per se, but is what I needed to be present—some physical movement, the freedom to wander alone out there, and me untethered in the unknown with pen and camera in tow…

Fargo wasn’t ever in the plans, but nothing about this year has been. If anything, everything seems to be about making do with whatever you have—to find substance or sustenance, in the most unlikeliest of spaces and places.

- Ben Pobjoy

TREK TRACKER

World by foot and/or footnotes

• Countries marathoned to date: 75

• Marathons completed this year: 19

• Kilometres trekked by foot this year: 3,244

• Marathons completed since 2015: 925

• Total kilometres trekked since 2015: 84,327

• Next stops wish list: Makhachkala, Bishkek, Tashkent

RAPID RECAP

A speedy synopsis for time-crunched readers

• The Wildest Thing: Ranch dressing served with nearly everything in Fargo🥳

• The Biggest Obstacle: Guns, desks, status quo, thoughts, prayers🥴

• The Lesson Learned: To still the mind I gotta move my body🙃

FIELD NOTES: FARGO, AMERICA

Life and death in the Heartland

The locals said downtown Fargo was unusually quiet because two people had been shot and killed in two separate incidents the weekend prior. Dead or alive, it didn’t seem to matter much—because by most measures—the place is empty. Only 136,285 people—at last count—are sprinkled across Fargo’s 126.4 square kilometres, which is a flat expanse barely dusted onto the Great Plains.

The economy of words that are spoken here—and the hangover of recent violence—felt like the hallmarks of a Cormac McCarthy novel. However, the drug-use destitution in the downtown core harkened back to Larry Clark’s Tulsa, but with a distinct American Indian bend in these parts once Sioux territory. The colours, quaintness, and everyday nothingness though? Pure William Eggleston.

Here, I didn’t have plans or ambitions. Rather, I decided to run an experiment of sorts—all recommendations for things to see on my marathon would be crowdsourced from random patrons and drunks at a bar. Furthermore, the only historical anecdotes that I would take note of would be those that were shared with me by locals.

Go where locals say.

Relay what locals say.

You get the drift so let’s get into it.

At some point in the late 19th century, Fargo was known as the divorce capital of the West. Some gas station lady cashier told me as much—that lenient laws enabled outsiders to train-in, hop off at the station, establish residency at a nearby hotel, hop back on the train that day…then return three months later to finalise the divorce (since three month’s residency—achieved through hotel room occupancy work-around—was mandatory to process the split). Had I followed current-day recommendations voiced my way by some grey hairs—to go get ‘couch dances’ at the Northern Cabaret—I’m sure I could’ve got myself fired and divorced by the missus in a much shorter timeframe.

Anyway, the divorce boom was right around the time that timber-era Fargo caught fire, losing some thirty blocks to flames. Ordinances changed thereafter, which explains why every grand and ornate brick building seems to have a datestone stamped with 1884. Like a toothy grin, buildings here stand like gapped teeth, unique in that you can appreciate them from multiple sides…which can’t be said for façade-only buildings in most other places (where space is at a greater premium, thus squishing structures together). The beautiful brickwork? Easily, Fargo’s best feature.

And amidst it all, those rustic off-distance sounds—the steel-on-steel screech of trains on tracks, the occasional bellow of a train horn, and the clanky cargo clunk of freight rail cars groan-ily starting up or slowly stopping with their pained metallic moans. As an audio tag, it brought me right back to my time living in Memphis—where I’d nurse late-night porch beers listening to the same soothing sounds…in a house technically paid for by the House of Gucci, if you can believe it.

Like me, Rooter’s Bar on Broadway—which is the main drag—looks older than it is or just simply worse for wear. Saloon doors, an interior full of dented deep red woods, off-licence sales, dartboards, stained pool tables, and street-facing signage that advertise its dual-role as a makeshift casino. Inside, digital slot machines and a manned card dealer table beside the fragrantly foul toilets (where IRL blackjack fundraises for the Special Olympics).

Cash-only, no backpacks allowed, heavy-handed security, and sorta frequented by everyone—from packs of dolled-up twenty-something girls drinking colourful cocktails to pot-bellied sexagenarian geezers crushing tall cans. Cigs as well as dehydrated meat snacks for sale behind the bar, dog-eared NDSU Bison football banners on the walls, and top forty chunes waffling through the oddly conjoined and/or partitioned space (which is actually two bars that are one bar because of an open arch in the middle of the load-bearing wall).

Tacky surfaces, mediocre service, pints of Bud Light for $3.25. Not a dive bar, but full of the trimmings and trappings of one. But, frequented by fine people who were generous with me—or at least unbothered by me bothering them—for recommendations, which I kindly received by clinking pint glasses with ‘em.

Go see the actual wood chipper from the Fargo movie at the visitor center they said, check-out the ferris wheel inside the gun store, marvel at the aquarium inside the mall, and explore the prairie pioneer amusement park thingamajig. Roger that.

Severe flood warnings meant I packed my rain kit for Fargo—waterproof socks, unbreathable Gore-Tex shoes, quick dry pants, yada yada. Worst case scenario was enduring a downpour that’d keep my Southeast Asia monsoon muscle memory in-tact.

But, Murphy’s Law meant the storm never materialised, resulting in yer boi marathoning sunny / humid Fargo unpleasantly overdressed. Leaving the core, I went south along the Red River which divides North Dakota and Minnesota. There, I crossed paths with one cyclist and two runners who greeted me, being the only pedestrians I’d see outside of people in cars on my entire marathon. Cutting west—through ranch-styled bungalows in a leafy suburb and past high school football practices at high noon—I made my way towards the crowdsourced sites, all punctuated by a no man’s land of sparse strip malls, heavy machinery rental places, and welding shops that build and/or repair livestock trailers.

Honestly, it was proving to be a bit of a bust but Bonanzaville, USA came through and seriously delivered, and I don’t even know how to describe the peculiarity of the latter—imagine a period piece film set as fenced-in community where you can wander car-less roads and enter homes, businesses, a church, a saloon, a courtroom, and other random buildings from the turn of the 20th century or earlier.

I was the only person there and the experience was akin to doing break-and-enters in a ghost town, with me exploring musty homes with bearskin rugs, entering old train cars, studying product packaging in a pharmacy from a hundred years ago, and picking up lead type in the print shop that once churned-out Fargo’s broadsheet. There was even a hangar with a ‘Nam chopper and some decommissioned fighter jets, which delivered value / kept some dosh in my pocket / meant there was little reason to visit the Fargo Air Museum 13 kilometres away by foot, in the northeastern part of town.

The outskirts of Fargo were so quiet that I could hear my thoughts for the first time this year. Such is the gift of the monotonous marathon, it is a reliable medium for meditativeness and self-reflection. Despite being hella bored, I was equally—if not exceedingly grateful—to have the opportunity to be somewhere else, somewhere beyond, somewhere I’d never choose for myself.

To date, I’ve largely gone everywhere I’ve ever wanted to go—which is a massive privilege and why I can’t complain if I never travel again—so now I take great satisfaction in going to places that don’t really interest me—like Fargo—as I have greater interest in complicated places that are my antithesis…like theocracies, autocracies or stuff of that ilk. Paradoxically, the places I’ve liked the least seem to be the places I find myself thinking about the most thereafter.

And I sorta savoured that sentiment in Fargo, doing so across its long stretches of not-much-to-see-here-ness while feeling the lazy breeze, appreciating the rolling skies, and delighting in the seagull-looking, sparrow-like birds riding airstreams to nowhere in particular.

West Acres Mall—was by far—the most locally recommended thing to me. And for different reasons—for the food court, for the water fountain in front of the JCPenney, for the 1,000 gallon freshwater aquarium, and for the Roger Maris Museum (which is a display case that runs the length of a hall for a Yankees baseball player who briefly lived in Fargo, and who never wanted a museum). There’s even a local TED talk about the mall, should you care to learn more.

I passed through the mall as a flanêur, not to pass judgment, but to gather observations—the USPS mailbox is being removed from the hall with the toilets, the tangy orange chicken dish from the Chinese food joint is quite popular, the body piercing studio is doing brisk business, and the people here seem to start families young—presumably because it’s the norm, affordable, or simply a way to program your life in Fargo with something to do.

For the hell of it, I crossed the Red River—when I was approaching the 40th kilometre of my marathon—to mosey on over to Moorhead in Minnesota. Largely indistinct from Fargo, I appreciated Moorhead for the very same reason I dig Fargo—a complete lack of pretence. You go out in whatever you have on, you get in the car, and you drive to work / drive to do errands / drive to meet-up, eat-up or drink-up with friends and family.

I’m not saying simple is easy—or even desirable—but there is something to be said for places at a standstill; everyone seems to know where they stand within the stillness and the predictability of it all.

BEST LOCAL THING-Y

The old neon signs in the windows of Sammy’s Pizza first caught my attention before my eyes noticed the bygone dining room inside. Having just burnt 2,500+ calories on a marathon, it seemed as good a time as ever to crush an entire wheel of pizza.

Nothing about the interior felt Italian, but the cork walls and the incandescent light bulbs combined to produce a reddy gold hue that felt like a Scorsese Goodfellas dining scene.

Sammy’s was empty, save for a couple there settling their bill as their rambunctious kiddie progeny ran ‘round the dining room, fired-up from the big cups of soda they were dual-hand glugging.

My pizza was bland. Light on sauce, but heavy on the green peppers and the canned olives. For pep, it was served with a shaker of red pepper flakes and a shaker of that weird American parmesan cheese.

It was my first time eating tavern-style pizza, which is thin crust pizza cut into a grid of bite-sized pieces (as opposed to slices). It was too messy for fingertips and too tippy for utensils. But, I ate it as civilised as I could—while swatting away the flies…which seem to be a thing at every bar and restaurant here.

I got to talking with the proprietor, who had some multi-generational family tie to the 70 year-old pizzeria, which is allegedly the first pizzeria in all of North Dakota and definitely the one still using the original pizza oven from 1956.

He was giving me the backstory, but then a customer walked in.

“No more pizza. We were busy today and I don’t want to make more pizza.”

“But, aren’t you open ‘til 10? My friend is driving over to meet me.”

“Sorry, not gonna happen.”

End scene.

I did that ‘got it’ double tap of the hand thing-y on the front counter, walked towards the door, and waved over my shoulder as I exited. Ciao Sammy.

POBJOY'S GLOBAL PRICE INDEX

This is an on-going documentation of how much things cost in different places around the world. Here are some of the things I bought in Fargo (all prices converted to USD):

• One ticket for Bonanzaville, USA: $13.65

• A take-out falafel sandwich, hummus & pita entree, and 20% tip at Ishtar: $25.07

• A large cheese-less veggie pizza, 355ml can of Diet Coke, and 20% tip at Sammy’s Pizza: $31.20

MARATHON MUSINGS

On being armed to the teeth

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never been to a gun store before. So, when locals told me to go to Scheels to see the ferris wheel and the taxidermy (e.g. dead bison, dead bear, dead everything, et al.), I complied. Doing so felt very American and apropos. Now Scheels—as a chain—isn’t that special; it’s essentially an outdoor outfitter like REI elsewhere in America, the Mountain Equipment Company in Canada, and Decathlon everywhere else.

But what makes Scheels different—at least in Fargo—are the gun laws in North Dakota, which itself is a constitutional carry state with no universal background checks, no gun licensing, no waiting periods, no assault weapons restrictions, no large capacity magazine bans, no concealed carry permits, and no open carry regulations. Basically, you can buy a rifle and/or shotgun at 18 years of age then buy a handgun three years later. And you can keep the latter on your body, in your car or just holster it between couch cushions—whatever floats your boat.

The laxity, in part, explains why guns and ammunition were flying off the shelves at Scheels on the Saturday morning I was there. Admittedly, I didn’t know that ammunition was sold like cartoned eggs at a grocery store ala grab-and-go. But, I opened up one box just to check, and yep, bullets. What did surprise me more, were the amount of handguns, assault rifles, noise suppressors, and laser sights being purchased…and how inexpensive entry-level versions are. Like, anyone with a few hundred bucks can cosplay a cowboy here. Even more fascinating, was the incongruity of the hunting-themed retail environment with peoples’ actual purchases—everyone was buying everything but the hunting-y guns, the bird whistles, and/or the high-vis Elmer Fudd hats. Collecting? Stockpiling? Boredom? Bravado? Offence? Defence? I was so curious as to what everyone’s motivations were.

And to each their own, I guess. But, it also makes me second-guess what happens when a ‘bad guy’ starts shooting in a crowd here…and ‘good guys’ start shooting back…and how summoned law enforcement probably show up and start shooting too...but, at who exactly? Feels like the perfect recipe for that Spiderman meme, and why America will always fascinate me—the exception(al)ism to pragmatism, where purity of concept is greater than the ugliness of consequence.

Anyway, I had a blast at Scheels—because I pumped the in-store shooting gallery full of credits and invited nearby children to pick up the nine guns that flanked mine to shoot the shit out of the 48 mechanical targets. Their parents smiled on in approval…

As another man in downtown Fargo was shot that Saturday morning. With police saying it wasn’t related to the previous Sunday’s multiple shootings and killings. 

But, guns don’t kill people, people kill people…with guns, here in Fargo, and with increasing regularity it would seem.

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