Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (69 page)

A
ttraction:
Presidential Pet Museum
Location:
Williamsburg, Virginia
Details:
Most presidential pet-related treasures are in the presidential libraries, but curator Claire McLean managed to get her hands on some curious mementos of the presidents’ pets. For example, she’s got a cowbell worn by President Taft’s pet cow, Pauline, who grazed on the White House lawn
Be Sure to See…
A bronze statue of Barney, George W. Bush’s Scottish Terrier, and a portrait of Ronald Reagan’s dog Lucky made out of Lucky’s actual hair.

Attraction:
Center for Urologic History

Location:
Linthicum, Maryland

Details:
Located in the headquarters of the American Urological Association, this museum is dedicated to the history and science of the human bladder, genitals, and other private matters. Among the displays of various medical devices are one exhibit on the history of male sexuality and dysfunction, and another on 1800s medical quackery.

Be Sure to See…
The pineapple-size kidney stone.

Attraction:
Vent Haven, the Ventriloquist Museum

Location:
Fort Mitchell, Kentucky

Details:
In a suburban home outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, lurk hundreds of ventriloquist’s dummies. The house is filled to the rafters with dummies, dummy heads, dummies in costumes, dummies that look like famous people (Adolf Hitler, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan), and dummies with names like “Cecil Wigglenose” and “Tommy Baloney.” There are exhibits on the history of ventriloquism and on famous ventriloquists, including Edgar Bergen and Waylon Flowers.

Be Sure to See…
The “dummy school”—an entire room made to
look like a classroom, with dummies filling all but one chair… which remains empty so you can have your picture taken with them.

Attraction:
Leila’s Hair Museum

Location:
Independence, Missouri

Details:
Leila Cohoon became a hairdresser in 1949 and shortly thereafter started collecting art made from human hair. Originally a room in Cohoon’s cosmetology school, the Hair Museum now occupies a two-room office in a business park. Most of the exhibits come from the Victorian era, when hair was braided into wreaths, framed, and put on the wall as decoration. Cohoon has hundreds of braids and lots of hair art, including jewelry, bookmarks, and buttons, all made out of hair.

Be Sure to See…
Celebrity hair—strands that once adorned the heads of Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln.

Attraction:
Moon Museum

Location:
The Moon

Details:
According to artist Frosty Myers, astronauts on the 1969
Apollo 12
mission unwittingly took a tiny “Moon Museum” with them to the lunar surface. Myers (with the help of an anonymous Grumman engineer) claims to have secretly put a ¾" by ½" iridium-plated ceramic tablet in a leg of the lunar landing module
Intrepid
. Etched on the tablet are six miniature drawings by major artists of the day—Myers, John Chamberlain, David Novros, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. Is it really there? No one knows, because NASA didn’t sanction the project. But the
Intrepid
is still there, so maybe someday…

Police in Cullompton, England, were called in October 2007 to help a 3-year-old boy: he’d gotten a traffic cone stuck on his head. His parents said he was trying to imitate his hero, Harry Potter. “We shouldn’t have laughed,” his mother said, “but he looked so comical.” It took police 30 minutes to get the boy’s head free.

You know that scene in
Forrest Gump
when he runs across the United States? A British man decided to do that in real life…except around the
world
. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies
.

T
HINKING OUTSIDE THE BOOK

Robert Garside’s big idea began as a whim. The 28-year-old London University student was halfheartedly studying in the school’s library in 1995 when he came across an edition of
Guinness World Records
. Flipping through it, Garside noticed records for cycling and even walking around the world, but none for
running
. Garside liked to run, so he decided then and there that he would be first human to run across every continent. “I just thought it would be cool to set a world record,” he said.

You’d think that a quest of that magnitude would require extensive planning, but Garside didn’t have that kind of discipline—he took the same casual approach that he’d taken to the rest of his life: Born in Stockport, England, in 1967, he ran away from home at age 17 and then had 80 different jobs over the next decade (including a stint as a cop) before going to college…where he dropped out to start his long run.

Something else that Garside lacked: long-distance running experience. He figured his record attempt would be like “going for a jog every day and not going back home.” His laid-back attitude would eventually haunt him, but at least he found out Guinness’s requirements to make the attempt official: He must run the length of at least four continents, covering a distance of 18,000 miles; he must cross the equator once and finish at the same longitude from which he began. He had to run from place to place—he could not walk or use any other means of transportation, save for a plane to take him from land mass to land mass, but there was no time limit. And he’d need both visual proof and documented records of his journey.

So Garside stuffed his small video camera into his backpack along with his passport, visas, maps, a water bottle, and his diary. Then, sporting a brand-new pair of running shoes, he set out from
London’s Piccadilly Circus on December 7, 1996, with £20 in his pocket. The plan: Run between 25 and 75 miles a day—more if the terrain was flat—and rely on handouts for food, water, and shelter. The night before he left, he watched
Forrest Gump
for inspiration.

He ran to the English Channel, then crossed into France by boat and ran through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia (where he visited his parents), and Poland. He hoped that as his journey progressed, the publicity would increase and he’d land sponsorship deals to pay for meals, accommodations, or, more importantly, airfare to the next continent. But in the early days of the run, Garside relied solely on his charm—he’d spark up conversations with curious onlookers and explain what he was attempting to do… hoping they’d offer up some food, water, or a bed to sleep in. “The gift of gab gets you through,” he later said. (It didn’t hurt that Garside is tall, thin, and handsome, with a friendly smile.) And every 20 minutes, he turned on his video camera to show where he was. Whenever possible, he convinced police and town officials to sign a document confirming he had run (not walked) into their town.

So what would you think about if you ran the equivalent of two to three marathons every single day through unfamiliar surroundings with no one by your side (most of the time)? “I philosophize while I run,” explained Garside, “taking in the local color and trying to interact with the people.” Every so often a bicyclist or a pretty girl would join him for small stretches. In France, a dog ran by his side for about 20 miles. “It’s like the time-travel show
Quantum Leap
,” he said, “but instead of jumping, I’m running from one experience to the next.”

As Garside left the familiarity of western Europe, the road turned dangerous. He wrote in his diary about being shot at by gypsies in Russia. Then, when reports of war in Afghanistan reached him, he decided the risk was too great and skipped the country altogether. In Pakistan in September 1997, he wrote: “I was robbed, my tent slashed with a knife, and all my contents taken. I have only my clothes on my back and my passport.” But having already run
across most of Europe, and now fit enough to feel confident, Garside wasn’t about to give up. So he tried again, this time with a little money (thanks to a few private donations) and a laptop computer so he could post updates on a Web site. Calling himself “The Runningman,” in October 1997, Garside started anew from underneath the arches of India Gate in New Delhi.

The journey was fraught with peril: A mob in a small Indian town pelted him with rocks, and in another town he was chased by ax-wielding farmers. In March 1998, he ran straight into the harshness of the Tibetan winter. In the Himalayas he met a runner from Spain, who joined him for a stretch—on a few occasions they had to sleep in the snow, but most of the time, people helped them. “A monk I encountered took us back to his monastery,” he wrote, “where we got a bed for the night and feasted on a dinner of roasted barley, roasted sheep’s fat, and yak tea.” From there, Garside headed alone into China.

Travel through China was even less hospitable than his path from India. In Huzhou, after evading Chinese police for three months because he didn’t have the proper papers, Garside was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail, followed by deportation. Again, Garside used his gift of gab to talk his way out of trouble. After three days of annoying his cell mates by running in place to stay in shape, “I begged to be allowed to finish my run and finally, they gave me one day to get out of the country. I had to cover 158 kilometers (98 miles) in that one day. I ran through the night but I did it.”

After receiving a donation from a Hong Kong businessman, Garside flew to Japan in late 1998. The Japanese press was very interested in his quest, and he was able to secure more donations after giving interviews. That got him to Australia for the next leg, but in the desolation of the Outback in January 1999, Garside found himself destitute once again. “I arrived in a small town in New South Wales called Violet Town, a guy came out of the pub and said, ‘You’re that mad Pommie bastard I’ve seen on TV who’s running around the world.’ He bought me a beer and introduced me to a wealthy farmer friend, who gave me $1,000 because he was so impressed with what I was doing.”

In mid-1999, Garside flew to South America. By this point, his run was well publicized and the hits to his Web site kept increasing. “My original idea was just to see the world. But as I was going through with it I realized I could make myself a future. I have created my own sport—and I am the only practitioner. So I have a monopoly on it,” Garside told a reporter in Rio de Janeiro (who bought his dinner and board for the night). And then the runner was off again. In his journal entries, Garside wrote about being threatened at gunpoint in Panama and again just outside of Acapulco—both times he was able to escape by running into heavy traffic. For protection at night, he slept at police stations.

In Venezuela, Garside met 23-year-old Endrina Perez in a Caracas shopping mall. Though they spoke different languages, they developed a deep connection. Perez became Garside’s running partner; he gave her the name “Runningwoman.” (Perez wasn’t the first girl that Garside “befriended” on his journey—there are reports that he’d had at least five girlfriends up to that point, including one woman who followed him on a bicycle for 500 miles through Australia.) Garside and Perez then ran northward through Central America, reportedly making it from Mexico City to the United States—through mostly mountainous terrain—in just 10 days.

In September 2000, they crossed the California border from Tijuana. Suddenly, thanks to an article in
Sports Illustrated
, the Runningman was a minor celebrity. Through his Web site, Garside had been offered sponsorships (Odor-Eaters picked him up for a while) and places to stay. The biggest boost came from a car dealer who provided Team Runningman with a support van that Perez drove while Garside ran.

Like the fictional Forrest Gump, Garside was joined on his journey through the U.S. by other runners, cyclists, and curious onlookers. A skateboarder pledged to follow Garside from San Francisco all the way across the country, but didn’t actually make it very far. In fact, no one could keep up with Garside’s amazing stamina. But the demanding journey was starting to take a toll on the 34-year-old runner’s mind and body. When Garside arrived in New York, he
told reporters, “I’m desperate to finish now. I’ve had enough. I’m missing things like never having more than one pair of shoes or set of clothes. And I’m dying to get a decent cup of tea.”