By Tim Murphy | Mon Jan. 5, 2015 6:00 AM ET
We had been on the sting of the desert close to Barstow, perched on the aspect of a freight prepare that was selecting up velocity, when my doubts started to take maintain.
Steven “Bo” Keeley and I had been launched by likelihood. A 12 months earlier, I had gone to Oakland to satisfy up with a buddy, an East Bay radical of the Occupy type who had lured me west with the promise of hopping freights. I had lengthy been fascinated by the notion, selecting up scraps of knowledge right here and there—keep away from the “bulls” (hobo slang for railroad safety); be careful for tunnels; pack loads of rope. The plan was to catch a northbound to Mount Shasta and thumb our method again. However one thing got here up. Within the meantime, my buddy advised me, she had a ebook that may tide me over. It was the memoir of a hobo she’d met as soon as over dinner, an actual Renaissance tramp, who takes teams of company executives with him on freight-hopping adventures. Good sufficient man, a little bit boisterous—and a prolific composer of emails.
Keeley.
Illustrations by Pink Nostril Studio
The very first thing you’ll uncover about Bo Keeley is that his Wikipedia web page reads like Indiana Jones. “Bo’s Wikipedia entry reads like Indiana Jones,” states the about-the-author web page of one in every of his most up-to-date books, which particulars his previous as a veterinarian, a former nationwide racquetball champion, and the most-requested substitute instructor ever to be fired throughout a playground struggle in Blythe, California. It’s not a wholly truthful comparability—did Henry Jones Jr. ever declare to have guided “twenty Brazilian evangelists with a penlight from a jungle bus crash” or chased “rhinoceros horn smugglers after being deputized and armed with a pistol in Namibia”? Many of those claims are sourced to Keeley himself, making the web page a matter of some controversy. Nevertheless it’s that muddy trench between man and fantasy that makes it such an alluring doc. As one Wikipedia editor put it, “As a result of uniqueness of the person, some hyperbole is comprehensible.”
Amongst different exploits, Keeley claims to have utilized for a Guinness world document for many near-death experiences (which he scores on a one-to-nine scale of “Catman factors,” based mostly on what number of of a cat’s lives would have been snuffed out), brokered offers for the nation’s main hedge fund supervisor, and been one of many solely gringos to trip the freight trains from southern Mexico to the US border. Final 12 months, tens of hundreds of migrants rode the so-called “Prepare of Loss of life” fleeing rape, homicide, cartels, and crushing poverty—all of which accompanied them on La Bestia. Keeley did it as a result of it gave the impression of a great time.
Bo Keeley exterior Barstow, California in Might, 2014. Picture: Tim Murphy
Keeley is a very social sort of loner, and he has attracted an intriguing band of followers who tag alongside on and subsidize his adventures. On his web site, amid writings, images, and an in depth timeline of his first 65 years on Earth, he advertises a journey service referred to as “Bo Keely Excursions,” inviting working professionals to interrupt out of the monotony of their desk jobs and threat life and limb with him on the rails. (He spells his title with out the third “e” when he’s writing as a result of he desires to take care of a distinction between his traveler persona and his authorized identification, or, relying on once you ask him, as a result of it’s simpler to signal autographs.) The Keeley bundle consists of the choice of staying at homeless shelters or bivouacking in encampments generally known as hobo jungles. The much less adventurous join spelunking journeys in deserted mine shafts or treks throughout the Mexican desert. In flip, Keeley’s “government hoboes”—an virtually completely white, virtually completely male fraternity of legal professionals, programmers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and traders—have welcomed him into their world and in lots of instances their houses. He’s been feted by financiers and invited to unique anarcho-capitalist Aspen retreats, floating out and in of his high-rolling mates’ lives like their very personal Neal Cassady. What, I questioned, attracted them to Keeley and his life-style? Have been his adventures merely Outward Sure for the Burning Man set? Maybe Keeley, himself a devotee of Ayn Rand, supplied a portal for one thing deeper. Maybe he was a form of objectivist people hero who reminded them going Galt was doable, even when they by no means would. Or possibly they simply actually preferred trains.
Maybe Keeley was a form of objectivist people hero who reminded them going Galt was doable, even when they by no means would.
I made a decision to enroll. In an electronic mail, I advised Keeley I needed to catch out with him to see what he sees. And albeit, as a result of I wasn’t positive he was actual.
After 9 hours within the Barstow railroad yard—9 hours hiding from the bulls whereas climbing over black tankers in 95-degree warmth—the expertise was all too actual. We had been crouched on the entrance grill of a container automotive going 5 mph towards Los Angeles, again to the place we had come from, and Keeley was telling me to leap. I tossed my bag from the automotive, checked my footing, and leaped ahead, tumbling, with the grace of a sinking barge, on my face. One observe over, a mile-long prepare gave a jerk. Eastbound. Keeley, who’d managed to dismount at a swish jog, hopped on, and beckoned for me to return. What else might I do? Two arms grabbed the ladder, then one foot, and now—regular—I used to be on. Our knees had been inches away from the grinding wheels because the prepare picked up velocity previous a watchtower, previous yard staff on four-wheelers, previous one final highlight, and ultimately into the open. A lady in a convertible jabbed at her driver to search for, honey, have a look at the hoboes! For the primary time all day there was a breeze, and the mountains offered shade from the fading solar as we sped by way of the Mojave towards Needles. Keeley gazed off by way of sun shades with one lens lacking, his head tilted up, a contented look throughout his face. He pulled out a pocket book and started to scribble away. It was solely later that I spotted he was writing backward.
Our correspondence had begun in earnest in Might. His first phrases had been: “I wanted a break—I got here from Peru and acquired beat up by the jungle.” This was a euphemism, it seems, for being evacuated out of the Amazon by a aircraft owned by the Argentine oil large Pluspetrol after displaying up at one of many firm’s outposts, anemic and demanding to talk with the president. Keeley had flown again to the States to recuperate from this newest ordeal, and arrange store within the Miami workplaces of a buddy. Over the telephone, his first name in additional than a 12 months, we settled on the tough outlines of an itinerary.
I needed the full-immersion government hobo expertise. The plan was to start out out West, the place the rail yards are extra open and the mountains extra grand, and work our method east, to Chicago or Council Bluffs, or Texas, if it actually got here to that. We might purchase clear garments at Willy’s (Goodwill) and spend our nights at Sally’s (Salvation Military shelters), listening to sermons from born-again preachers in alternate for a scorching meal and a heat bathe and a few yarns. We might alternate figuring out nods within the jungle with our fellow hoboes, our companions in grime, and maneuver previous the bulls utilizing crafty and agility rendered dormant by the trimmings of modernity.
Leaving the world behind is a serious promoting level, in addition to a supply of pressure, for Keeley’s acolytes. Bank cards and wi-fi units invariably discover their method into the packs of the execs (a time period he makes use of to explain principally anybody with a desk job), and infrequently one will desert the expedition altogether seeking a sq. meal and a lodge. However for probably the most half, they need to see how the opposite half lives.
“As a suburban middle-class child, I had no understanding of issues like poverty or homelessness or any of the issues that may drive someone to eat at a rescue mission,” says Arthur Tyde, an open-source software program pioneer, recalling the primary of a number of freight-hopping journeys he’s taken with Keeley. “I used to be like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a lot extra bandwidth to the human expertise than I’d ever been capable of tune into earlier than.’” The speculator Doug Casey advised me a few spotlight of his cross-country trek with Keeley: They had been standing for a sermon at a mission one night time once they discovered themselves in the midst of a knife combat. “The typical individual is like, ‘Oh, isn’t it harmful? Oh, isn’t it unlawful? Isn’t it gonna be uncomfortable?’” he says. “It may be harmful, and it’s unlawful, and it’s uncomfortable—and I like to recommend it extremely.”
Being a global hobo is dear, however luckily for Keeley, the sort of people that excelled at racquet sports activities tended to maneuver on to white-collar jobs once they had been achieved.
Tyde and Casey are emblematic of the kind drawn to Keeley—masters of self-invention with a libertarian streak. After faculty at Michigan State College, Tyde moved to the Bay Space and based Linuxcare, an early open-source software program firm, and started to dabble as a non-public investigator. Casey, an early goldbug, struck it huge in 1978 with a ebook referred to as The Worldwide Man, which inspired readers to depart nationwide borders behind in pursuit of wealth. (It turned a bestseller in Rhodesia.) Now comfortably rich, Casey is pursuing his pet undertaking, convincing heads of state—”typically navy dictators”—to grant non-public companies full financial management of their international locations. The strongmen would take 10 p.c of the income, 85 p.c would go to the folks, and 5 p.c can be publicly offered. He has by no means been given the inexperienced mild, however his newest goal is Mauritania. In such a world, trespassing legal guidelines are simply one other burdensome regulation to be forged apart.
A couple of days earlier than I left for California, I had organized to speak with Keeley once more, however he requested to reschedule. “[I] forgot that tomorrow from early morn till 4pm time right here i’m in court docket watching my buddy legal professional defend a murder of a parrot who was witness to homicide of human,” he wrote. “[T]he parrot’s title is Cash and the excessive profile case is known as ‘Cash Talks’.” That is, I’d uncover, a trademark of a great Keeley yarn—largely true, in the identical method {that a} steak salad is essentially good for you. “Cash Talks,” as Keeley dubbed it, wasn’t high-profile; the press by no means even observed it. The defendant was accused of murdering one other man in what prosecutors deemed a drug squabble. However there actually was a parrot, and it actually did die. As proof of the person’s pathological tendencies, the prosecution contended that he had murdered the sufferer’s hen too. Dan Issue, an legal professional for the defendant, knew Keeley from his days on the skilled racquetball circuit, and though they’d not seen one another for 20 years, he had stored abreast of his previous buddy’s exploits. He advised me that he was planning to depart behind the authorized occupation imminently, maybe to open a shamanistic resort together with his spouse in Peru.
As I bided my time, I picked up a duplicate of Bo’s latest ebook, Keeley’s Kures: Various Practices From the Trails and Trials of a World-Champion Hobo-Adventurer. It’s a personality research masquerading as a self-help ebook. At one juncture, we’re knowledgeable that the writer’s ardour for science induced him to contract 35 p.c of all illnesses recognized to man, “together with the obscure Hobo illness.” (It is a actual factor, morbus errorum, brought on by lice bites; don’t Google it.) He recommends studying backward and the other way up, which he has skilled himself to do, as a corrective to imaginative and prescient issues and neck ache. However most of his survival suggestions are pretty minimalist. The remedy for altitude illness is distilled water. The remedy for bladder stones is distilled water. The remedy for anxiousness is distilled water. The remedy for strokes is distilled water. In Keeley’s view, distilled water is a nectar of the gods, though different nectars can do in a pinch—he claims that, misplaced within the desert in triple-digit warmth, he as soon as survived by consuming his personal urine. I made a word to pack distilled water.
Keeley greeted me on the Amtrak station in downtown Los Angeles with a smile and a handshake. “Are you a hobo?” he requested. He didn’t appear to be one. He’d come from the “Cash Talks” trial in a crisp blue-and-white button-down shirt and was skinny however wholesome, with sufficient hair to be glad about and a tattoo on his arm of a mouse with a smiley face and a teardrop, as a result of “on the street, you’re at all times completely happy otherwise you’ve acquired a tear in your eye.” Keeley watched as I despatched a textual content message from the cab and quizzed me on the way it labored. He makes use of Fb in web cafés however newer types of know-how flummox him—he struggled so magnificently to grasp the Los Angeles subway fare machines that one other passenger acquired off with him to assist him buy his ticket. I’d hardly recognized Keeley 5 minutes earlier than he started unspooling his life story and telling me about his most beneficiant benefactor, a renegade Connecticut hedge fund mogul named Victor Niederhoffer.
Keeley was the older of two brothers in a conventional Midwestern household. His father, who died in 2013, was a Navy engineer and a DIY fanatic who constructed a two-person submarine in his storage. On the age of 5, Bo completed his first portray. It was a freight prepare. He was a Boy Scout, an Episcopalian, and a productive pupil. When he arrived on campus at Michigan State as a part of an accelerated veterinary program, he appeared, one buddy recalled, “like a younger Republican.”
Granted all-night entry to the health club by way of his work-study, he started experimenting with racquetball, and after submitting his exams, determined to forgo veterinary observe to play within the new skilled league. He was a star, as these items go. Keeley was profiled in Sports activities Illustrated and printed a how-to ebook that he says turned the game’s bible. He additionally supplied glimpses of his future self—driving throughout the nation, for instance, with a seven-foot-tall stuffed rabbit named Fillmore Hare sitting shotgun. (The rabbit might wave to passersby when Keeley pulled a string that was tied to his hand; it was, he defined, an effective way to choose up women.) Keeley’s father questioned his determination to place his veterinary observe on maintain and hustle racquetball. His mom was extra philosophical. “He was in a mildew,” she advised SI, “and he stepped out of it.”
Bo Keeley in his skilled racquetball years. Wikipedia
Earlier than lengthy, he walked away from skilled racquetball too. “The well-known Charlie Brumfield match,” he says. The Ali and Frazier of American racquetball had been good mates who’d as soon as even lived collectively in East Lansing, together with a Chuck Berry backup band referred to as the Woolies. SI dubbed their friendship “the start of contemporary racquetball.” However stylistically they had been worlds aside. Keeley prided himself on conditioning. Brumfield was coldly manipulative. “He would play actually, he would name his personal skips, he would give me room to hit, and I did none of that fucking shit,” says Brumfield, now a lawyer in San Diego. On the deadly match in 1977, Keeley was main when Brumfield excused himself from the court docket and disappeared. He returned, well-rested, an hour later to win. “It ought to’ve been a forfeit,” Keeley seethes, 37 years later. Instantly, racquetball’s Joe Frazier turned racquetball’s Richie Tenenbaum, leaving the game behind seeking his spirit.
Keeley’s subsequent quest for reinvention hit a wall within the early Eighties when he fell in with a charismatic Salt Lake Metropolis martial arts teacher who claimed to be telekinetic. A journalist revealed the guru, James Hydrick, to be a pretend; Hydrick was later revealed to be a baby molester as properly. (Whole Catman factors: one.) After they parted methods, Keeley hit the rails.
Bo on the quilt of the now defunct Racquetball Illustrated journal. Fb
Being a global hobo is dear, however luckily for Keeley, the sort of people that excelled at racquet sports activities tended to maneuver on to white-collar jobs once they had been achieved. Earlier than lengthy, he acquired a lift from an previous buddy—Niederhoffer, a squash participant whose renown on the court docket was eclipsed solely by his prowess as an funding banker. That they had bonded years earlier over sneakers; Keeley, who wore mismatched purple and blue kicks to tournaments, observed Niederhoffer carrying mismatched black and white ones. As Keeley roamed the globe, they exchanged letters. Throughout one in every of their common racquetball meetups in New York Metropolis, Niederhoffer requested Keeley to work for him. Collectively, they devised a set of metrics, what Niederhoffer dubbed “low-life indicators,” that may measure the well being of an economic system by finding out its most granular parts. The most typical instance can be the size of discarded cigarette butts—when instances had been dangerous, their idea went, bums would smoke them right down to the filter. Different indicators included the quantity of popcorn on the ground at skid row film theaters and the period of time a prostitute took to show a trick. Keeley provided this type of financial intelligence to Niederhoffer as he crisscrossed the globe.
In return, Niederhoffer supplied Keeley glimpses of his world, giving him the rostrum on the Junto, his month-to-month libertarian confab in New York Metropolis; internet hosting him at his palatial Tudor nation property; and, one 12 months, inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner with George Soros on the 4 Seasons. (Soros had enlisted Niederhoffer to handle lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on his behalf; on the wall of his research, Niederhoffer retains a portray of a red-Speedo-clad Soros greeting him on a seashore.)
Then, within the late Eighties, he gave Keeley a brand new task: Journey the growing world, gathering supplies for his assortment of Titanic artifacts—and doling out money to entrepreneurs, in return for 15 p.c of any returns. Keeley’s plans hit a snag in Caracas, when he was virtually slashed with a machete at a Chinese language restaurant; the assailants took the cash pouch he stored round his neck, the emergency wad sewed into his pants, and one other stash in his again pocket. (Factors on the Catman scale: 4.) “You by no means have any want for them, however they at all times occur,” Keeley says of his near-death experiences. The investor let him convalesce in a basement closet in his mansion, after which dispatched him on a brand new task: to journey to 9 Center Jap and Southeast Asian nations, “examine the state of the adverse psychology of the nation,” and report again. Counting on Keeley’s evaluation of rickshaw tires and cockroaches, in 1997, Niederhoffer invested lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in Thailand.
In July of that 12 months, his Thai holdings misplaced 90 p.c of their worth. Shortly after the autumn, Niederhoffer sat for an interview with a Japanese movie crew. You possibly can watch it now, if you would like a glimpse of a person damaged cleanly in half. In shorts and a sweatshirt, he takes the crew on a tour of his mansion, empty of most of the uncommon books and trophies that marked his opulent heyday. He seems to be as if he’s witnessed an unspeakable crime.
“How a lot did you lose?” the cameraman asks. On his couch, Niederhoffer fidgets, pauses. Two seconds, three. “A staggering quantity. A staggering quantity. It’s too horrible touhuhto inform. However lower than $100 million and properly over $1 millionas they are saying within the US, someplace between seven and 9 fig-yuhz.”
“And what occurred?” the interviewer asks. Niederhoffer blinks. Clearly, with out a pause, voice completely nonetheless.
“Titanic.”
Niederhoffer retreated to his basement, the place he spent hours enjoying with a prepare set by the stairwell cabinet Keeley as soon as referred to as residence. He’s philosophical concerning the episode now. It was a mistake, sure. Hubris, positive. “In these days, we at all times needed to be No. 1,” he advised The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy in a sympathetic 2007 profile, and he had matured some.
After I requested Niederhoffer for his ideas on Keeley, he demurred—twisted a knife, even. “He’s often not very beneficiant in his estimate of others until they’re psychics or martial arts consultants,” Niederhoffer emailed, referring to Hydrick. However what did it say about Niederhoffer that he wager his fortune on such a person? The reality is that Niederhoffer has much more in frequent with Keeley than simply mismatched sneakers and Ayn Rand (the speculator throws a celebration yearly on her birthday and named his third daughter Rand). Niederhoffer was each bit the compulsive risk-taker the Catman was, each bit as disdainful of conventional methods, and each bit as assured in his capability to outwit the system. He simply performed with a special sort of hearth.
In time, Niederhoffer recovered, fell, and rose once more. However the partnership was over. Keeley retreated to the desert, to the closest factor he has to a everlasting residence: a trailer dropped right into a 10-foot gap within the floor on the sting of California’s Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Vary. Keeley calls it Scorpion’s Crotch.
Southeastern California is without doubt one of the emptiest locations on the American map, and for generations it has been a vacation spot for individuals who prefer it that method.1 It’s within the wastes of Imperial County that Christopher McCandless skilled for his final march into the wild, and the place an obsessive New Englander named Leonard Knight constructed a mountain of adobe and paint and devoted it to God. Nowadays, it’s the place smugglers work in peace and outcasts go to vanish.
Scorpion’s Crotch is totally off the grid, however about as soon as each six months a stranger finds Keeley. It’s often somebody who has learn his hobo writings and maybe is a little bit dissatisfied with the American Method, and thus will make the pilgrimage down a sand-swept street in 110-degree warmth to start an journey to be decided. Sometimes, Keeley’s hobo executives will drop by too. Tyde was so enthralled with the Keeley life-style he practically purchased a parched patch of land for himself. When he needed to get in contact, he used to hop in a small aircraft and drop leaflets on Keeley’s property.
There’s one thing very Galt’s Gulch concerning the place, and after I raised this with Keeley, he confesses: Atlas Shrugged, he believes, is “hermetically good” as a result of Ayn Rand wrote it with out editors. Outdoors of pensions, a essential supply of earnings within the space is america navy, which drops lots of of tons of reside ordnance on the Goodies yearly. When the bombing ceases, scrappers head into the mountains in dune buggies or armor-plated Volkswagen Beetles. Scrapping on a bombing vary can result in a 12 months’s sentence in the event you’re caught—and an untold variety of folks have been killed or maimed—however a ton of brass or aluminum can go for $2,000 on the metallic recycling middle in San Diego.
Although Niederhoffer had chosen to rebuild his enterprise with out Keeley after the Thai collapse, he hadn’t forged him out of the libertarian monetary clique totally. Keeley continued to publish usually on Niederhoffer’s web site, Each day Speculations, and his government tour service was born in 2001, after he introduced there that he was planning on using the rails to Eris, the then-annual Aspen get-together hosted by the anarcho-capitalist Doug Casey (company have included Ron Paul and the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver), and would anybody like to return? Keeley promised an “Outward Sure” expertise, besides as an alternative of paying a couple of thousand {dollars}, he requested solely that executives cowl their very own overhead.
“Bo’s very strict about that: You don’t pay him, ever,” says Nathan Janos, an information scientist from Santa Monica who caught a freight with Keeley after studying about him within the New Yorker article about Niederhoffer. In time, the checklist of “executives” who’ve taken the Keeley problem have included a medical-device producer; Tyde, the software program guru; a New York actual property supervisor; a Toronto stockbroker; a San Diego therapist; a Florida geologist; and an emergency companies coordinator for San Mateo County, California.
We accomplished our ultimate prep work within the Orange County yard of Steve Klett, the medical-device exec who as soon as freight-hopped with Keeley to Tucson. I used to be starting to get used to my touring companion’s idiosyncrasies. He walks sideways down stairs, and glacially so, on account of the five-pound ankle weights on every leg, together with his eyes generally closed and head tilted up like a turtle within the solar. He doesn’t put on underwear, a truth he volunteers freely.
As we loved our ultimate moments of suburban calm, I jettisoned a couple of books to make method for Keeley’s reward to me—a laminated zine, held along with a paper clip, referred to as From Birmingham to Wendover: An Various Journey Information to Cool Tenting Locations and Obscure City Climbing Trails All through america and Canada. The title is euphemistic; it’s a information to railroad yards, instructing the reader on the place and when trains will cease to alter their crews, how tightly they’re policed, and even the placement of old school diners. Handed underground from one trusted hand to a different in hushed form of tones, the zine is coveted by tramps in the best way aficionados hunt sure sorts of bourbon. Its writer is an virtually legendary determine, a form of hobo Santa. Keeley speaks of him with a reverence different folks reserve for Keeley.
The rise of the manager hoboes marks a shift in People’ relationship with the iron street. On the flip of the final century, tramps attended “hobo schools,” to be taught philosophy and hygiene, and joined hobo unions, to make sure peaceable relationships with the railways. Early hoboes didn’t consider trains the best way we consider vehicles, as one thing non-public; they considered trains the best way we consider highways, one thing to which everybody had a proper. Ridership peaked throughout the Nice Melancholy, when lots of of hundreds of staff camped in boxcars or squeezed between the wheels of rolling trains seeking work. However over the past 50 years, that transportation community has been remade. Trains are sooner and more durable to board. Boxcars are all however out of date, and the post-9/11 safety clampdown made rail yards more durable to entry.
The hoboes are completely different too. In 1998, Congress investigated the issue of railroad fatalities, and Jolene Molitoris, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, advised the excessive numbers of deaths stemmed from “the glamorization of hoboing.” The unemployed now not trip freights from metropolis to metropolis, for probably the most half, though sure harvests, like potatoes and sugar beets, nonetheless appeal to migrant staff. Now it’s youngsters—anarchists, punks, or simply homeless—and what Keeley calls “plastic folks”—white dudes with cellphones and police scanners and bank cards who hit the street for a great time. That’s, tramps like us.2
Klett drove us to Colton, about 60 miles exterior of LA, rehashing his journey with Keeley the whole method and sounding for all of the world as if he needed to return with us, however for the job and the fiancee. We acquired out at a gasoline station, walked previous a hobo encampment of younger of us with canine, and meandered down an overpass on the fringes of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad yard till we discovered ourselves within the buzzing, floodlit canyon between the trains. In a yard, Keeley is at all times seeking to hold shifting, hopping over and infrequently underneath containers, oil tankers, and gondolas to search out the quickest and most snug trip. This may be exhausting, maddening even—particularly after Keeley confesses this routine is partly for train.
Finally we climbed into the entrance lip of a grain hopper, an upside-down trapezoid with sheltered cubbies at each ends, and one way or the other, amid the wheezing, screeching breaths of the mechanical beast, I drifted off. I awoke with a jolt because the prepare lurched ahead, bracing myself with each observe change, curling tighter towards the metallic frames previous each lit-up checkpoint I used to be positive would give us away. That first departure felt, I used to be positive, as shut as one might get to reliving the ending of Argo. The prepare rattled by way of the suburbs and exurbs of the Inland Empire within the cool of daybreak, and got here to a ultimate relaxation alongside a sandy wash 45 miles into the Mojave. We’d made it to Barstow.
Safety is particularly tight right here due to the excessive portions of navy provides that go by way of. Janos, the MIT-educated knowledge scientist, referred to as his journey to Barstow with Keeley “probably the most intense expertise I’ve had actually my entire life,” as they dodged bulls in jeeps with “infrared cameras and all that shit.”
I used to be out of provisions, and I used to be touring with Boxcar Bear Grylls; if I didn’t communicate up, we would by no means get off.
We stalked the yard for hours, hiding out in groves of eucalyptus timber and strolling for miles in 95-degree warmth with 30-pound packs on our backs. All of it appeared to return so simply to Keeley in his writings, however he had remodeled right into a hobo Patton within the desert, main us on a cheerless collection of false begins that felt an increasing number of like coaching workout routines. When our luck lastly appeared prefer it was starting to show, we acquired caught. “They’ve had me chasing you guys all day,” mentioned the non-public safety guard, not a lot older than 20, who nabbed us. He advised us to stroll a mile down the observe, previous the tip of the yard, and catch a prepare on the fly by the Amtrak station like good hoboes—recommendation we promptly ignored. After strolling parallel to the yard by way of sand dunes within the open solar, we shimmied underneath a small gap within the fence and again into the yard. The primary prepare we boarded—the one I disembarked face-first—was headed within the fallacious route. The second acquired us out.
For a second, as our prepare rattled by way of the Mojave Nationwide Protect, previous the dancing shadows of Joshua timber and desert scrub, it clicked. We had outmaneuvered a yard stuffed with bulls, dodged loss of life, and now even the solar was on our aspect. However earlier than lengthy, the majesty gave technique to the monotony of being trapped aboard a five-foot-long flatbed platform, fingers cramping up from clutching the latch of a transport container to protect towards sudden stops, our our bodies weary and dehydrated. The prepare paused by the Colorado River round midnight and we stepped off. I used to be determined for the bottle of Gatorade on the backside of my pack, however Keeley barked to maintain shifting. Again on gravel for less than a second, we walked rapidly up the prepare seeking a automotive with a platform deep sufficient to securely spend the night time, climbed aboard, and had been off as soon as extra. Nothing occurs after which it occurs so quick.
The subsequent day discovered us idling by way of mountain meadows exterior Flagstaff, pausing for anyplace from two minutes to 2 hours to let sooner trains go, or to change crews, or for observe upkeep, or, Keeley advised greater than as soon as, as a result of somebody referred to as us in. We inched throughout Arizona and the Malpas, practically 100 miles of black volcanic rock that flows throughout the panorama like a river from hell, lastly rejoining civilization 40 miles south of Albuquerque in a spot referred to as Belen. The place’s distilled water once you want it? I used to be out of provisions, and I used to be touring with Boxcar Bear Grylls; if I didn’t communicate up, we would by no means get off. When the prepare slowed to a cease, we made our escape. We climbed over a barbed-wire fence and finally emerged at a Valero.
Keeley is an professional at adapting to uncommon circumstances, however by no means totally groks regular ones. He insisted on staggering our entrance into the gasoline station, purportedly in order not to attract consideration to ourselves, however stood out a lot as he waited exterior {that a} lady drove to McDonald’s and again simply to deliver him a bag of burgers. The stops at Willy’s and Sally’s, I used to be rapidly realizing, had been by no means going to occur on the breakneck tempo we’d set, however we’d entered into a special world anyhow. Keeley had cash however accepted the Huge Macs gratefully, and the girl turned to me: “Would you want some too?” (I declined.)
The subsequent three days had been a gradual descent into purgatory. We jumped on a piggyback—a flatbed automotive with a semi-truck on high of it—uncertain of the place we’d find yourself. The excellent news was that it was a hotshot, which means it held high-priority cargo that different trains must make method for. We awoke in Clovis, New Mexico, handed Amarillo and Fort Value, and crossed the Pink River. The lights of Oklahoma Metropolis flickered by that night time, as Keeley snored like a damaged rubbish disposal. Our relationship had frayed—dialog is troublesome on a screeching prepare, earplugs are important, and there was little I might do or say with out falling sufferer to the Catman’s persistent second-guessing; he even refused to consider the Google map I consulted for our exact location. On Tuesday, I spotted I’d solely eaten 4 items of beef jerky since Sunday. Given the dearth of a correct latrine, possibly this was for the most effective.
I’d reached my breaking level by Kansas Metropolis and ready to make my exit. However the yards change into extra militarized the farther east you go, and this one felt like Normandy. Our choices had been to leap out of the prepare because it rolled and hope for an exit, or to get off when it stopped and virtually definitely get caught. I had no excellent warrants; a $200 high-quality appeared like a small value to pay to get a motel and bathe up. Keeley needed to maintain going. Why waste cash on a flight once you had a hotshot?
I’d be taught that I wasn’t the one one to be worn down by Keeley’s proudly authoritarian strategy. Tom Dyson, a British monetary analyst who has ridden trains with Keeley in Mexico, Canada, and america, recalled that after wading throughout the Rio Grande to Texas, he had sought out a gasoline station to make a telephone name to his spouse. Keeley, “cranky as shit,” gave him 5 minutes, watched as he made the decision, and when Dyson went over the allotted time, left him behind. “Bo’s only a bizarre man, and I believe he simply understands issues in another way from different folks,” he says.
Throughout Missouri, the lightning flashed brilliantly within the distance for hours, and when the skies lastly opened up round midnight, sheets of rain pelted our automotive at 60 mph. The bivy sack wouldn’t shut, and I started to panic. There was nowhere to get off, no technique to cease, no technique to keep at bay hypothermia besides going fetal and praying for daybreak. I assumed again to what Steve Klett advised me about his journey with Keeley, as we sat in his yard simply earlier than I launched into mine: “I’ve by no means been so uncontrolled.”
When Keeley’s flight was referred to as, he gave a agency handshake and a smile. My leap from the shifting prepare in Barstow, he advised me earlier than he left, was value one Catman level.
5 days after we caught out of Colton, our trip terminated in a Chicagoland trucking distribution middle referred to as Willow Springs, and this time I led us out of the yard, previous a smiling observe employee, down a ravine, and throughout a four-lane street to a Dunkin’ Donuts, the place we left puddles on the ground and Keeley purchased a aircraft ticket on my telephone. I paid for a cab to the airport and he answered my questions on the best way, with a persistence and appeal I hadn’t seen since we embarked. He might flip that change so rapidly. “I’m going to Iquitos [Peru] after which, in September, to Baja,” he introduced. For a part of the final decade he has dreamed of extending the Pacific Crest Path, which meanders down the Cascades and the Sierras, south by way of Baja to Cabo San Lucas. He had virtually completed mapping it out: “I name it the Baja Loop.” When Keeley’s flight was referred to as, he gave a agency handshake and a smile. My leap from the shifting prepare in Barstow, he advised me earlier than he left, was value one Catman level.
George Meegan, the British adventurer most well-known for strolling 19,000 miles from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Ocean within the late Nineteen Seventies, was sitting by the river in Iquitos, Peru, one sweltering night time a few years in the past when Keeley launched himself and started to quiz him concerning the Darien Hole, an impenetrable tangle of swampy jungle that has thwarted land journey throughout Panama for hundreds of years. Meegan compares Keeley to a different Iquitos transplant, the real-life adventurer of the Werner Herzog epic Fitzcarraldo, who as soon as transported a steamship over a mountain whereas exploring the Peruvian Amazon, earlier than dying on the river at 35. “I quite assume, Mr. Murphy, that he and I harken again to a earlier age,” Meegan mentioned. This, I found, was a standard theme amongst those that affiliate with Keeley—the sense that they’ve lucked into an journey with a piece of historic fiction.
And I’ve to confess, seeing the West from the platform of a container automotive had its moments: There are issues you possibly can’t see every other method—graves of railroad staff in tall mountain meadows on century-old rights of method—and experiences that toughen you up psychologically. However there was one thing voyeuristic—even for a journalist—about tramping by way of hobo jungles hoping to catch a glimpse of an alcoholic or band of punks, dropping in on their world with a digicam and a notepad as if I had been after the snow leopard. “Are you aware of Burning Man in any respect?” Tyde requested. “There are individuals who go to Burning Man as a result of they need the expertise, and you then’ve acquired like millionaire vacationers who go as a result of they’ll. I put that every one in the identical bucket. There are privileged those that go and do silly issues for the joys of it, and I’m probably not a fan of that.” His analogy shocked me as a result of Tyde is a millionaire vacationer; his most up-to-date Fb publish, as of this writing, lamented the dearth of wifi at this previous summer time’s Burning Man competition.
Keeley’s mates, lots of whom go many years in between visits, press me for particulars after I inform them the place I’ve been, and reside vicariously by way of his exploits. It wasn’t needed for the executives to reside their total lives as he did, to go Galt in one of many continent’s least hospitable locations. It was sufficient for them to know that he had and so they might. In the meantime, they honored his ethos in small methods. Steve Klett, the medical-device VP, proposed to his girlfriend at a Mojave ghost city Keeley had first proven him. “He’s at all times at the back of my thoughts—at all times,” says Nathan Janos, who at Keeley’s recommendation turned down a six-figure wage and plans to journey world wide subsequent 12 months. “I hope he’s there for you too.”
A couple of weeks after we’d parted, Keeley had arrived in Puerto Maldonado on the Bolivian border and, about six months after being evacuated from the Peruvian jungle, started planning a brand new expedition up the continent with a “hoboette” named Boxcar Emily. Then he deliberate to return as soon as extra to Guatemala, for a ferry over the Usumacinta and a prepare trip north with the autumn migration on La Bestia. “I used to be given a clear invoice of well being,” he wrote, “to stroll the paths and hobo the Amazon tributaries.”
Within the meantime, if I might persuade my editors to ship me to Peru, he had a narrative for me. One of many world’s largest gathering of shamans was coming to Iquitos, and Keeley promised to place me in contact with a person he referred to as “the Johnny Appleseed of ahahuasca [sic]”—the psychedelic elixir greatest recognized for producing non secular revelations and excessive suits of vomiting. The city was low cost and “stuffed with riches for the curious gringo.” I politely declined.