The Trekker Returns Home

Suzanne Jennings, Gabe's mom, emailed the following report on the harrowing and sudden conclusion of her son's bike trip to Brazil that has the heads of more orthodox athletes and coaches shaking. After Suzanne's account, you'll find a brief interview with Gabe himself.

Gabe is home! It's quite a story, as usual. I'm writing the update with direct input from Gabe himself.

Deathly ill with hepatitis, Gabe reached his final destination of Salvador, Brazil, on May 15th. He contracted the virus by drinking the local water and eating off the streets of either Peru or Central America. At the time, though, Gabe thought he just had a debilitating case of the flu. Ten days earlier, when he boarded a barge in Manaus, the heart of Brazil's Amazonia, Gabe was so stricken with the disease that he was unable to leave the suffocating confines of his hammock for four days. Upon reaching the mouth of the Amazon at BelÈm, Gabe, feeling somewhat better, hopped back on his bike only to relapse into a life threatening semi-conscious state after his 100km ride. From that point on he rode buses to Salvador.

Gabe was unable to hold down food for almost two weeks. He laid in the streets of Salvador for hours at a stretch. By the time he was finally able to call home, Jim and I frantically insisted that he go to the hospital IMMEDIATELY. Thank the gods he listened to us. In the public hospital he was diagnosed with having hepatitis, was given an IV, and then sent back to the hostel where he was staying. The doctor had wanted Gabe to stay in the hospital, but at this point Gabe's homing instinct was stronger. In his condition, communicating in Portuguese was also frustrating as well as taxing, and Brazilian food is far from conducive to healing.

The next day, Monday, May 19th Gabe was finally able to eat his first meal. Jim spoke with Gabe's Brazilian doctor; communication was difficult, but the gist of the conversation was that the worst was over and that he'd be okay. By Tuesday Gabe was homeward bound. Jim and I picked him up at the San Francisco Airport Wednesday morning (May 21) and on Thursday (yesterday) he saw his Mendocino doctor and then took a nice long walk out on the coastal headlands. Gabe's still weak from the hepatitis and his eyes have a pale jaundice glow, but he's improving quickly and should be out of the contagious stage in the next few days. While I have the chance I'd like to challenge him to a mile jog, but I think I've already lost my window of opportunity. I can feel Gabe's fire start to blaze. It's something that's been smoldering since the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials, but the head winds from this bike trip to Brazil have definitely fueled his vision.

Suzanne Jennings, May 24, 2003

A Brief Interview With Gabe (May 28, 2003)

T&FN: Gabe, you're alive! How are you feeling?

Gabe: It's been about two days that I've felt good. I've only been back about a week. I was already getting better by the time I came home. [Before that] I experienced two weeks of hell. But I was still just basically sleeping all day for the first 3 or 4 days, and then… Really, my progression's pretty amazing. I consider myself 60 or 70 percent healthy.

I've gone for a couple of runs; I'm super excited, supercharged.

T&FN: Are you disappointed that you never got to study capoeira in Brazil for the purpose of opening up your stride length?

Gabe: I was horribly bummed. The Brazil experience was pretty tainted. By the time I got to Manaus, everything from there, I was just so sick the whole world seemed ugly.

T&FN: What were your symptoms?

Gabe: It was pretty dangerously close to, I don't even know, major liver damage maybe. Or maybe, even worse. I was pretty unconscious for a number of days, literally laying on the street because I couldn't make it to motivate to a hotel or anything.

It was pretty bad. I have really hazy memories of trying to walk a block and then just being so dizzy and out of synch that I'd just lay down right on the cement for maybe 2 or 3 hours and then I'd kind of wake up for a few minutes and try to sit up and then just go back down for another few hours. And this happened for days, where I hardly moved 2 or 3 blocks. Usually I'd find a hotel and then I'd just lay in bed for 2 or 3 days straight and then I'd try to get up and make it to the bus station or the part of Salvador that had the drumming.

Then finally I called my parents after two weeks. It was hell.

T&FN: What town were you in?

Gabe: I spent 4 days sick on the boat from Manaus to BelÈm, and then I spent about 3 days sick on the buses. It was just so stupid, but my whole philosophy was I just kind of thought it was a really bad flu and I thought, I don't want to be sick in a part of Brazil where I don't really want to hang out. I just wanted to get to Salvador, but then I got to Salvador and I was still sick and the symptoms weren't going away. Sure enough, it's hepatitis.

But my jaundice, I think probably as of yesterday is pretty much completely gone. Because I came back and I was yellow. My eyes were just gross, yellow. My liver wasn't doing its job.

T&FN: What type of hepatitis is it?

Gabe: It's A. I got it through food or water. I wasn't really being very smart. I was eating off the street most of the time. I did a few really stupid things. I remember washing my toothbrush and rinsing my mouth out with Amazon water. That in and of itself; they dump everything in that river. But the worst of it is I really, literally didn't eat for two weeks [after I got sick]. I'm not exaggerating.

T&FN: What's your weight right now?

Gabe: It's pretty light; probably dangerously light.

T&FN: What's the medical prognosis?

Gabe: I haven't even gotten those tests yet. I don't think I will unless I notice symptoms. If I can start training at a pretty hard level, I think that in itself would prove that my liver is functioning fine.

Hopefully now I'll have a lifetime immunity; that's the only benefit.

But it's so good to be home. As much as I'm so bummed about capoeira and everything, when you go through that kind of an experience—and I did it alone—when you're that sick alone, man, I was so happy to see my parents. I haven't even really had time to reflect on the whole capoeira thing.

It's horrible. I had finally made it to Salvador and I was going to be there another month and a half, and I didn't even touch upon capoeira. I heard it from my hotel bedroom window; I heard drums just going crazy and I couldn't even appreciate it.

But at the same time it turns out that the capoeira is in the Pelourinho, all consolidated to this one little part of Salvador. My romantic vision, of course, was that everybody was going to be practicing capoeira right on the beach and I was going to be able to train on the beach and then come back and do capoeira for hours and then go for another long run on the beach.

The Pelourinho is like 2 blocks from the ocean but the navy yards are below it so it's all cement, no beach. It's a huge city and there are beautiful beaches, but they just happen to be on the other side of the city. So if I lived in the Pelourinho doing capoeira that would mean commuting 2 miles to the beaches. It wasn't ideal.

After my whole trip and getting in amazing fitness…

T&FN: Riding over the Andes on underinflated tires would certainly help your fitness.

Gabe: Yeah, but at the same time I was getting really antsy to start running, and I live in paradise right here for running. So I'm running.

T&FN: In the last couple of days?

Gabe: Yeah. It feels great. I feel like a different person—my whole attitude and inspiration behind running, especially.

T&FN: So you feel in the motivational sense the trip was a success?

Gabe: Absolutely. I could feel the change occurring in my psyche. It doesn't take long. It only took about two weeks of really pushing my body to that extent that I just started to realize that my whole competitive nature was coming back. Because I was challenging myself on the same kind of level that I used to challenge myself in running except it was more of a survival.

It wasn't running the 25 miles up to Mammoth Mountain because I was inspired; I rode my bike sometimes 2-300km out of necessity, at one shot. Sometimes I really felt like it was a challenge that was out of my control—it was either freezing to death in the Michoacan mountains or pedaling another 150km in the middle of the night to make it to the nearest city where I could feed myself.

The same thing happened in Honduras. I basically rode through the whole country of Honduras without stopping because I had no money, no food. I rode for over 300km without eating. When I finally got to Nicaragua, I was so excited to actually eat. There were a lot of instances like that. And I could go on and on.

Introduction
(In which Gabe’s decision to ride his bike to Brazil [T&FN, March] is explained)

Trip updates from Gabe’s father, Jim:

Report 1
(In which Gabe is robbed in Guadalajara, then pedals all night to keep warm in the high altitude near Mexico City)

Report 2
(In which Gabe runs into a truck in Oaxaca)

Report 3
(In which Gabe is robbed in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica, but remains in high spirits, meeting many new friends)

Report 4
(In which monkeys assault Gabe with coconuts as he runs through the Costa Rican jungle and Gabe later accedes to his parents' wishes that he skip violence-torn Colombia in favor of a plane hop to altitudinous
Peru)

Report 5
(In which Gabe climbs the Andes with underinflated tires and is beset by mosquitos in the rapidly disappearing rain forest on the other side.)

Report 6
The final update, in which Gabe reaches his capoeira destination of Salvador, Brazil, but is forced to return home by a dangerous case of hepatitis.

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