Davenport native traveling across U.S. with 'no real plan'

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By Kay Luna | Monday, May 19, 2008 5:18 PM CDT | () comments

Brian Triplett, 24, of Davenport, plans his hike across the United States, from Maine to California, while at the Panera Bread location in Davenport. Triplett and a friend, Denny Clark, will make the journey by walking, camping and blogging about their adventures and the people they meet on the way to the West Coast. Triplett and Clark, also a University of Iowa graduate, want to meet people, get to know their country better and show people that the world isn’t as scary as some make it out to be. (Elisa Petersen/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

He calls it his “office,” this tall table near a sunny window at Davenport’s Panera Bread cafe.

Admittedly, this place — where 24-year-old Brian Triplett has been working on his laptop computer a lot lately — is a far cry from the worldwide wanderings he spent several months doing last year.

But starting today, his scenery will get a lot more diverse.

The Davenport native is flying out of the Quad-Cities, setting out for the East Coast to launch a new adventure: a long walk across the United States, with a goal to make it to the West Coast within three months.

His goal: to meet strangers and hopefully turn them into friends.

“Why is everybody so afraid of strangers?” he said. “Is the world really that scary of a place? We think most people are good-hearted.”

That’s what inspired Triplett and his friend, 23-year-old Denny Clark, also a recent graduate of the University of Iowa, to plan the “No Stranger Land” walk, which they plan to write about online at nostrangerland.blogspot.com.

Their only plans so far are to camp out at night, eat mostly cheap canned food and perform random acts of kindness along the way. And that “way” is unknown. The route is not planned, and they have little money to pay for their travels.

Triplett said his previous travels taught him that things usually work out, even without a plan. They did when he was hopping from country to country, staying with strangers-turned-friends and living without a plan. He wrote about that trip in detail at briantriplett.blogspot.com.

During that adventure, Triplett traveled alone. This time, he will travel with Clark because “we realized we have a lot of similar thoughts about the world.”

That included an interest — no, a passion — for proving that most people are basically good, and that strangers don’t have to stay strangers, he said.

Hence, came the name of their trip, which they dreamed up during a vacation to Colorado last fall.

“I guess it’s almost like a field study,” Triplett said. “We’re out to meet good people, and the plan is not to ask much from people. We want to live as basic as possible.”

“We want to see people trust their neighbors again.”

In an effort to prepare, Triplett has been running up to 10 miles per day, and fasting one day a week. But he figures he still isn’t truly ready for the physical challenge.

“It’s going to be a lot harder than I can even imagine,” he said.

His parents, Pat and Mimi Triplett of Davenport, said they feel the same as they did when their son left to travel the world — apprehension and pride. They especially are proud of their son’s “noble reasons” for doing the walk, his father added.

“He believes so much that if they do a favor for someone, that that person will in turn carry it on and do a favor for someone else,” said his grandmother, Donna Triplett of Bettendorf. “They’re just trying to spread a little goodness in the world.”

Triplett, who has a journalism background, said he still plans to write a book about his travels — whenever he finishes them.

“Even if it’s just a great thing we can tell our kids about someday, to us, that’s a success,” he said. “We can definitely see this as molding the rest of our lives.”

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

Follow the  trip online

Davenport native Brian Triplett and his friend, Denny Clark, will be posting entries about their walk across the country online at  nostrangerland.blogspot.com.

You can follow along with their travels there, as well as get more information about how to donate funds to help cover the basic costs of their journey.

The site says donations can be sent to The No Stranger Land Project, 1309 Campus Drive, Ankeny, IA 50023.

Triplett said they have applied for a grant but haven’t heard yet if they won.

Meanwhile, the travelers can be reached by e-mail at nostrangerland@gmail.com.

— Kay Luna

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

(Editor’s note: Pat Triplett, the father of world traveler Brian Triplett of Davenport, wrote this essay on the eve of his son’s departure for a three-month hike across America.)

Mark Twain once said, “I’ve been thru some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

So when our 24-year-old son informed my wife and I that he and a friend were planning to walk across America this summer, naturally my first thought was, “What could go wrong?”

That got me thinking: Why was that my first reaction? Why wasn’t I excited for him? Wasn’t I the person who, some 40 years earlier, decided to spend the summer renting a camper with a couple of buddies to head out West and explore the Rocky Mountains? Wasn’t I the guy who drove the camper through the mountains one night even though I couldn’t see 10 feet in front me due to the clouds, realizing the next day we were literally five feet from dropping of the cliff? Wasn’t I the one who rented a motorcycle and spent the day driving through the Garden of the Gods even though I had never ridden a motorcycle before? Wasn’t I the one who walked on the ledge of the Royal Gorge Bridge on a dare? What happened to that guy?

I ended up with more questions than answers. Why do our values, fears and worries change as we grow older? When does “invincible” get replaced by “vulnerable?” When did watching the Cubs on TV become more enjoyable than going to Wrigley Field? Why do we go bungee-jumping without giving it a second thought when we are young and are afraid to step out our front door at night when we are old? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I would rather jump out of an airplane and have the chute fail to open when I’m 88 instead of 18. At 88, I will have lived out a full life instead of just beginning it. And yet it seems the more the years go by, the more fearful we become.

Maybe it’s the result of having watched too much violence on TV over the years. Maybe we hear too many stories of horrible things that have happened to people we know. Maybe we feel the vulnerability because our joints ache and our heart skips a beat or two, and we can’t seem to remember what’s his name. We grow old. It’s a fact of life. Aren’t we supposed to grow wiser, too? Then why can’t we realize the reward beats the risk nine times out of 10?

Perhaps that’s the key. It’s that 10th time. We start to ask ourselves “What if?” as we mature though the aging process. We feel it’s our duty as “wise” parents to warn our younger, inexperienced children of the possible harms. And yet, as Twain pointed out, how often do our fears and worries really end up happening? Enough to prevent us from trying them? If we are really as wise as we think, then the answer would have to be a resounding no.

Our son spent last year traveling the world, 25 countries in all, mostly by himself, with little to go on but a sense of confidence and adventure. And he made it, despite older and wiser persons advising against it. Now he is embarking on a new quest. The more I think of what I have done in my life and what he is doing in his, I have come to the realization that I am proud of him, proud that he is doing it and prouder yet for the reasons behind it. When I asked him why he was doing it, he said it was more than just an adventure, that it was to try and change people’s views. He already has one convert before he has even left.

— Pat Triplett