Nameless Friends

For the past six years, “The Strand” has been my Saturday morning running home. It is a gorgeous location, beginning at Will Rogers State Beach on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Temescal Canyon and extending through Santa Monica, Venice, and Marina del Rey, and if you are crazy enough, continues on through Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach to its terminus in Torrance—a grand total of twenty miles. It is a spectacular route with its beautiful sunrises, open sand, crashing ocean waves, occasional dolphin sightings, and eclectic collection of locals and tourists out walking, jogging, cycling, and roller blading all day every day. I love it.

But the best thing about it to me is the crew that assembles there. After running solo for a year or two, my friend, Jeff, joined in once he relocated from Alabama to California. That made a good thing even better. With time, we enlarged our little running group to include friends, colleagues, and students, and I lost track of who all has joined in on our early morning adventures.

There are others, too—friends without names—that I know next to nothing about but immediately recognize and greet there on Saturday mornings. These nameless friends reflect the beautiful diversity of Southern California, and I feel a strange connection with each and every one despite such limited interaction. My favorite is a gentleman who rides his bike wearing earbuds and wraparound shades and after months of my unnoticed waving one day looked up and became one of my best buddies. He playfully criticizes me when I have been absent and notices when our little running group has grown or disappeared and points these things out in the two seconds we share in passing. Two seconds on intermittent Saturdays, and I doubt I will never know his name or his story, but he is my friend.

I’m really not sure why this seems special to me, but it does. It may be some deep desire to live in harmony with all of humanity for no other reason than we happen to share this planet. A desire to be connected to everyone in this world, named or not.

Whatever. I’ll be back at The Strand to see all of my friends soon and will be happy to see them.