I asked, “What’s the craziest excuse you’ve heard to get out of a ticket?”
“Oh, the usual,” said Trusty. “My grandmother just died. I have to go to the bathroom. I have cupcakes in the oven.”
“Cupcakes in the oven?” I repeated. “That’s a good one. Did it work?”
“Oh, yeah, I never write tickets. I feel bad. We all make mistakes. I give them a warning.” The next story had to do with a naked criminal who jumped into a river from a bridge, and Trusty went in after him, leaving the keys to the cop car in the ignition. “I was new to the job,” he added. “You’re not supposed to leave the car.” The naked man turned out to be an excellent swimmer and a good runner, and he wound up beating Trusty back to land and stealing his cop car.
When Trusty finished the tale, I dropped off to go home. Right after I left, Trusty turned to Raven and said, “Oh, I got a better story than that.” (I heard this from Raven on the next run.) One afternoon, Trusty had to report to an apartment where an old Italian lady had just died. After pronouncing the woman dead, Trusty was waiting at the apartment for the woman’s grandchildren. On the stove was a big, beautiful bowl of pasta and meat sauce. Trusty was “hungry as heck” and really wanted to try the pasta, but he resisted. After an hour, he opened the fridge to get a glass of water. As more time passed, he kept eyeing the pasta. Finally, to tide himself over, he grabbed a handful of peanuts from the bowl sitting on the counter.
When the family arrived, they were in remarkably good spirits. One grandchild saw the peanuts. “Granny sure did love her sweets,” he said. “We never knew why, but she would buy bags of peanut M&M’s, suck off the chocolate, and then spit out the peanuts in the bowl. And there they are.”
* * *
SOME NAMES ARE SELF-EXPLANATORY. Sleeper is a narcoleptic who has fallen asleep while on the run and swim. “Did you ever see the Stork?” Raven once asked me. I said no. “He looked just like a stork—six-five, a hundred and sixty-five pounds, beak nose, always wearing biker shorts. One time, when we made the turn at the jetty, Shaquille O’Neal was standing there with his kids, and the Stork goes, ‘Shaq! How you doing?’ And Shaq looks at the Stork and says, ‘How you doing, big man?’ After that the Stork told everybody, ‘Shaq called me big man.’ ”
A man with pitch-black hair and one gray streak down the middle walked up to Raven and said, “My name is Mehi. I am from Transylvania. I am a bloodsucker. I am a physicist.” He sounded exactly like Count Dracula and had a bite mark on his neck. He was wearing a shirt with a big red heart and instructions to “Give Blood.” To nobody’s surprise, Mehi became the Blood Sucker.
“This one girl running with us was like four-nine,” began Raven. “Her hair was so blond that you could see her scalp. She had small features—tiny teeth that protruded a little. When she told me that her classmates used to call her Hamster, I said, ‘I can see why.’ And then she said, ‘Yeah I know, my last name is Hamley.’ ” She was called the Hamster.
When I asked why the good-looking triathlete was called 31 Kilo, he responded, “I’m in the military, and 31K is my MOS”—Military Occupational Specialization—“I train dogs.” I asked how he got into that, and he said, “I got lucky.” Today he mostly trains airport dogs to detect bombs and drugs, but on the side he works for “three-letter government agencies.”
Most days, he dons the bite suit, which he says is “fun.” Raising his left arm, he pointed to a puncture wound in his bicep that blended into his tattoo. “That bite went right through the suit,” he said, smiling. “She was a German shepherd, a real good dog.” He has trained dogs in English, Dutch, Portuguese, German, and several other languages. I asked what I should do if I’m attacked by a police dog, and he said, “Don’t get attacked by a police dog.”
Floater, Dizzy’s best friend, escaped from Cuba in 1992 and paddled to American shores in a two-man kayak with a man named Nany. “We get about a mile offshore,” Floater told me on a run in 2012, “And he asks me, ‘Do you think we’re going to tip over?’ I told him I didn’t know, that it probably depended on the weather. Then he goes, ‘Right, because I lied. I can’t swim.’ ” Today Floater and his wife, Chicken Fricassee, teach middle school and run races to raise awareness for childhood obesity. Recently, Floater ran from Naples to Miami. “My last eight miles in Miami,” said Floater, whose feat earned the Event of the Year, “I ran with the Raven.”
Fiddlesticks got his name because he told Raven, “You know I’ve got a streak of my own.” When Raven asked what it was, he danced around the issue for five minutes until Raven tired of the conversation and stopped asking about it. Then the man said, “I haven’t cursed since I was a child. The closest I’ve come is fiddlesticks.” I wasn’t on that run but when Raven reported the conversation, he added, “I tell you, White Lightning, after eight miles with him, I started to think, Maybe I am normal.”
Warden is a prison warden who, in 2002, ran with Raven 305 times—six out of seven days per week—a Raven Run record. Occasionally, Warden met inmates who had run with Raven, and he’d facilitate communications between the men. But Warden’s claim to fame is as Treasure Hunter. Along the run that one year, Warden scooped up forty-eight watches, including a Rolex, from the sand. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Raven. “One time, he was behind a concessionaire truck, and the wheel was spinning in the sand, and a Rolex flew right into his leg!”
Story Lory, who is 55, got her name because, on the fifth mile of her first eight-mile run, as they were getting a sip of water at the water fountain, she said in her Italian accent, “You know I am the most famous woman in Italy.” Raven studied her face, then exchanged a suspicious look with “Mad Cow,” a thirty-something marine biologist from London whose real name is Henry Potter.
“What do you mean you’re the most famous woman in Italy?” asked Raven.
Lory rattled off her résumé. “I was a model and an actress on television shows and movies. I was a Miss Universe contestant. I won Survivor: Italy. I dated George Harrison and Eric Clapton.” At Eric Clapton, Mad Cow sighed deeply, as if in pain. “Oh, that God-awful song,” he moaned in his British accent about “Tears in Heaven.”
“Yeah,” Lory responded. “That was about my son.” Clapton had written the song after his four-year-old son, Conor, fell to his death out of a window on the fifty-third floor of a New York skyscraper.
“To be honest, I didn’t believe her,” Raven recalls.
Mad Cow said, “Sorry, what did you say your name was again?”
Lory Del Santo.
That night Mad Cow called. “Raven I looked it up, and everything is true,” he said. “That was her son. I can’t believe I called it a God-awful song.” Raven hung up the phone and called his friend Freebird, a lifeguard from Italy. “Have you heard of a woman called Lory Del Santo?” asked Raven.
“Of course, Raven,” said Freebird in his Italian accent. “She is the most famous woman in Italy. Growing up, you might’ve had a poster of Raquel Welch on your wall, but I had Lory Del Santo.”
Story Lory was the real deal, and Raven immediately changed her name to True Story Lory. A few days later, she was back to run eight miles, and Raven told her how very sorry he was to learn more about her son’s death. “She wasn’t mad at Mad Cow,” says Raven, “but he really had put his foot in his mouth.”
When I met True Story Lory in August 2014, she was running with “Magnet,” her 21-year-old boyfriend, who is younger than her children. “See, White Lightning?” said Raven. “I don’t make this stuff up.”
* * *
SLEAZEBUSTER IS A RETIRED Northwestern law professor who earned his name after explaining in detail on the run how he liked to take down sleazy divorce lawyers. This impressed Firecracker, who was running beside him. “You’re like a sleaze buster,” she observed, and Raven immediately approved. “The problem,” Sleazebuster told me, “is that runners have shortened it just to Sleaze, so I’ll be walking around South Beach, on vacation with family or work col
leagues, and people will be shouting, ‘Hey, Sleaze! How’s it going?’ And my friends are like, Why are they calling you sleaze?”
I asked Raven if anyone has ever asked to change their nickname. “The Cadaver did,” he answered. Cadaver was a long-distance swimmer from Cuba who completed his first eight miles on his 59th birthday in 1994. The man’s dark hair matched the circles under his eyes, which looked as if they had been carved into his face with a scalpel. On hot days, he collapsed in the sand like a corpse.
The Cadaver ran with a fanny pack to carry a homemade concoction of peach juice and coffee. He carried a big radio and blasted boleros, Cuban love ballads. When it rained, he sometimes wore a shower cap. The Cadaver was okay with his nickname until one day Bigfoot the lifeguard hollered, “Look alive, Cadaver!”
Cadaver was offended. “I don’t like this,” he told Raven. “I am not a cadaver. I am alive.” Raven gave in, and the Cadaver became the Instructor, after he got certified as a Red Cross swimming instructor.
A year later, Cadaver collapsed in the sand. “He was lying in a gully like he was dead,” says Raven. Two old ladies came up to Raven and asked, “Is that man all right? He’s not moving.” At that moment, the Instructor’s arm shot up again, and Raven walked over and picked him off the ground. “He’s okay,” Raven told the ladies. “He just came back from the dead.” After that, Raven changed his name back to Cadaver. The next time the lifeguards teased him, he stopped running.
Today Raven misses the Cadaver terribly. I asked Raven, “Can’t you just change his name so he’ll come back?”
Raven winced. “You really have to see him, White Lightning. He looks just like a cadaver.”
SEVENTEEN
CHUCK NORRIS AND JESUS CHRIST
On May 18, 2002, Raven was on the front page of the Miami Herald for his 10,000th day in a row—80,000 streak miles. On the run was Tom Fiedler, the editor of the Miami Herald, who earned the nickname Daily Planet—the fictional newspaper from Superman. “They took a picture of me shaking Marble Man’s hand,” says Raven. “He was a really weird-looking guy—a one-time runner—but still it was a great, memorable day.”
Thirty people ran with Raven to commemorate the milestone, and nineteen people swam. “That was the all-time record for swimmers,” says Raven. Graphics Man—Pimm Fox—a Bloomberg News anchor on the show Taking Stock, flew down from New York for his sixth run with Raven. Springman, Miracle, Poet, Gringo, Sailor, Bookworm, the Giggler, and Pokerpace were there, too. The Herald story enticed a lot of new recruits and as soon as Raven had checked off goal one, he made goal two: a hundred thousand streak miles.
* * *
THAT SUMMER, it felt like someone was lashing his arches with a bullwhip; a callous on the sole of his foot was so tender he couldn’t step on it. Rolling onto the outside of his foot changed his stride, which hurt his hip and back. On August 15, 2002, after the run, his knee was killing him when a tourist came up to him and said, “There’s people that just fell off a Jet Ski at Sixth Street. They’re in trouble.”
Raven looked to the water and saw an empty Jet Ski floating, doing circles as it bumped up against the Gulf Stream. A family of three was shouting for help. Raven threw his wallet, glasses, and glove on the lifeguard stand and took off for the waves. The parents were Latin, in their 20s, and the son was 2. Another person helped get the son and father, who was a better swimmer, and they made it to shore. When Raven got to the mother, a helicopter was flying above him. “I see the cops, I see the rescue squad, the beach is filled with hundreds of people, there’s a Coast Guard boat a little farther out,” Raven told me. “But nobody’s in the water. I don’t know why. Maybe they figured I had it under control.”
Raven offered his usual disclaimer, “I’m going to get you in. It’s just going to take a while.” Tugging the woman behind, he fought the current for fifteen minutes. When they could stand in the water, the woman hugged Raven as hard as she could, repeating “Thank you” over and over. Then she ran to her husband and toddler. “They were going crazy in Spanish,” said Raven.
A large policeman had watched the whole scene and recognized Raven. “I thought all you did was run,” he said.
“No,” said Raven. “I can swim a little.”
* * *
A FEW MONTHS LATER, his ankle was so swollen it couldn’t bend. He had to drag his foot when he ran. On one run in January 2003, eight miles took him three hours and six minutes. “When Sailor, our slowest runner, flew by me, I thought, The streak’s over,” recalls Raven.
That night Mike “Flatfoot” Flatley, a runner and a podiatrist, called. “I heard from Reverend that you had a bad day,” said Flatfoot. “Come to my office tomorrow, and I’ll look at your ankle. Plus your orthotics came in.” Raven had been Flatfoot’s celebrity endorsement for an ad for the Miami New Times and to return the favor and take pressure off the calluses, Flatfoot had taken a mold of Raven’s mangled feet for orthotic inserts.
Warden drove Raven to the doctor’s office, where Flatfoot wrapped Raven’s foot with a medicated bandage. It was a bad sprain. “Now don’t be stupid,” said Flatfoot. “Take it easy and let it heal. Don’t run the full eight. And don’t swim.”
Raven promised he wouldn’t swim, which actually was a relief, because the Atlantic was clogged with jellyfish. Wearing orthotics that afternoon, Raven shaved one hour and twenty minutes off his time and proudly shared the feat with Flatfoot. “You were going too fast,” said Flatfoot on the phone.
“Well it didn’t hurt as much,” said Raven. The next day, Flatfoot came to run with Raven to slow him down. Then he rewrapped the ankle. After a couple of weeks running with the orthotics, the pain went away. “I was running faster than I had gone in years,” recalls Raven. “I felt like I was seventeen again.”
* * *
AS RAVEN’S RUNNING FAMILY GREW, he started losing his only real family left. In 2005, Mary had a heart attack at age 88. After three days in the hospital, she was transferred to a nursing home. “That was a dirty, dirty word,” says Raven. “She made it a point never to put her mother in a home, and she told me never to put her in a nursing home. She wanted independence.” At the nursing home, Mary stopped eating and accused the nurses of being mean. Though Raven had no experience as a caretaker, he took his mother home to her apartment.
Beginning in May 2005, Raven visited his mother twice a day, before and after the run. He bought her groceries, cooked her dinner, and watched television with her for hours at night. “I never knew how I was going to find her,” says Raven. On ten different occasions, Raven had to pick his mother up off the floor. Still, Mary insisted that a nursing home was a death sentence.
“At least God gave me a window where my back was better,” says Raven, “and I could lift her.” On her eleventh fall in December 2006, Mary broke her hip and went to the hospital for three months. Every hospital visit broke Raven’s heart, and every eight miles put it back together.
A new runner from Seattle became a great support. Jim was a 58-year-old pilot who flew for Alaskan Airlines. With blue eyes and a little mustache, he looked like any plain Irish American guy, but on Halloween he liked to dress up as an Arabian prince and go by the name Abdul, which was the identity he requested from Raven.
When Abdul came to town, he ran from his hotel on 65th Street to meet Raven—that’s 5.2 miles—and then ran eight with Raven, swam, and jogged back home. He was a tough athlete—a graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis who had finished seventy-eight marathons and a couple of Iron Mans. A lot of runners respected Abdul. “I adored that man,” says Gringo. “Not only was he humanly healthy, he was creative—earthly creative and spiritually creative at the same time. He really had a balance.”
Raven admired Abdul, too, and opened up to him about how difficult it was to take care of his mother. Abdul could empathize; his mother, who had been a piano teacher, was also sick. The two swapped caretaker stories, offering mutual encouragement. To know someone else was going throu
gh the same thing and was taking it in stride made Raven feel less alone.
In March 2007, Mary was discharged from the hospital and needed more assistance than two visits per day. Raven set up home help for her, but the nurses refused to take a house key, and Mary couldn’t open the door to let them in. “I thought I could do anything for my mother,” says Raven, “but I just couldn’t change her diaper.” He thought he had no choice but to put her in a home. “Then God sent an angel,” says Raven. “That was Poutine.”
* * *
POUTINE IS CANADIAN, named after her favorite national dish of French fries smothered in gravy and cheese curds. She holds many Raven Run records: Most swims in a year (202), most runs in a year for a female (232), most consecutive runs and swims (143), and she is in the Hall of Fame. For a living, she walks dogs and pet-sits.
She met Raven in January 2007, when she was on vacation in Miami, petting a cat on the sidewalk outside the Lord Balfour Hotel. From her legs, Raven could tell she was an athlete, and he invited her to run. “I’m not really fast,” she said.
“Oh, we got this guy Hurricane, he’s almost eighty,” said Raven. “If you want to run slow, you can run with him.” That afternoon she walked-ran with Hurricane but got tired of the slow pace after four miles. “She thought she was just stuck with Hurricane,” says Raven, who convinced her to try again the next day, when she became fast friends with Adbul’s wife, Fatima.
That night, Poutine came to the annual banquet and was sitting next to Fatima as Abdul led the runners in a prayer before dinner and later accepted the Rookie of the Year award. “Abdul was very spiritual,” says Raven. “Always Jesus-talking, and he lived it.”
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