We encounter our first fence. It is made of thick metal bars and looks pretty serious, but someone has already bent one of the bars just enough that we are able to slip through. Our run is off to a great start!

We cut through a middle school and run right between two little league baseball games. There are lots of spectators, but no one cheers us on. :-(

The field we are supposed to cut across has a fence around it. We decide to run past it and cut through at the next possible point. This point happens to be a guy's driveway. He happens to pull in just as we're running down it. He pauses for a second, confused, then leaps out of his car and starts running after us while shouting "come back you fuckers! you can't do that!" I try to indicate that we're just passing through, while continuing to run. However, fences thwart us again. His yard is surrounded by a rusty chainlink fence. Ryan leaps over it and I stop for a second, thinking maybe I'll just try to explain to this guy what is going on. Then I hear him behind me shouting something else about us "fuckers" and I decide that I really don't want to face that. Armed with the proper motivation, I stick a foot in the fence, grab a nearby tree and hoist myself over.

We can't help but think: Why are people so scared of other people? Why does this guy immediately assume that we are up to something? What happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? And why does everyone need so many fences?

Our encounter with the irate homeowner has left us with a pretty large surplus of adrenaline and we pick up the pace quite a bit. We also do some zig-zagging through the neighborhood to make it harder for him to find us (we were convinced he was in his car, combing the streets for us, which he probably was--he was super-pissed). There were two downsides to this. 1) We got really tired after a few minutes of near-sprinting. 2) We stopped thinking for a few minutes and had lost track of where we were in relation to our planned route. We just keep going in what we think is the right direction. (it turns out that we are right and only a couple of blocks from our planned route at this point)

We take a nice jog through the back streets of Wilkinsburg (aka the ghetto). Every car that passes slows down to stare at us. We periodically change who is closest to the street to share the gunshot risk. We can't help but think at this point that we would like some of those fences now.

Rebecca Ave dumps us onto Ardmore, which becomes highway 8 without warning. When the sidewalk ends, we are forced to run on the median. We pass the entrance to highway 376 and several other entrance / exit ramps, but no side streets. Plus, we're running uphill on grass.

4.5 miles

We finally find a place where we can turn off of highway 8 / Ardmore (remember that name). We run up some hills, guess at the appropriate path to take through the neighborhood, realize that we have no idea which direction the mall is, and stop to ask a woman for directions. She tells us to go down the hill and take Ardmore. Great.

We cross Ardmore (a little further east this time) and run north (and uphill again) on Braddock (which I guess is different from the Braddock that goes to Swissvale?). Anyway, this is all very confusing. We decide the roads are not working out and cut through the Forest Hills Park.

We run around the tennis courts and up a gravel path that leads directly into someone's backyard. Luckily, there are no fences this time and there's plenty of space between houses. In fact, we're so excited to find a community with no fences that we decide to just cut through another yard right away. Final result: two streets worth of eastward progress and no irate homeowners on our tail.

We realize that we can't just keep cutting through yards when we reach a dead-end street that ends not because of houses, but because of a cliff. We ask a guy who is doing some yardwork how to get to the Monroeville Mall. He looks really confused for a second then gives us some (clear, correct) directions and asks, "are you running to the Mall? That's crazy." But he says it in a sort of approving way. We decide we like this guy.

We reach the end of the yard-work guy's directions and have to choose which direction we should run along Greensburg Pike. We actually choose correctly, and even decide to leave the road at the right point, cutting through a cemetery just south of our intended route. The cemetery is on a hill from which we can spot the factory that we had wanted to run through. It looks hard to get to, and maybe fenced off with some barbed wire (although we intend to explore this later). We run down one of the cemetery roads and come out on Beulah Road.

8.0

We correctly guess which way to go down Beulah, but miss the turn we are supposed to take, thinking that it looks like a private drive and surely doesn't go through. Instead, we take the next road, which dead ends after a while, forcing us to traverse some more yards and hike up a wooded hill (our first hike of two). When we emerge from the woods, we are on Churchill Road. Finally back on course!

8.2

We know we're back on course, but don't remember which way the course goes. Still, we know that the next major road we take is Thompson Run Road. We're at a four-way stop, the perfect place to ask for directions. So we start approaching cars, asking where Thompson Run is. At least half the cars we approach look at us and drive off, sometimes even running the stop sign in order to get away. Again, what happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? The crazy woman in our neighborhood approached me after standing in front of my car at night and I rolled down my window to talk to her. Why can't people give directions in the middle of the day to two people who are obviously jogging?

8.76

Some guy in a car and a guy driving a school van both tell us that Thompson Run Road is to the left. Since both sets of directions agree and the guy in the van conferred with all the passengers before answering, we figure left must it. However, after half a mile of running uphill we see... highway 376. Specifically, we see the Wilkinsburg exit. Considering we were just in Wilkinsburg 20 minutes ago, this is not an uplifting sight. Annoyed, we turn around and run the half mile back to explore the other side of Churchhill road. Also, at this point I start having to pee.

As we are running through a golf course, we see a couple of golf carts crossing the street. We ask them how to get to the Monroeville Mall (at this point I start wondering whether I need to say "Monroeville Mall" or if we're close enough that I can just say "the Mall"). They deliberate for a while and point in various directions and say something about running forward for much longer than we'd like to. Then this guy in the cart behind them, who has been silent the whole time, stroking his chin like some kind of sage, says that if we want to take a shortcut, we can just turn left before the cemetery and follow that road down. This is exactly what we wanted. This guy has obviously been thinking about the best route this whole time, so we trust his advice.

We pass a woman who is walking along the road and ask her for directions, just to confirm that we are on the right path. The conversation goes something like this:

• Us: How do we get to the Monroeville Mall from here?
• Her: Monroeville Mall? You way off course.
• Her: (thinking)
• Her: Well, I guess you could go that way. (points in the direction we are already heading)
• Her: You go about half a mile down this road, then turn left and take that road for about a mile, then you'll merge onto another road. Stay on that for half a mile. I'd say it's about 5 or 6 miles from here.

We thank her and spend the next few minutes of running pondering how 0.5 miles plus 1 mile plus 0.5 miles equals 5 or 6 miles.

We turn down Harrison Road which look very familiar (it's odd how streets can look familiar even when you've only seen them from Google's satellite view). About half a mile down this road, we finally end up in a spot where there are no houses within immediate view and very little traffic. I take the opportunity to pee off a ledge. Much better!

We see a tunnel that Ryan swears he remembers from the satellite map. He's like "yeah, you go through this tunnel and then there's a field on the other side and we go through that." The tunnel looks really nasty though (it's small and dark and is full of standing water). Also, the area is littered with "No Tresspassing" signs. After our encounter with the homeowner, I'm really leery of explicitly violating such a sign (it turns out that the land is owned by Union Railroad, so I doubt anyone would have been around to notice us). Still, I veto the tunnel and it's a good thing because a half mile later the road we are on passes through the real tunnel, which is much less scary.

Things get scary again as we pass by a train junkyard. There are rusted out locomotives and giant scraps of metal along with unidentifiable garbage and industrial waste. There is some guy driving a bulldozer around the area and we agree that whoever it is that takes care of the train junkyard in the middle of nowhere, 300 feet below the Monroeville Mall, we really don't want to meet him.

We are just a few hundred feet from the Best Buy, but also a few hundred feet below it. The most direct route is up this hill. The satellite view showed a clearing, but we didn't see anything, so we hiked up the hill, through the woods. It was a little rough. The ground was really soft and crumbling and the trees weren't much help because they were mostly small and would just pop out of the ground if you tried to use them to stabilize yourself. Half-way up, Ryan spots a tent. I'm not sure who would camp out in the woods behind the mall, but again, this is probably someone we don't want to mess with.

We reach the top of the hill and can see the Best Buy sign in the distance. We're finally back in civilization!

We reach the front of the Best Buy and have the following conversation with a guy walking to his car:

• Guy: How far did you go?
• Us: Maybe 10 miles? We're not really sure.
• Guy: That's great. That's great. I bike 10 miles every week. I used to run, but I can't run anymore. (Waves his cane around, in case we couldn't tell that this is why he can't run)
• Guy: I'm not supposed to be able to walk. the doctors said I should be in a wheelchair. But since I ran and bike, I can still walk. Keep it up!
• Us: Yeah, you too.

So he was really nice actually, but not what you expect to run into in the Best Buy parking lot. Anyway, we're finally done and Jessica is waiting to pick us up. We're late because we didn't expect to get so lost. Sorry Jessica! We spend the next couple of days being pretty sore, but happy that we completed the trip.