WORTH 50,000: DAY NINETEEN - The itch.

<[Source.]

He used to sit in classrooms, grading papers for professors and proctoring tests taken by dimly lit children who didn't know how to end up anywhere but that classroom and then the life waiting for them beyond. Higher education was a pause, he wanted a full stop. He had dug his heels in, not wanting to move forward, but not knowing how to move back. He thought about track jumping. About and article he'd read in the New Yorker about dissatisfied youths who rode the rails with nothing, looking for work as if they lived during the Great Depression. "They didn't have a choice," one young man had said, grinning for the photographer, looking through haystack hair and licking dry lips. "We wanted to give ourselves the same ultimatum. See who we could really be." He'd sipped his latte and closed his eyes and wished for the strength to break away.

Turned out it wasn't strength you needed. It was breath, and good sturdy boots, and three days without sleep. The rest would have to figure itself out at the next stop.