First Train Out of Denver

First Train Out of Denver

On a tenebrous winter morning in Denver, Colorado, Leo Jenkins felt the weight of the world crushing him. Leo has a decision to make—maintain a comfortable position in a career he’s no longer passionate about—or take a massive leap of faith. Giving up everything he’s ever known, Jenkins sells his business, purges every possession that won’t fit into a single backpack and sets off into the world in pursuit of answers.<br /><br />Equal parts social philosophy and travel adventure,<br />First Train Out of Denver takes the reader <br />on an around the world quest for meaning <br />in a seamlessly senseless world. <br /><br />Along the way Leo accepts a challenge from another former Army Ranger to see how far they can travel together in three weeks with nothing but a backpack and one hundred dollars to raise awareness and funds for a veteran charity. By any means necessary, the two manage to traverse two continents and film an award-winning documentary along the way. In true nomadic hobo fashion, the pair stow away on coal trains, talk their way onto a boat, hitch rides, and walk their way over eight thousand miles in twenty-one days, raising nearly thirty-thousand dollars for their fellow veterans.<br /> <br />Leo’s personal journey continues through Eastern Europe, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Upon arrival in Alaska, Jenkins allots himself twenty-four hours to find and buy a vehicle to drive south, continuing his exploration of not just the world, but of the mind. As he seeks to finish a goal to drink a beer in every state, inadvertently, he embraces the “van life.”<br /><br />First Train Out of Denver brings the laugh-out-loud, gritty Ranger humor readers loved in his first book, Lest We Forget, and combines it with the raw, unrelenting introspection readers related to in his second book, On Assimilation.