{"id":981146,"date":"2026-08-05T00:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981146\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T00:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:09:32","slug":"be-more-free-be-more-adventurous-meet-chantz-rivera-the-man-walking-from-the-bronx-to-san-francisco-bronx-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981146\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Be more free, be more adventurous\u2019: Meet Chantz Rivera, the man walking from the Bronx to San Francisco \u2013 Bronx Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In America, some people view driving cross-country as a rite of passage, typically taken by young people on a mission to find themselves and explore what lies beyond their small corner of the world before heading off to college. For 29-year-old C<\/strong>hantz Rivera \u2014a Bronx kid from humble means who acquired a string of odd jobs after high school\u2014 going cross-country seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, until some startling news changed the trajectory of his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rivera packed some essential items, $250, and began his 3,000-mile journey from the Bronx to San Francisco, but he didn\u2019t have a car. He decided to go on foot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just me wanting to better my life. Be more free, be more adventurous,\u201d Rivera told The Bronx Times.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Rivera grew up in the Gun Hill Houses in Williamsbridge, where he still lives with his father and brother. His family didn\u2019t always have the means to provide for a young urban kid wanting to fit in with the latest trends and at around 14 years old, Rivera began selling marijuana to buy the popular gear all the other kids had. While marijuana is legal in New York State today, prior to its decriminalization, people faced serious charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rivera never did any hard jail time, but slinging weed on street corners got him into a lot of trouble with the law, accumulating a laundry list of misdemeanors. It\u2019s also how he met the mother of his now 8-year-old daughter, Susanna; a daughter he wasn\u2019t aware he had until his daughter\u2019s mother lost custody of her child and pointed to Rivera as the father.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThen a couple years later, she hit me with a paternity test to go to court. So I went to court, but the COVID thing was happening, so it kinda shut down court for a little bit,\u201d Rivera said. \u201cI was still going to court though, and then when I found out [I was the father], like 2021 or 2022, I was doing visits for a while.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time of his visits, Rivera\u2019s daughter had already been in foster care for several years. The foster agency made Rivera do a drug test, which he failed. While Rivera admitted to smoking marijuana, legal at the time, he vehemently denied ever doing harder drugs. As a result, his visiting privileges were reduced to phone calls, further straining his relationship with his daughter, whom he feels was being turned against him.<\/p>\n

\u200a\u201dMy daughter was having a hard time seeing me because [she] kept saying stuff like, \u2018Oh, my [foster] mom said you a bad man. My mom said to not go with you to the park. My mom said don\u2019t go with you to the bathroom\u2019 and stuff like that,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not having the proper opportunity to get to know his daughter and feeling like a monster in her eyes, Rivera was left heartbroken and searching for purpose in life. Earlier this year, he decided to join the Army, but even that was a disappointing process. According to Rivera, the recruiter told him he had too many arrests and would not be able to enlist. A second heartbreak. <\/p>\n

Rivera needed an escape, something drastic. With the exception of a trip to Florida when he was a teenager and a weekend trip in Washington, D.C., Rivera never set foot out of New York City. <\/p>\n

So, on May 31, he started his walk to California.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Lessons from the open road
\n\"\"The mother and daughter duo in the photo, Sheila and Kendra, respectively, originally hail from Brooklyn and now live in Columbus, Ohio, where they met Rivera by following his Instagram page. They bought him McDonald\u2019s, some hygiene essentials and a pair of his favorite sneakers \u2014 On Clouds. Photo courtesy Chantz Rivera<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t in agreement with it at first, but being that he went through a lot of trauma within the past two, three years due to him and the custody battle with his daughter \u2013 I think at the end I was like, \u2018You know what? You\u2019re a grown man, you can make your own decisions. I\u2019ll support you 100%, just be careful,\u2019\u201d Rivera\u2019s father, William Rivera, told The Bronx Times.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being frugal-minded, Rivera showered at truck stops, pitched a tent in parking lots and occasionally slept on park benches, getting kicked out of few by security at certain points in his trip. Being a kid from the Bronx housing projects, Rivera traveled with a chip on his shoulder, sure he would encounter some rotten people.<\/p>\n

While walking across Ohio, he was approached by a man who claimed he wanted to help and offered to get him a motel for the night so Rivera could shower and sleep comfortably. At this point, Rivera was so impressed by the kindness of strangers, he thought nothing sinister of the offer. He got into the man\u2019s car, they drove to the motel and the man entered the room with a bottle of wine. <\/p>\n

Surprised and confused, Rivera said he just wanted to shower and rest, while the stranger insisted he just wanted to hang out for a while. Rivera gave in and went to get his remaining items from the car. When he returned to the hotel room, the man was lying in bed, wearing nothing but his underwear. Shocked, Rivera grabbed his things and hightailed it out of there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like there\u2019s way more nice people in this world than bad people, you know? I think it\u2019s the city mindset. Being in the city, you think everybody\u2019s just, like, for himself. [But] walking through the country, people were really nice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

People gave Rivera food, money and supplies, some of them knowing about his travels via his Instagram page @yo.mula<\/a>, and others who knew nothing about him, or as Rivera put it, \u201c\u200athey don\u2019t know me at all from a can of paint, you see? They just be looking out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He encountered a few other people making similar trips, most notably 52-year-old Robert Cowden who left his home in Oklahoma in April with his rescue dog Enzo. Cowden has suffered from alcoholism his entire adult life. He vowed to stay away from booze while witnessing how alcoholism affected his father, but all it took was one sip in his senior year of high school.<\/p>\n

I was just an alcoholic out the gate,\u201d Cowden told The Bronx Times, racking up two DUIs before the age of 21.\n<\/p>\n

Cowden was in and out of recovery since then, suffering a relapse earlier this year that resulted in the loss of his job and long-time girlfriend. He attributes his recent backslide to a broken healthcare system. Cowden was struggling with his weight when his doctor put him on GLP-1s, much like Ozempic. He said the drug wasn\u2019t working and his doctor put him on something stronger with more stimulants, but the drug was expensive and his doctor prescribed him something less expensive, but with even more stimulants.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I kind of twisted off on some harder drugs,\u201d Cowden said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

In a similar search for clarity and catharsis, Cowden set off on his cross-country trip with his 2-year-old spotted pointer mix, Enzo. The two plan to walk to Pittsburgh and then canoe the Ohio River down to New Orleans, and chronicle their distance on a sophisticated website created by Cowden, enzothegreat.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anyone who\u2019s fallen as many times as me, I don\u2019t know anyone who\u2019s gotten up as many times as me, and I don\u2019t know how many more chances I got to get up or fall down \u2014 but\u00a0 I have hope,\u201d Cowden said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The couple in the photo were driving down the street in Ohio when they noticed Rivera walking down the road with his wagon and offered him a ride to the nearest town going west. Photo courtesy Chantz Rivera<\/p>\n

As for Rivera, he took his inspiration from the 2007 movie, \u201cInto The Wild,\u201d based on the non-fiction book by the same name, written in 1996 by John Krakauer. The book is an expansion of Krakauer\u2019s 1993 article, \u201cDeath Of An Innocent\u201d published in Outside Magazine. The book tells the biographical story of Christopher McCandless, a young well-to-do man who, after graduating from Emory University, cut ties with his family, donated his savings to charity and left his material possessions behind to travel cross-country and eventually ventured into the Alaskan wild. However, McCandless\u2019 expedition ended with his death. Rivera is much more hopeful, especially since he plans to stay where the weather is warm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His supplies aren\u2019t out of the ordinary for a camper: a sleeping bag, a tent, portable chargers, a backpack, a water bottle, plenty of beverages and a wagon to carry it all in. He also keeps several journals where he documents his day-to-day. For footwear, he prefers On Cloud or Nike sneakers.<\/p>\n

Currently in Missouri, Rivera\u2019s favorite part of what he\u2019s seen so far was Ringing Rocks Park in Pennsylvania, where people bring hammers and bang on the boulders to elicit a sound of ringing bells.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWhatever you wanna do, you could do it. Don\u2019t let the money stop you,\u201d Rivera said. \u201cYou just need to take action. That\u2019s what you need to do. Take action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rivera hopes to reach the Golden Gate Bridge by Christmas and his father agreed to purchase his flight back home once he completes his journey.\n<\/p>\n

Reach ET Rodriguez at\u00a0etrodriguez317@gmail.com<\/a>. For more coverage, subscribe to our\u00a0newsletter<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram<\/a>!\u00a0<\/p>\n