Walking Distance

What's Skip doing now?

2011-04-11T10:53:00.004-04:00

Check out TLH TEFL where I am the head trainer in Prague, Czech Republic.

Mention my blog and get a discount towards your course and an exciting new life . . .

El Finalo Bloggo

2009-07-08T10:46:00.002-04:00

That's right, it is the end of it all, sort of. My final short video is up (see the bottom) and now I am officially onto my new blog. Hope you enjoy. Cheers.

Part One

Part Two

Lahaina, HI: Afterlife

2009-06-13T04:08:00.003-04:00

I'll be getting video up just as soon as I can. My poor little laptop has pretty much given me all she's got with memory and I have no Scotty to help me. The first 5 minutes are done more or less, but you'll have to give me a bit of time.

In other news, being that I am no longer walking, I'll be switching to a new blog which will be starting up immediately to deal with my continued adventures and my trouble coping with post walk life.

Find it here: Skip Potts - Adventure Nerd

Santa Monica Pier, CA: That's All Folks

2009-06-07T11:50:00.002-04:00

It wasn't what I pictured but what ever is? I didn't cry, just so you know. The important thing was I finished, ran right out into the ocean and dove in.

Surprisingly, what was moving wasn't reaching the coast, maybe if I had gone alone it would have been more moving for me, but I wouldn't trade the way things did end for anything. It was a mess, a random reporter, friends from survival school, family and a few more friends. No one knew what was happening. I didn't know whether to walk to the end of the pier or into the ocean, and everyone was trying to figure it out. I'm not accustomed to these kinds of messes anymore, I just keep going and before long the decision is made. I had a small reprieve doing a jig for the camera man and being sprayed with Champagne by my buddies that walked in the last 8 miles with me, then I headed down to the ocean.

Like I said, surprisingly, the water wasn't the most memorable thing, though jumping into the water felt good, it didn't feel finished, it was just too simple. Then we went to the park and slowly, those same friends and family showed up, a few couch surfers joined in and even a few more friends who were running late. What ended the walk was that, being there with people I knew and loved, joking those old familiar jokes and knowing that nothing would quite match just sitting in a room together and laughing. Several times I just sat with a dopey grin on my face watching my friends in way that might even seem creepy, but it was so simple that the only thing that could result was pure well being and happiness. People are the only version of home I know now.

I'll do a few more blogs here, and try to get two more videos up and then we'll see. Thanks so much for being a part of this.

The Walk into the Sunset

2009-06-06T12:08:00.002-04:00

Schedule of the day:

Start of Route (Verve Lounge) @ 11pm
Westwood & Olympic @ Noon
26th & Olympic @ 1pm
The Pier @ 2pm (Walk End)
Beach Park #1 by 4pm (Potluck)

Route

Beverly Hills, CA: 9021-Whoa

2009-06-05T08:05:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 16.7
Miles Total: 3801.1
Miles left: 7.8

Route

Saturday's Route

From the Lobby of my Buddy's Hotel the cool ocean air blew in and filled the room with the air of the sea.

"It's all done." I thought to myself knowing it technically wasn't, but feeling that a distance of less than 8 miles was negligible.

"Nine months," I say all day to people wanting to know how long it took me to walk the US. They don't know my name, they call me 'Superman' because of my shirt.

"That's like having a baby," a lot of them say.

"Yeah, through your feet." I always joke back. The symbolism of time hasn't been lost on me though. I've thought about it many times. This walk has taken on a life of it's own, for me it is a person, and though some new life will be born to the Pacific tomorrow, an old one will end. The idea that this will live on only in my poor memory is a little sad to me, there are many parts I have already forgotten and many more that surely will follow.

Tomorrow will be happy and sad, I've glimpsed a little of it already. I'll probably blubber at some point but not too much. My image of Saturday afternoon is getting clearer and clearer but I still have nothing for Sunday or any of the following days. I suppose I'll just float for a while. There's an idea, maybe I'll get supplies and tubes and head north to just drift down a cool summer river for a few weeks.

My glimpse of Saturday has been in the form of old friends. D, an old friend from high school is a hair stylist in Beverly Hills and my route took me right past her salon, which is the reason I now have a fabulous new LA doo. I should have known I couldn't get through LA without a makeover, in Beverly Hills they even make sure their homeless wanderers are stylish. And Buddy, I've mentioned him before. There's something about starving in the desert and almost dying that forms a strong bond between people. He was my 'buddy,' of the buddy system buddies, during survival school which ended a scant 10 days before I started this whole trek. Tonight was the first time we had ever seen each other indoors.

It's from Buddy's hotel room that I am writing this morning, I woke up at 4 am and couldn't sleep. The night had been filled with stories and laughs and beers, it felt like a peek at the future, but at 4 am my legs ached a little in a familiar and sad way. I wanted to do something, I walked downstairs and filled my canteen that Buddy had gotten me and I had carried all the way across the country. I walked past the signs for the gym and the pool and felt a general air of not knowing what to do with myself. It's the worry I've had for a while now, afterwards, after this climax, will life be blah? Will I be returning to the black and white Kansas after walking the colorful roads of my Oz?

I will be happy to end, but I don't think it will be long before I'm putting on my Ruby Running Shoes and hitting the road again, maybe not on foot, but who knows.

Here's a schedule for Saturday if anyone is interested in walking the a few of the final miles or showing for the potluck.

Start of Route (Verve Lounge) @ 11pm
Westwood & Olympic @ Noon
26th & Olympic @ 1pm
The Pier @ 2pm (Walk End)
Beach Park #1 by 4pm (Potluck)

Alhambra, CA: The feat of feet

2009-06-04T01:36:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 24.7
Miles Total: 3784.4

Route

There's been a sacrifice. My pinky toe has lost it's nail. It's the first time that it has happened to me, but I suppose a tribute to the walk is in order and to be fair it was only a few square millimeters anyway. SO, no, it's not like my first born son or a lamb or a virgin or anything, but still I kind of liked the idea that if I was randomly polled to see how many toenails I had I could fit in the majority and say '10.' I mean, it's not that I just hop on any band wagon, but this one adds the convenience of not getting the follow up question, "How many toes do you have?" which is a bit weird. But enough about my toenails, or lack thereof.

Tomorrow is my last 'big day,' but it's still less than 20 miles to my stop point which is just 5 miles shy of the pier. I get Friday off and then a short walk in with a few friends and family before I start my next steps, whatever they may be. I'm thinking voluntary mascot for something that doesn't need it, like I could become a mascot for puppies. I'll keep thinking about it though.

The low mileage tomorrow doesn't mean the day will be any easier though. The daily treks with my heavy pack are taking a toll (see paragraph 1) on my body. My feet hurt like the first week. They feel bruised and broken and even at the end of the day when I've gotten a bit of rest and get back up to do something, I walk like an old man. My shoulders hurt, my knees hurt, my neck is doing 'interesting' things. Nearly 20 miles will be no picnic, but it will be made easier by the ever nearing Ocean which I can feel in the air and probably am fooling myself into believing I can smell, but it could just be the rain I got today.

I have no idea what the hell I am doing anymore.

24.3

Claremont, CA: Too much, Time on my hands

2009-06-03T02:40:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 19.7
Miles Total: 3759.7

Route

I am now within a distance of the pier that I have covered in one day before. With four days to go, it looks like I'll have it mostly wrapped up by tomorrow leaving a little bit for later in the week and Saturday with whoever wants to join me. I'll have a lot of time to think and try to wrap my head around this being over and the idea of staying with people I know every night. Weird.

48.7

Rialto, CA: Coasting

2009-06-02T00:30:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 17.0
Miles Total: 3740.0

Route

Well, I had fun in redlands but it was time to make a break for the coast and away from the Eastern side of the Inland Empire where all the smog from LA and the west collects, poor Redlands and San Bernardino. I was shocked, shocked, to see a blue sky when I hit Rialto in the afternoon and was thoroughly unprepared for it to clear up resulting in a mild sunburn. The next two days I'll be turning in most of the mileage for the remainder of the trip and then taking a bit of time off to try and wrap my brain around this whole shebang being over and done with. And maybe I'll get a haircut too.

68.4

Redlands, CA: Coming Home

2009-06-01T02:57:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 13.3
Miles Total: 3723.0

Route

I've been staying with some cool college-ish age kids here in Redlands. I always feel comfortable in this environment, I feel comfortable most anywhere, but especially in a place like this. A place like this is a house with a few roommates in a residential neighborhood near a park. It's older and has a porch, the furniture is older but not shabby, comfortable, and the floors are wood. There's always beer in the fridge and a guy at the kitchen table studying. I've always loved this place and have seen hundreds of versions of it, but never lived there.

A place like this makes me think of my past and wonder if I had ever done this how my life would have been different. I doubt I would have come here. I worked hard and bought my own track house and was busy being overly grown up when I was in school, I wonder if I can come back and fit into this life later on when I am older, calmer and can sit still long enough to go back to the university system that always seems to be calling to me.

In any case, it's been nice and regenerative. I've met some cool people with great lives and goals and dreams and it feels good and right to be moving on from here. So little time left.

86

Beaumont, CA: Psyched

2009-05-29T22:14:00.006-04:00

Miles since last blog: 10.1
Miles Total: 3709.7

Route

I'm finally getting excited not just for the walk ending, but after the walk, of course this corresponds directly to getting deeper in debt but I can ignore that a little bit longer before the hounds begin to bay.

I know you've all been twiddling your thumbs and doing your underwater basket weaving and thinking, "WHAT IS SKIP GOING TO DO WHEN HE FINISHES!?!" (It seems a sizable portion of my readership statistically is insane)

Well, I don't have a long term answer, but the short term is: Traveling. I am booked up for about two weeks visiting the 'rents in Hawaii starting a few days after the walk and then a week after that I plan to go back to Prague for two weeks, sometime in or after there I am also trying to find time and cash for Buenos Aires and Roatan (Honduras). Color me excited. My skin is actually hot because I am so incredibly psyched to GO, GO, GO!!! Now that the walk is in it's last 8 days (a few days ago when I said ten my brain was fried from the sun, I had 12 left even then) I am starting to have solid dates and places and people to meet in them that I have known and loved for more than a week. I had no idea how exciting it would be, but many of these plans are sort of coalescing today and it is leaving me super charged.

It's hard even to think of the past at the moment. So here I go, Blythe. The desert was hot, maybe a little too hot, and I hadn't walked far, maybe a little too not far, before long, I had to rest out of the heat. I had been sketching out some of the lyrics for my long planned zombie comedy musical romance and the heat of the day and dryness from singing had worn me out so I slank back off the road behind a broken down old shack and laid down in the dirt. The flies were buzzing and I couldn't get a decent rest, "cool its youz guys," I snapped.

Down the road a bit of dust was being kicked up and a car was bouncing up the dirt that passed for a road. A tall dark man got out and started questioning me, "what are you doing?" "do you want this cold glass of ice water?" "do you want to stay at my house and get food and a shower?"

I said yes to all of it, which probably left him a little confused with respect to the first question. His name was Marvin, a nice guy who was into cage fighting and being a pastor, I wondered if ever at the same time. I could see him rubbing a guys face against the cage bars, "repent sinner!" he would rasp in the victims ear. I stayed the night in his living room and all the next day he let me rest, waking me periodically to feed me and take me to see his other family, which he helped out but wasn't 'involved' with. He twirled a loaded gun on his finger and was nice as hell, funny too with a past that was as wild as my hair in the morning. I was a bit sad to leave such a great guy and character in the dust when I trekked off into the sunset, but my cousin was coming from the state capitol and I had to get moving.

The days with Cousin Kathy passed beautifully in a colorful haze of sunsets and fast food deliriums. We had our adventures, helped another man walking across the desert, found a stranded motorist and helped him with his overheated car, we were a duo of preemptive Sam Becketts (Quantum Leap) traveling through the desert to put right what could have gone wrong. I got a cactus to the foot and Kathy snarled at the Dead fish in the barnacle shores of the Salton Sea. We rode the Painted Canyon and hunkered into mineral baths, those were the days.

Since then I've rolled rough and said goodbye to Kathy, Ando (my carrier), and a host of other things like my tent, sleeping bag and blanket. I've been couchsurfing and experimenting with authentic homelessness in the cold and windy passes exiting the Coachella valley and the giant dinosaurs that lie beyond it. But I've said to much. Until next time my monitor mates, my blog buddies, my life lovers, my my my.

97

Banning, CA: Numbers

2009-05-29T00:11:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 15.6
Miles Total: 3699.6

Route

200 Blogs, 3700 miles and 9 months later, I'm only about 100 miles from the coast. I'm couchsurfing, and last night I slept for a paltry hour. I have not slept since. Tomorrow I am only walking 10 miles and talking to one class, I am reasonably caught up on video and photos as well, which means i can start dredging my memory and get back to writing that I have been terribly negligent in. I know I say that all the time lately, but every once in a while I bust out some move for you guys, right? Give a weary traveler a break, damn.

In any case, the sun has set on the desert. It is a small, but meaningful, bit cooler where I am now which makes the days easier. This and the fact that there is regularly places to eat and get water makes a enormous difference in my day. The coast is calling.

106

Whitewater Rest Area, CA: And rest I shall

2009-05-28T02:22:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 28.5
Miles Total: 3684.0

Route

I'm sleeping in a rest area tonight, it's right in the pass between some mountains where it's so windy that on the other side is one of the biggest wind farms around. I'm putting on my clothes, all to most of them, and hunkering down. Looks like I'll have a bit of down time in the future and I'll be catching up on writing and photos, but as promised, here's a few videos I had to chop up to fit on Youtube.

1) http://bit.ly/19O14O
2) http://bit.ly/9LP5u
3) http://bit.ly/pSE9K

122

Palm Desert, CA: Thank you Comfort Suites!!!

2009-05-26T20:22:00.002-04:00

First off, thanks so much to the Comfort Suites in Palm Desert for giving me a place to lay my head tonight.

Second, I am working very hard on getting some video up tomorrow. If you are on Facebook it is already up along with a host of new photos.

Third, I am going to bed, I've been working on this all day. Goodnight.

La Quinta, CA: The Much Awaited . . .

2009-05-26T01:56:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 7.4
Miles Total: 3655.5

Route

Short walk today, I'm in no hurry at the moment and just happy to be in civilization again. People are where it's at. They're where the magic happens. Out in the desert or in the city, it's the experience of interaction that brings such a unique and mystical seeming feeling to this life. I'm now entering the final ten days, that's sort of a non sequitur but I thought I'd just throw it out there so you can do as you like with it, call it a girl, idolize it, I don't care, it's yours now. Oh wait, there's my train of thought, where's that ticket? Ah, here it is-next stop, the non-story story.

The Non-Story Story:

Today, I met a man, the comedy trekker. He's a young guy who started a walk across America a few years back where he'd stop in comedy clubs and do stand-up along the way. He made it pretty far too, from NYC to Texas. I can't blame anyone for stopping in Texas, just watch my Texcape video on youtube and you'll know why. I knew who he was from before we had met because I research other walkers, but I didn't know much about him. I didn't meet him through any kind of social network or our similar pass times, no one alerted either of us that we were in the same vicinity, nope, I met him at Burger King. I sat down across the aisle from him and some of his friends, they were on their way back to LA from a trip to Phoenix which I gather now was for his Birthday.

If you've been reading for awhile, you know I have this Kismet that follows me around sometimes, for instance, I met another guy walking across the desert, not for any charity or purpose, he was just trying to get to the other side and didn't have a car. I'd followed his tracks all day and even remarked on video and in a text to my cousin (whom was being amazingly awesomely helpful as a support vehicle for a few days), then I caught up to him at a rest area because I sat down on the adjacent bench and recognized his shoes from the tracks, he read my sign and we started talking. I gave him a bottle of water and my cousin gave him a ride to the next town.

Now, I am here to offer a less mystical explanation than Kismet. Odds are, had I gone any other way or any other speed, I would not have met either of these walkers of the earth here in one of the most barren (okay, I'm on the edge of the barren part in civilization now, but whatever) parts of the country. The thing is, unless I do walk some kind of magical path, which let's assume I don't for the moment, had I gone another way, SOMETHING else would have happened. Chances are, I would have been dazzled by whatever that event was too, and who knows, if I had gone a bit faster maybe I would have met with a fate even more amazing. So the story here is really no story at all, the story isn't about a magic path, it's about making a path that will cross with others so you have more chances of getting experiences like these. For some this idea may take away from the experiences I've had, the idea that they aren't destiny or beyond our grasp. I submit instead that it is empowering, to know that I can affect this kind of event on my own life completely with my own actions and not dependent on fate or the stars or anything else, but simply by mixing things up. But hell, I was a mathematician.

The Non-Story Story:

When I meet people, like the Comedy Trekker, it inevitably comes up to the point where someone says, "Gee, you must have some crazy stories." And I'm sure I do, the thing is, I can never think of them. It occurred to me in the shower that this is probably because a stories worth or craziness is based on what you are used to, and I am used to a crazy life.

The fact is, that when your week starts with being picked up and taken home by a cage fighting pastor with two families who constantly twirls a gun on his finger and talks about when he used to deal drugs for the mexican mafia, and ends with a couple of 85 year old gay guys who have been together for 55 years and are telling you about dinner at Liberace's house a block away, none of your stories seem all that unusual to you anymore. The fact that the middle of the week was filled with a day where you got stung by a bee on one foot and then stepped into a cactus and had to pull out 20+ barbed thorns from the heel of your other foot and at one point even got your hand stuck to the very same cactus leaving yourself in a painful yoga pose, well, this doesn't seem out of the ordinary either. It was the same day we headed up painted canyon road, woke up at some mineral baths and saw the Salton Sea and Joshua Tree Nat'l Park, you know, a normal day.

Maybe this is why when someone asks me, "Any good stories?" I can't think of any. To someone else, maybe each of these days are okay stories, to me there is no story, it's just my life.

146

Indio, CA: Civilization

2009-05-25T04:01:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 23.4
Miles Total: 3648.1

Route

Hard day at the office kiddos, more soon. I know, promises, promises.

155

Chiriaco Summit, CA: Preparing for Reentry

2009-05-24T02:59:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 36.3
Miles Total: 3624.7

Route

Soon my loyal followers, soon you will hear of my journey across the desert. You must be patient, but here's a glimpse at the future.

Tar Baby Cacti
Chupacabra
Truckers
The Salton Sea
Joshua Tree
Painted Rocks
Buttocks Hydration
Walking the Earth and doing good (take notes Hulk and guy from Kung Fu, I don't beat anyone up)
The Cage Fighting Pastor
A Gay Old Time
Goodbye to Old Friends

I'll do my best to catch up soon, but feel free to put your vote in on which of these you'd like the most to hear about since I am not sure I'll get to them all . . .

176

Desert Center, CA: MIA

2009-05-21T00:47:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 22.0
Miles Total: 3588.4

Route

I know, I know. I haven't been writing much lately and what there has been has been half-assed, you'll just have to be patient because tonight is no exception. probably another night or two until I am fully functioning again here. See you then.

211

The Middle of Nowhere, CA: Slowly, but surely

2009-05-20T01:50:00.003-04:00

Miles sine last blog: 25.3
Miles Total: 3566.4

Route

Not too far for two days walking, especially with help from my cousin. But i've been enjoying her company and the ability to get out of the sun when I want. I'll make it across the desert eventually, and while I'm not necessarily trying to prolong my time here, I'm not pushing myself too hard either. That would make the experience utterly miserable and right now I'm still having a bit of fun. Don't forget, the experience is what it's all about and if I can't enjoy it, I shouldn't be doing it at all. It's not about surviving, it's about living. So I'll do things my way and don't you worry your pretty little heads.

Although to be fair I would have gotten further tonight if my cousin's car battery hadn't died, I decided to walk back and meet her and wait for a charge. By the time we got one I was tired and had lost momentum, that slippery devil. Tomorrow I should make it to Desert Center, which I suppose is the actual middle of nowhere, then I think we'll take a day off and go have some desert fun.

A lot has happened, but I'm really too tired to talk about it tonight. I've met some cool people and seen some beautiful things. People don't give the desert it's dues, but maybe that's because it's hot as hell.

232

Blythe II: Decisive Indecision

2009-05-18T00:34:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 8.1
Miles Total: 3541.1

Route

The choice was either walk the interstate 100 miles which has rest areas and gas stations, or walk the legal way 120 miles with nothing. 100 miles is too far for my normal tactic of "better to ask forgiveness than permission" and so I tried to call the CHP, they could decide for me. They did, in a way. The CHP is not open on the weekends here so I couldn't ask permission, I had no place to stay in town, thus it was time to leave. If I was lucky I could make more than 20 miles and be within 100 miles when I woke up, I stayed a long time in town waiting for it to be cool and planning on walking at night.

Eight miles down my track I was hot and wanted to take a break, I found a beat down old shack off the road and laid down behind it. A short time later a man pulled up and we said our hellos. Eventually he offered me to stay with him and his family for the evening and I never turn down a shower or a home cooked meal unless I have one waiting somewhere else. So here I am, only eight miles in, within reach of the interstate still and my cousin slated to show tomorrow afternoon.

I can't walk on the interstate with my cart, but with my cousin showing in the afternoon I could leave it behind the shack and come back for it in the car when she arrives, leaving me free to walk off the side of the road enough to be legal. An interesting proposition. I don't need to make it far, a 16 mile stretch and later a 9 mile stretch with side roads everywhere else along the way, but do I head back and leave my cart all day? Hmmmm, it's a thinker. The only reason it's a question is mostly because of the fact that I had already resolved myself to the idea I was going the other way and the prospect of isolation and pure nature had started to excite me, on the other hand the interstate would have supplies, be shorter, I'd have more time to spend having fun with my cousin. I think I know what I'll choose, but I won't know until I show up in the morning at my cart which I did leave behind the shack tonight. Hmmm.

New MexiGO!

Blythe, California: The Golden State

2009-05-16T06:05:00.006-04:00

Miles since last blog: 5.6
Miles Total: 3533.0

Route

A few days ago it started, the pressure bushing back on me from California. I couldn't explain it but as I pushed towards it, it pushed me back, I didn't feel ready. When I wrote this originally I wasn't even in California, I was less than a mile away in a Hotel room I had gotten donated. I used the room as an excuse not to enter California last night, I was nervous. I sat in my room, I showered, I wrote, I edited, I clipped my fingernails and realized why I was nervous, I was getting ready for a date.

California is where I came from, I haven't lived there in more than a decade and I wanted to come back the right way, not feeling tired and dirty but clean, fresh and triumphant. I wanted to make a good impression, I realized for the first time since I left that California was still my home and there is a something in that that never leaves you no matter how far from it you go. The thought of walking across the state line, now fills my eyes with salt water and my stomach with butterflies. I can't say why, perhaps it's even more, the last border, the end of this all, I don't know.

When I walked up to Exit 1 in Arizona it was almost Sunset. The Colorado River that defines the border of California here was a shining golden ribbon dressing the land. It had been a hard road to get here and would be easy across but I couldn't bring myself to walk it just yet.

Miles outside of Quartzsite, AZ I came to the furthest off ramp and sat under it in the shade trying to regain a bit of coolness, composure and energy and I decided, out of fatigue and heat and laziness, to continue walking into town via the interstate. It was my great mistake. Though I had talked to a Highway Patrolman the day before another officer stopped me a mile past the off ramp.

Immediately I knew this officer wasn't like the other officer. Officer Gibbs had been kind and thoughtful and in much the way i have found most police on this trip, just wanted to help. Officer Castillo, or as I call him, Officer D'bag, was no such officer. He was the kind of officer portrayed in movies and television, the kind that makes people despise the law. I knew this immediately because instead of driving up slowly on the rumble strips to make noise or to signal me in some other way that he was there, he drove quietly up behind me and then hit the siren at full volume to startle me.

We crossed over the familiar territory, I had talked to another officer (whom he did not know), what I was doing, why I had moved to the interstate (the other roads had simply gotten too hot and difficult), all D'bag had to say was, "yeah, it's against the law to walk on the interstate."

This was true and I couldn't fail him for noting it, except that he wouldn't really offer a solution or anything else, not even punishment, he'd just purse his lips for a while and the say, "it's against the law to walk on the interstate." The other thing he said was that people were calling about me.

I told him several times that I would get off at the next exit and he, not knowing what to do simply kept repeating his line. This kind of boldfaced stupidity is hard for me to deal with, on the rare occasions I run into it as an obstacle I just try to think to myself, "this person is precisely the guy I'm trying to help, precisely the reason I chose to help education, if he was just a little bit smarter this would be a much less painful experience."

I said my goodbye and made an exit realizing if I left it up to him we'd be stuck in a perpetual loop of torturous line rehearsal. It was over, I'd have to be careful crossing out of Arizona now which was unfortunate since that was where there really weren't any other roads on the map, and where crossing the Colorado River, there was only one bridge, the interstate.

My dealings with D'bag were over, I thought. I walked and a few miles later he started creeping up behind me again. I scooted off the road to let him pull up in case he wanted to tell me something but instead he stopped a hundred yards back and sat there in his car. Great, now I had a creepy stalker cop. Another miles down the road, just two or three miles from the exit I would take, he pulled up again and got out this time.

"Hey, we keep getting calls, so you're going to have to get off the interstate."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked. We talked briefly and Officer D'bag laid out his intricate plan. The plan was to lift my cart over a barbed wire fence onto what may or may not be private property and send me out into the desert where there was no road, many ditches and rocks, snakes and no water or food as there would be shortly on the interstate. There was no reason to fight, it would go nowhere, I just dragged him down to the worst place I could find and made him help me move my cart over the fence and was off. I was furious, this wasn't about the law, surely throwing me over a barbed wire fence was proof of that, and the spirit of the law was about protection, which this surely wasn't. On the shoulder of the interstate I had been more than a full car width away from the near lane which also had rumble strips beside it to warn drivers or me if they were off course. I was safer on the interstate than I was on many of the roads I had traveled throughout my journey.

No, what it was about was made abundantly clear when I asked if I could just stay on this side of the fence but walk in the rough which was still straight and relatively passable even 20 to 30 feet off the side.

"We'd still get calls," he said. Yes, it was made clear that safety and the law were not priorities here, just so long as Officer D'bag and cohorts didn't have to answer a pesky phone. Never mind that this would send me into a far more dangerous situation which was in all likelihood also illegal, or that the barbed wire fence really didn't hide me and wasn't any more likely to stop calls than if I had been on the other side. Simply, the only explanation was that at one point in his life officer D'bag had come to a crossroads which was either clown college or police officer, and he chose police because the word 'college' had in all probability intimidated the crap out of his poor atrophied brain. I wasn't on the highway so I wasn't his problem, who cares about the law or safety of anyone?

As I said of Quartzsite, AZ, I was lucky to have the rest of the people I encountered not taint my memory of the area which they accomplished by being incredibly nice. The next morning however I had to deal with the repercussions of my previous meeting with D'bag in which he pondered aloud how I was going to get to California and suggested a route which was about 40 miles linger through the middle of nowhere rather than the short and safe interstate walk.

I walked side roads as long as I could but knew there was a six miles stretch with no mapped roads. I quickly reached that point and headed out into terrible mountains on what looked to be ATV trails. They were a double edged sword, it was good to have a trail that was slightly worn, but they often went on some of the worse courses for steepness and path because those were the most fun on an ATV. A few times I had to sneak back onto the interstate when no other road was remotely reasonable in direction and during that time I would sprint until I found a suitable place to get off, my temper which had submerged in town was burning white hot. If D'bag had caught me I doubt it would have been a very productive encounter.

Eventually I landed on my final off map road. I'd been over several fences and this was just one more to add to the list. The mountains were incredibly steep. When I would go uphill my head would often be pressed against the handlebar of my cart and my feet would slide back sometimes for a foot or more until I found purchase again and started climbing. The rolling nature of the land was even more treacherous for going downhill. With no brakes I would lean back so far I was nearly skiing on my shoes being pulled down the rocky slopes by my heavy partner until I had to break into a full sprint down the hill while trying to steer with one hand so my things wouldn't drop into a crevasse.

Occasionally I would look down on the interstate with great distain for my foe to pass so I could spit venom at him from afar, but I never saw a sate troopers car. The path was dangerous, arduous and easily one of the least enjoyable things I had done in a long time. By the time I had checked in to my hotel I had long since forgotten most of this, when I dipped into the pool I felt clean and free again, but even now when I think of him it fires me up. Abuse of authority is one of my very few hot buttons. Before now, I always said that I had never had a bad experience on this walk with anyone, at most, they had been awkward but well intentioned or a draw, but Officer Castillo, excuse me, D'bag, changed all that. Then again, making 3500 miles is pretty good.

**********

After all the trouble, when I got to the bridge just ten minutes after leaving my hotel, there was a walkway. I took the shoulder in protest, and also because I was already on the other side of the fence. It was hot but I was distracted by the people jet skiing in the Colorado River, it was California, it was time for fun and games and the sun on your face.

I tried about ten hotels before finally getting a room donated at the Motel 6 in Blythe by the very nice people in the office. Others had wanted to help but couldn't and many just said, 'no,' or lied about not being able to. It feels good to be home. Home, what a word.

ALONE/TOGETHER - My newest video

267

Ehrenberg, AZ: Rock beats Scissors

2009-05-16T01:09:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 19.3
Miles Total: 3527.4

Route (approx.)

Yes, we are all familiar with it. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper and paper beats rock. As ridiculous as that last one is, paper beats rock, hmph sounds like we need a better game, we know it well. New one now, Free Hotel Room beats State line.

Yep, still in Arizona but only 0.7 miles from California, I can see it from here, the Colorado River that marks the border shone brilliantly in the sunset as I waltzed up to the Best Western here in Ehrenberg, AZ. As much as I want to get into Cali, and I am far more anxious than anyone believe me, I do need to rest and slow down a bit. Tomorrow I will cross over into the final state but for tonight I was donated a room and got to take a dip in a wonderful pool, it's an excellent place to bed down if you're heading across country through the desert, there's not much else around and it's clean and comfortable. I should be so lucky tomorrow when I am recounting my adventures. Until then . . .

277

Quartzsite, AZ: Bodily Harm

2009-05-15T02:05:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 35.9
Miles Total: 3508.1

Route

It's always whining about the heat isn't it? Let's change that. Due to the thing we aren't mentioning I am having a few bodily issues besides fatigue, the most interesting of these is that the tip of my left index finger occasionally goes numb or to sleep. I'm attributing it to the heat and dehydration, but I don't really know. That one is my favorite, when it first started, I just pretended a tiny venomous spider had bitten me and that was the entire effect, stupid little spider.

Another injury which is indirectly from heat is my neck. The other day when I was hopping fences to cool off in aqueducts I somehow irked where my neck meets my back and now I act like Michael Keaton's Batman. You know the one, the one that has to turn his whole body to see something next to him, that Batman. Mostly it doesn't effect me much walking but every so often I like to see if a car is going to send my flying into the desert and when I turn to look behind me, I turn to look behind me.

In addition to these are: all my finger tips are peeling, normal blisters, dry skin breaking off, burns and a small friction rash on one leg.

And then there are the people. They've been nice in Quartzside, aside from one bad apple which I'll talk about later but it is my understanding that he does not spoil the whole bunch . . . girl. Since I arrived this afternoon I have been bought lunch, a shower (at a truck stop, I didn't know about these) and now even a hotel room at the Super 8 Motel that I didn't know existed until the end of my night when I strolled by it as I was leaving town.

Good town and a good night for what is probably my last night in Arizona, I'm not sure though, I have a number of different plans from here to Indio, CA and I have decided what to do yet. Heat and hotel rooms are the most likely factors in my near future processing. Tomorrow, you'll hear about the Bad Apple, not tonight, it will be part of the story of my illustrious return to my birth state (geographically, at least). Huzzah!

270-290?

Bouse Wash Rest Area, AZ: Mojave? I said LESS jave.

2009-05-13T18:26:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 43.0
Miles Total: 3472.2

Route (unable to map)

I know I've said this before, and at the risk of being redundant or whiny, it's effin' hot out here. I have never been so hot in all my pathetic little life, and I don't enjoy it. Let's go back to when I was happy and naked (cue wavy image and flashback music).

Waking up after a full nights sleep in the shade with just my little snow white feet in the sun put me in a pretty good mood. I cleared myself to go get some food and then take photos and video of the Hot Springs, things were going well and I was tempted to stay an extra day to take advantage of a sign I saw saying they might trade work for board. I thought it would make good video and experience but opted instead to keep moving and maintain what little momentum I had mustered.

I started off on the dirt roads I've become so used to. It was a little bit longer to get the next interstate crossover but it kept me off the roads and the radar of the highway patrol for a bit. It wasn't so bad, the dust isn't as refractive as the asphalt so it actually kept me a little cooler while it was smooth and even later on I set off route on a trail beside an aqueduct (which I swam in a number of times to cool off during the day).

The allure of my off route swim lane kept me off route at the fork in the road. I had two choices, a) the walking route provided by my navigator which was 9 miles longer but kept me off the interstate, or b) the interstate which was shorter but illegal. As is my nature, and that of Captain James T. Kirk (whom a facebook quiz told me I was), I chose option C. Jumping fences and heading out on the desert through private land where there were no roads but maintaining visual with the interstate and my swimming fun. This lasted for about ten miles before I came to an overpass.

I suppose you could call it a bridge, a bridge to nowhere, and after hanging out on one of these for a few hours I don't really see what all that election fuss was about. The overpass did indeed pass over the interstate, but there were no on or off ramps and the road terminated into dirt which seemed to go nowhere on either side. I decided to sit over the highway, eat dinner in the middle of the street and watch internet television until my battery died, then I peed off the overpass. You can blame my dad for that.

By then it was dark and although my plan had been to join the interstate and head down that for the first time, the thought of jumping several barbed wire fences in the dark didn't appeal to me much and I headed off into the dirt to find another way. It's only once it gets dark that the temperature is bearable, pleasant even, the kind of weather you might happily walk in and would be smart to do so. The only problems with this is that in the dark and dirt you can't see much so it's harder, the day is so impossibly hot that you can't sleep in it and once it cools off you are so drained it's all your body wants to do. I tried to walk, I really really did. You have no idea how much I want to be out of this desert but the curse of it is that I have rarely had a more than 20 mile day due to it's stifling-ness. I set up camp a scant 3 miles later.

As little control as you have with sleep, you have just as little over waking up unless you find a way to shade yourself. The sun comes up early and though the light isn't a factor every morning at 7 am a piping hot Skip is served from his easy bake tent. Last night I had gotten almost 8 hours of sleep but I felt more tired than ever. I had set up camp at first under some power lines, but the buzzing and the vibrating tent poles that glowed blue sparks when the touched each other or my sign which I usually lean against the tent convinced me of two things: a) I should move my tent or face the possibility of waking up in blue flames, and b) I should come back when I understand physics better to do some boss experiments.

I moved my tent until the poles stopped vibrating on their own and went to sleep postulating designs for a perpetual momentum device and puzzling over how motion is turned into energy and wondering if I could wake up: a superhero, with cancer, or at least a burst of energy. Sadly, I was as I said only super tired, I blame the power lines.

I woke up and went directly to the aqueduct. The sides were steep and cement and there was a tall fence all around. I hop fences for breakfast, and on at least this case that is a literal statement. While I thought about whether or not to get in or just dunk my clothes the decision was made for me and I slid with a momentary flail and the a commitment into the water. Getting out was no less graceful as I ripped up several riverside plants in my efforts to climb the algae covered bank. For a moment I considered that my cart would be stolen and I would just have to drift 20 miles down the duct in search of a way to get out only to walk barefoot to the interstate where someone besides me would gain quite a story out of the situation and for a fraction of the price.

Eventually I made it out and onto my foray in interstate walking. The highway patrolman on duty did his best to ignore me, he told me this later when he stopped me. Someone had called about, "a guy walking down the interstate with a stroller." He was very nice and friendly and informed me that it was illegal to walk on the interstate but okay to bike, I knew this already and was prepared if necessary to dazzle him with an argument on why I am really much more like a bicycle than a normal guy. The argument was mostly show though and thankfully I didn't need it, the officer told me all the things he should do and then slowly talked himself out of each of them. I could see this was really more of the argument that he'd be making to his superiors on my behalf and that from the beginning he had wanted to let me keep walking but had to at least check things out since he'd gotten a call. He let me go on and said that he'd only have to come back if they kept getting calls but he'd only gotten one so far.

I continued on still. And the heat, this is what it is all about, the heat. My mind doesn't work out here. I catch moments of thought, literally moments, like, " . . . when I get there . . . " and " . . . 10 . . ." and " . . . not an animal . . " These things by themselves mean absolutely nothing on their own and the fact that they were coming out of my brain would have worried me could I muster the emotion. My watch said 1:15 at one point and my brain naturally assumed that it was the temperature. I can't even think, that's how hot it is, I can't listen to music or podcasts, listening is too much for my poor brain to do in this heat. It's too hot to do anything, including walk, but that's what I have to do and really my only option. One of the only things keeping me going, the new advent of signs for Los Angeles, which was exciting for several minutes before the excitement melted and got my hands all sticky, no wait, that was my brain that melted. In any case, I've made it to a rest area as you may have guessed and though I do plan to walk more today, not for a while, not until I use all my change on the vending machines, charge my laptop and the sun de-lightens up a bit.

300

Tonopah, AZ: El Dorado Hot Springs

2009-05-12T01:16:00.005-04:00

Miles since last walk: 21.9
Miles Total: 3429.2

Route

I know what you're thinking, "Hey, why is Skip naked?" Okay, you can't see me but you are probably now thinking, "Hey, why did Skip just tell me he's naked?"

Well, for either question the answer is the same. Tonight upon reaching Tonopah I had a quick dinner and was on my way back out into the desert to take advantage of the bright moon and cooler night air. I made it about a block. A block into my journey I came to El Dorado, the City of Gold. Except the gold is spring water, and the city is really a laid back hot spring with a little camping area. The good people here let me in gratis (free) and I got to partake of a wonderful set of varying temperature spring water tubs, and in the nude!

"Why are you going on about being naked?" you might rightly ask. Well, maybe not, many people know the joys of nudity, but it is really something more here. Being someone that typically camps on the side of the road or sleeps on someone's couch, I don't typically get to spend a lot of time in the buff, occasional hotel stints but as much as I am able to feel at home in almost any place, I don't really feel at home in hotels ever. So being free of clothes and feeling comfortable, well, it's been a very long time.

The El Dorado Hot Springs are awesome, quite the oasis for a weary traveler. As I sat in the tub I let my arms stretch out along the sides and my shoulders rest on the back, heels out before me touching the bottom of the tub and the rest of my body rising and falling with my breaths and the air in my lungs. It was heaven. I went back and forth between the warm and cool tubs for more than an hour as a few people came and went in the other tubs. No need for the hot spring tonight and relaxing, watching the stars overhead and floating there was perhaps the first time my body felt cool and complete on this entire trek.

My bed is a pillow topped lounge chair that I plan to stay birthday suited up for since it is very likely one of the only chances I will have in my entire life to sleep naked in the desert with no fear of creatures and feel the wind on my skin, what an incredible way to spend the night. I may try to do a work trade with them and spend another night to get some video, pics and rest, otherwise it's back to the desert with this salty dog. Time to get back in the tub.

350

Buckeye, AZ: Hot on my trail

2009-05-11T00:20:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 17.1
Miles Total: 3407.3

Route

The goo has me. The goo that has been striking me when I am leaving towns for long stretches of desert. I just drag my heals enjoying luxuries like the occasional availability of food, water and shade. I'm tired, glad I'm near the end, a few miles left, must finish.

For the second time during my journey I broke down and paid for a hotel room. So weak, that's like a week's worth of food, weakness. I guess incredible heat and more than eight months on the road is my krypotnite. Blech, looking forward to getting through the next 200 miles or so and back to a civilized temperature.

And a managed to make a video during the day as well:

MOUNTAIN MAN

Avondale, AZ: Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!

2009-05-10T00:13:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 19.6
Miles Total: 3390.2

Route

That's right I've finally moved on from my temporary roost of Phoenix and back towards the goal of the Pacific Coast only four weeks away and now less than 400 miles which gives me TONS of time to consider my strategy post walk for this thing people call 'life.'

At one point during the day an electronic sign flashed me the miserable info that in that particular intersection with all the asphalt's help it was a dismal 113F. I think I'm gonna have to make some adjustments. I've never been particularly good at enduring heat, mostly it just makes me tired and I had to seek refuge a few times today. I see more night and early morning walking in my future but it begs the question: When will I sleep? I'm not really good at sleeping in the heat or waking up in the morning so admittedly the low temp areas of the day are problematic for walking as well. Hmmm, I'll have to think about this one a bit more while I'm walking. The good thing is, if I think long enough and keep walking I won't need a solution anymore because I'll be through the desert.

Though I am still in the Phoenix Metro Area with gas stations and restaurants I couldn't find a place to sleep on this side of town so I am camping out, bummer, I had been hoping to get a few dozen more miles out before I ran out of opportunities to shower and sleep in a cool room. I'm trying to sleep in the heart of a business complex on the gamble that no one will be here on an early Sunday morning before I wake up and I can get out with charged gear and move on to find a napping place tomorrow afternoon, we'll see how well all this works out. Oh well. In other news, my favorite traveling bear, Kodiak, has returned to the road and begun to blog again. You may remember him from his brief stint with me in Texas. Good travels Kodiak.

Phoenix III: End Game

2009-05-09T04:39:00.006-04:00

Now, I am an Olympian the night before his event. I have the calm solemn demeanor of an undertaker preparing to embalm, it's a side of me that very few people have ever seen and tonight is no different, I am alone when it starts. Now is when I am focused, even when I am doing things that would usually require this kind of serious and strict attention the task at hand is little more to me than a game. University, Survival School, Teaching, Relationships, you name it, I'm always there with a joke and a smile, having fun and rarely needing a fraction of my full attention even if I give all of my energy. When I am at work, I look like I am at play because I am, I don't do things I don't like to do generally because money isn't much of a motivator for me and I am clever enough and adaptable to get by whatever the situation. I'm not a humble man, it's not a confession so much as an admission of guilt. Things are easy for me, I'm not bad looking, I'm smart and funny and creative. And so, I find myself searching endlessly for challenges, it's one of the things that led me here.

That is the reason for my concentration. Tomorrow I will start what I typically joke about as "the big end boss at the video game of my walk," a 250+ mile trek through the hottest and most desolate desert I have yet crossed at a time when it will be over 100 degrees every day. None of my normal bags of tricks will help me here, it is sheer determination and willpower and dumb stubbornness that will get me through those miles. It is a time when I am stripped down to my core and tested to see if I am worthy of the life I have been given, a time where I try to prove myself on my quest to gain acceptance into my next life when this one ends in less than 30 days.

It's another reason for the sober tone, the watery concentration that looks over my things without seeing any of them, trying to focus instead on where all the pieces fit and what they mean, why am I doing this again? I fight the big boss, I slay him and walk slowly into Los Angeles and to the Santa Monica Pier with plenty of time to rest and think and then the old me is gone, something new and unknown will stand on the edge of the Pacific Ocean with tears in it's eyes. Nine months to birth born of hardship and thought and a country that once seemed as foreign to me as any other, this new me will stand confused and hopeful, lost on a jumble of thoughts and friends and family, awash in a path that is already being constructed by the world for me. Nine months in which the walk has been a life in itself, a life I will put out when I reach the Ocean, and I will cry for it. The only place it will live on is in my memory or story and I am a poor archivist if ever there was one.

After the hero wins at the end of the movie, then what? It's something we never see. Sitting at home, tapping his fingernail on his front tooth as he watches television. Is it post traumatic stress syndrome from the loss of an old life that I have to look forward to?

It's calm here and the wind from the ceiling fan blows through my hair, hair that started in a place and time from when I was bald in Florida now waves lightly. Time barely means anything to me anymore except as a practical matter. I need this much water for this much time, I can go this many miles, I must have this much food, there's no thought to things strictly related to time or patience, no longer any consideration to anything that doesn't require years of life. A month hardly seems different to me than a day anymore but I can't really imagine that sounding like anything but a lie to anyone else. I don't know what day it is most of the time and I don't want to. It's a solemn state yes, but there is no sadness in it. It is a puzzle to work on, a puzzle that I can't turn away from and yet I work on it with a meticulous yet removed concentration that makes it something more than just fun, in fact, it is not fun, nor is it a labor, it just is. Eyes closed or far off, I suppose now that I am close to being something new, I am searching for where that piece fits and what it does, crossing my eyes over the magic eye painting of my life and knowing the picture is there, knowing my eyes can see it, but not yet sure how to. The same inept superman feeling.

I sound as if I am babbling, running nowhere, but writing is a sad vessel to carry thought. A small mouth of a river trying to let out an ocean. Who would God be without the Devil, or for that matter what would the Roadrunner be without Wile E. Coyote, where would Don Quixote be without his Windmill? What am I when I slay my nemesis? Where will I be in 30 days? It's a simple question I still don't know how to answer. Will I break away from my old life only to find myself in a new role pre-determined for me by my actions, is there something that people like me are supposed to do after we do things like this? Will I be strong enough to make my own path again in spite of that path? I feel I cannot stop, cannot be stopped, but I know that isn't the case and in fact the logical side of me sees no way around possibly even years stopped if something new does not pop up to bail me out of prison I have built with years of living truly free. And yet as I said, I feel I cannot be stopped. I'm doing good out here with the people I meet and if I fall it will be in a brilliant and glorious flame that people will wish upon.

Again, do not confuse my thoughtfulness for sadness, and though I try not to let it in, pragmatically I know not all great dreams end in success. That doesn't mean I'll stop dreaming though. Enjoy the following video in my continuing efforts to catch up on my editing and posting.

DESERT WIND

Phoenix II: Days go by

2009-05-07T04:12:00.002-04:00

The thing which is most beautiful about my life, and as you've seen there are hard parts, but the most beautiful part is the unexpectedness. Not only do I do unexpected things, which I'll get to, but since my life has no real 'baseline,' or usual, every experiences maintains the richness that is so inherent in the deed. Sleeping indoors for instance, a shower, anything that might seem normal in a life of routine, with the exception of walking, is vibrant for me. The same way you can taste something better with a clean pallet, that's the way I taste life, and the hard parts of my life lend as much flavor as the good times, after all, if you ate sweets all the time you wouldn't really know the taste of sweetness.

And the unexpectedness, well, it's unexpected. One night I'll be hanging out with a beautiful blonde woman who grocery shops out of dumpsters and is dating a homeless guy, and I sleep on the floor of her unheated apartment. Another night, there I am staying in a luxury high-rise, driving a BMW SUV and eating a dinner including hand-rolled Kim Chi brought back from Seoul, South Korea on dry ice and Kobe beef grilled on a tiny clay barbeque from Japan made by my gay Hawaiian host.

Life is like Kim Chi, you don't know what the hell is in it until you try it, and still there's a bit of mystery. Okay, it's not as poetic as Forest Gump, but at least I'm original

Phoenix, AZ: Triple Digits

2009-05-05T20:38:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 12.5
Miles Total: 3370.6

Route

Not much to report from here, working on catching up on the videos for those of you who enjoy them better than work and beginning the first day what what conspires to be uninterrupted triple digit heat until I hit the other side of the desert in California. But at least my distance left is only triple digits too.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, here is el video.

CARLSBAD

429

Tempe II: Night of the Living Video

2009-05-05T02:03:00.002-04:00

I know it's been a while, but I made a new video of old stuff. My last few days in Texas.

Here's the link, but the sound quality is much better on facebook if you can find it there.

TEXCAPE

Tempe, AZ: I am, I am Superman

2009-05-03T23:43:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 23.6
Miles Total: 3358.1

Route

Superman Complex:

When you give yourself an unhealthy feeling of responsibility. Feeling you need to save everyone around you and that no one can do their job better than you can do it yourself.

Yes, this is me. Yes, I know it. I've heard this come out of peoples' mouths for well over a decade now. I've made a few steps in the right direction, for instance, I stopped dating girls I thought I could 'save,' girls with problems that needed help. I'm done with that, I want a strong self-reliant, blah blah blah girl that only exists in my mind now.

Even though I have made this modicum of progress with my condition, I doubt I'll ever progress much further. I have insane goals for myself, a few I have never even mentioned due to the level of insanity, but I like that. There is a lot of me that thinks of 'content' as a four letter word akin to 'giving up.' I never want to be satisfied, not unsatisfied either, but a place between those words that we don't know yet, contentedly discontent and always striving to push myself just a little harder. If I stop this process, it's the same a death for me or at least the lack of what I consider life.

I've also long since come to the conclusion that you can't really ever save anyone, you can only provide them with opportunities to save themselves, which I suppose is a way to save them but that's a technicality. It's the level that I take this too that really is the unhealthy thing. I realize it, and I know that I could be called anything from 'too good of a guy' to 'an egotistical lunatic with delusions of grandeur' or worse but it's me, they're probably both true.

On my list for the future, a small part of it that I'll let you see to impress upon you the scale of weight and insanity that drives me:

Swim the English Channel
Motorcycle across South and Central America
Learn to drive a motorcycle
Get a degree in Particle Physics
Help out friends and family who are having financial troubles
Learn a musical instrument
Create or do something that will help with Climate Change and Energy Crisis
Write a book
Make a documentary
Inspire people to live the lives they want instead of the lives they think the should live

The list goes on like this forever, even though many of the things are for personal gratification (like learning a musical instrument) they are more because I feel like I am deficient in some way for not having already done them and that I need to be able to in case that particular skill is called upon at some point, to never fail when I am needed and often help when unexpected.

I was thinking about this when I was talking about some problems with friends and family on my walk today, that it was unreasonable for me to feel like I should be able to swoop in and stop foreclosures, bankruptcies, confusion, whatever. It's not that anyone says I should do this, it's that I feel like it is in me somewhere to be able to help in these ways and not doing it feels like I am doing something wrong. It may be that I can't change the world in the way i'd like to in some of my more grandiose goals but wouldn't it be wrong if I thought I might be capable? I feel like an awkward teenage Superman if I am one, one who tries but doesn't know how to wield his power effectively, but still I should get there in my mind. In the theme of like congregates with like, here's a link to a friends blog from today: Goals

And then of course there's this

436

Apache Junction II: Walking off into the Sunset

2009-05-02T16:13:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 31.6
Miles Total: 3334.5

Route

Deep breathes, this is one of the moments you've been waiting for Skip. Deep Breathes.

The Walk is almost over. In fact, I have the exact date and time I plan to finish and plenty of time to reach it.

The Date: 6/6/9
The Place: The Santa Monica Pier
The Time: Approximately 2:00 pm

Exhale.

I'd love for you to be there. Yes you, and you too. And you. I'd love to see as many people show up, new faces or old, to show support for the charity, the walk and of course if there's any more support left, a bit for me. I'm not kidding when I say that this will be one of the first great moments of my life, hopefully the first of many more, and I would like to generate as much energy and press as possible for everything involved. So, in short, come and walk or just watch me walk in.

After the end I'm hoping to find a park or some place in town where we can all congregate and do a potluck/party type event. Any help in the selecting of venue, organizing, contacting the press or anything else is very welcomed since I will be limited with what I can do. And by all means, invite everyone you know, the best problem I could have right now is too many people show up.

Check out PFEE.org, my contact info is on there if you want to help.

461

Apache junction, AZ: ?

2009-05-02T01:42:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: ?
Miles Total: ?

Rpute?

I'm in AJ, AJ is nice. I know it's nice because they buy me food and drinks, so many drinks. I like it here and all the people are very very nice and funny. It's time to go to sleep though, don't you wish you were here, I wish you were here, we'd have a lot of fun you and I . . . sleeping . . .

Superior, AZ: The Life

2009-05-01T00:38:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 25.7
Miles Total: 3302.9

Route

9:30 was when my body really started to move even though I had been awake for a while. At 10 am the reporter I had met on the road the day before was coming over to interview me.

"Hey Superman!" she said as I opened the door. My Superman shirt is currently in rotation and as much as I try to avoid it, I was also wearing my red shorts which makes me look even a little more ridiculous than I normally do. We talked a bit and the interview turned into a field trip to a local school where I talked to a third grade class which was a good way to start the day.

Then we hit Jack in the Box, admittedly I had wanted to get out of town earlier and knock out a bunch of miles today but you can't really beat a newspaper article, inspiring kids and my main man Jack. I headed out of town just after noon but not before buying a sandwich for the road.

The road was amazing, dangerous, unique. I climbed through construction on a winding highway over canyons and mountains biding my time between floods of traffic on a road with no shoulders. The road crossed up over 4600 feet and during the course of my walk I walked into and out of the Tonto National Forest. It was strange to see such lush green amongst the red and alien rock formations that are normally reserved for the barren desert and Roadrunner cartoons. The red rocks jutted from the mountain and from between bushes, pines and oaks.

The descent was no less awe inspiring. I went down into Devil's Canyon which was composed of the same windy and shoulderless road harnessed in on both sides by sheer warm toned rock faces from which you could here mountain goats bleating between the noise from passing cars. I fell further and further behind my schedule as I stopped to look for the goats and took picture after picture of the rocks in the changing afternoon light.

Before sunset the rock walls were staggeringly shifting into black shadows and brilliant color in the direct light of the horizon, as the sun fell and the sky turned orange to mimic the rocks and then pink, the rocks themselves transformed into warm black cutouts at the base of the sky. In the following half-moon light they took life back again and without detail managed to play with the light in ways that revealed new majesty from what was visible in the daylight.

The night also brought more of the same or similar danger as the day had. Long streams of cars threw themselves caustically around corners while I stood pressed against the guard rail with my carrier just a bit over the white line, on the other side of the guard rail the land fell away at a steep pace and there was nowhere to go anywhere. If a car hit, it would hit the carrier first and I would be pinched into pieces between it and the rail before the car ever even reached me. I was glad to get of the mountain in spite of its beauty for this very reason, but not before crossing a tunnel and a bridge along the way. Tunnels are my nightmare, if being trapped on the side of a mountain is bad, being trapped inside one is that much worse, you can't even jump.

As I sat at a rest stop in the town of Superior eyeing a park across the highway to sleep in, I talked with my mom, "Is it safe for you to cross the street?" she asked. And somehow I feel that all the progress made in the last 3300 miles was lost somewhere in the conversation. I laugh and tell here I think I'll be alright. It was a wonderful day. I'll post pics later retroactively.

488

Globe, AZ: Today's Blog is brought to you by the letter B

2009-04-29T23:29:00.004-04:00

MIles since last blog: 20.6
Miles Total: 3277.2

Route

512. As a old mathematician this number immediately feels warm to me. Something about countless nights I have run across it on my way trying to sleep.

2x2=4

2x4=8

2x8=16

2x16=32

2x32= 64

2x64=128

2x128=256

2x256=512

and so on . . .

and so it is an old friend with nice properties, it feels very round despite not having zeros. It feels more like a circle to me then a number with a zero in it even, maybe that's because I associate the numbers with things and characteristics, not physical looks. Numbers have feelings and personalities for me and spend a significant amount of time thinking in terms of them even where it wouldn't naturally make sense for others, like in new models of world governments or spelling of words.

Tonight 512 means two things. 1) it's about how far I have left to go, maybe a few miles further, maybe a few less. Tomorrow I'll jump below 500 miles left for certain. 2) it's the number two just as much as the number two is the number two, and the number two is the letter B. And actually, 512 isn't just two, it's nine twos, or nine B's. So here we go.

2=B=Batman Voice. When you walk up to 35 miles a day you do things to keep yourself busy, no, that's wrong, that implies you have set them in motion, that you decided to do things to pass time. In actuality this is half true, some things just happen. Like the Batman Voice. The Batman Voice is literally MY Batman voice, seeing what I would sound like as Batman as I walk down the road. I say things like, "Your an idiot" to passing cars, and yes, just plain old, "I'm Batman." Of course you have to do a Bruce Wayne as well to differentiate. None of this is really a problem until you walk into a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

"Hello," the cashier says.

"Hello," I reply. Wait a second, oh no, I just said hello in the Bat Voice. Crap, now I'm stuck speaking in the Bat Voice and being a weirdo for the rest of my shopping experience, wonderful. No chance of sticking around here, I thought to myself. The idea to simply clear my throat didn't occur to me until much later.

4=BxB=Bananas. These are good to have. They contain Potassium which is necessary to keep your muscles from cramping. But you know what you can't get in the middle of nowhere? Bananas, such is the leg predicament I have had later. I know, I know I could carry a bunch with me when I leave a town, but seriously, after a few days in the carrier at high temp, there's nothing appetizing about that.

8=BxBxB=Buying Bread. This is just a helpful tip if you are crossing the country by any means and are also, like me, eating sandwiches along the way. Buy bread in town, in a big town. When you buy bread in the middle of nowhere it's often already past the 'sale by date' because no one is there to check and they don't sell bread that often. I recently bought some of this bread, is was frozen when I bought it and I have yet to try a piece but I've had some pretty dry stuff before. Buy your bread in town.

16=BxBxBxB=Baba. Last night a nice old lady on the Apache Reservation, a Baba, bought my groceries for me after reading my sign. She was just waiting at the counter when I got there and it is a gesture that is rare and very nice. The fact that this morning to men were waiting for me on the road to Globe and had brought me a drink and some food just added to what is a very nice memory of crossing the reservation.

32=Bed. I have a hard time sleeping these days. Beds are too flat and the sleeping bag is too confining. I used to be better at this, I wonder how long it'll take to get used to sleeping in a bed again.

64=But I could have been finished already #1. If I had taken the ADT, the American Discovery Trail, to the North, I'd pretty much be done. But I took the long route and I've met people and done things that were amazing. But I could have been finished by now #2. If I hadn't taken so much time off, like a during the holidays at my friends house, I'd be done by now. Then again, the time to write and reflect was as useful as the walking itself.

128=Bah bahhh bah dah da da dahh . . . If you can't recognize that, I understand. But it is the Legend of Zelda theme song (a game in which, I can assure you, you spend a lot of time walking around) and like the Batman Voice, I was powerless to stop singing it for the final hour of my walk today.

256=Buddies. Now is the time if you ever thought about visiting me on my walk, it's getting hard at the end and I could use a visit, an email, a text or a call. It always helps to feel that connection.

512=Blogging. Yes, shortly this blog in the form you have known in for so long will cease to exist with the end of the walk. What happens then? Not even I know that.

Peridot, AZ: He's Alive!!!

2009-04-29T01:20:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 34.5
Miles Total: 3256.6

Route

Spotty internet tonight, just checking in from my camping spot off US - 70.

Fort Thomas, AZ: Blah

2009-04-28T01:22:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 22.1
Miles Total: 3222.1

Route

Short day. Woke up later, started off down the road and was almost immediately stopped by a nice man named Chuck who took me to lunch. Got back on the road but couldn't ever quite regain momentum. Tomorrow I enter the Apache Reservation, I myself am 1/64th Apache which means absolutely nothing, nevertheless it is the case. I'm camped out on the edge of Fort Thomas behind a church and my writing tonight is very dry. My lack of energy, creativity, and the a few other clues lead me to believe I might be fighting something, still, closer and closer to Phoenix every day.

568

Safford II: Black and White

2009-04-27T02:14:00.005-04:00

The Comfort Inn and Suites of Safford, AZ was gracious enough to afford me another night to recover. Most of the day was spent lying in bed watching television and going slowly stir crazy. The highlights of my day were a few phone calls, texts and a walk to a local convenience store where I met a guy biking across the country. That's right, the country is swarming with hobos and our spirit is infectious. Laid off, out of work, have you thought about riding the rails and sleeping on the couches of strangers? Or biking through the mountains and camping in the forest?

Let me tell you a little bit about what might be in store for you, it's a little story I call 'Yesterday.'

Recently I'd been mixing things up as a sort of experiment in keeping things fresh, event the results of the experiment were mixed, it was going alright. It starts with sleeping, Hotels, etc., the previous night I had decided to sleep on top of my sleeping bag and using just my wool blanket which is normally my pad under the bag. I just flipped stuff on the chance that it might be warm enough and that my sleeping bag would be more cushy bedding. It wasn't warm enough and the problem with laying out camp in the dark is that a lot of times you set up in places that aren't really suitable either. I've mostly learned to sleep around and on jagged rocks, but you can't deal with cold other than warming up. So I woke up in a tangle of sleeping bag and blanket and completely unready to take on the day with a half lame calf.

The good news was that I only had 11 miles into town where I was hoping to find a place to stay for the night. You know how that turned out from the first line, but let's pretend there's more to a story than it's end. I was moving slowly, brushing my teeth with a dry brush and toothpaste and letting the sun hit my back and chest alternately before I suited up for the day. When I went to put away my backpack a hundred plus moths flew into my face from the small pouch on the back of my carrier. When I opened up my hat another 20 or so flew out. This continued all the way down the road the eleven miles, me slowly loosing moths upon the world.

Before I got into Safford I walked through the tiny satellite town of Solomon where I stopped to use a gas station toilet, on the wall there was a spot carved out with a swastika and the words 'WHITE POWER' in blocky letters, I tried to imagine it was very old but most of the wall was fresh. When I came out to men with shaven heads were entering the store, another guy with short hair was standing outside by some motorcycles and checking out my cart.

I slowly pulled on the gloves I bought to cushion my hands my second time in Austin. The man with short hair came over to talk to me.

"What is this thing exactly?" He said nodding at Ando, my carrier. Talking about stuff, this is how guys relate if what I remember about regular society still holds true. I note that I am slipping further and further away from that society and that at times I find myself eating with absolutely no manors, shoving things in my mouth and not able to remember the motor functions of civilization. I humor him and play along in the man role.

"This is my cart, it's a baby jogger actually, I carry my stuff in it."

"Why are you walking across the country anyway?" I can't see his eyes because of some mirrored lenses that remind of the nineties Oakley fad. I size him up and go with the basic answer.

"I'm walking for charity, Public Education, trying to help out some of the schools that need it." He shrugs, not so interested in education I guess.

"Public education," he mumbled. "Yeah, I guess most schools are pretty bad shape these days. Hey, let me ask you something, this new president, what do you think about him." I already knew what he thought, it wasn't what was scrawled on the wall, no reason to think that was him, but his language 'this new president,' not Obama, not 'the new president,' but 'this' new president. I don't feel like getting into a debate but I'm not a liar either.

"Well, I tell you one thing, I think he'll be good for education."

"Yeah yeah," he seemed to be searching for something, he wanted to identify with me somehow I could see that, but he wanted to get something from me too. "But what do you think he'll mean for the war on terror?"

Christ, I don't want to get into this, this will go nowhere, what's a neutral response? "Oh, I don't know." The truth is, that like most other things, I just think people are too afraid of this, you're more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than a terrorist attack, perhaps we should go after the coconuts. No reason to lend credence to these idiots by being afraid of them. There are far more terrifying monsters lurking out there and attacking the USA, ignorance, economics, tubs without little grippy flower things on the bottoms, you name it.

"I read that loud and clear." He said smiling and nodding. Apparently he took this as my agreement with his obvious position. The two men with shaved heads came out, they were his friends.

"What are you doing?" They asked.

"Nothing," he said. I saw my opportunity to leave.

"Bye," I said and started walking off. Maybe if I was lucky, what would stay with him wouldn't be this false agreement, but instead that I said something positive about the president and education.

The walk was peaceful into town and the Comfort Inn and Suites was the first Hotel I came to. A very nice woman was behind the counter and she called the manager and got me a room donated for the evening. When I asked about a pharmacy to resupply she offered to drive me into town after she got off of work at 3.

I took a shower and ate at the restaurant across the street which was owned by the same people as the hotel, The Manor House, good Philly Cheesesteaks. True to her word, at 3 o'clock she drove me to a pharmacy where I picked up 50 SPF waterproof non-greasy long lasting Sunscreen, new moleskin (pad bandages for blisters), a few gatorades and a snack. When I got to the register she paid and told me in the car on the way back to the hotel, "some days you just have to give yourself over to the needs of others." It was that simple for her, as simple as not liking Obama was for the other man. It takes all kinds, I'm lucky people seem to like the path I travel, I get the best parts of them, the niceties all intact, but the woman seemed only nice to me. There were layers to her of course, but none of them were harsh or mean, just deeper or shallower views of the same woman, it's always nice to meet these people and in my life they are the majority.

The main thing the road offers is experience, time to think, sometimes too much of both, but isn't even a flood of too much experience and thought better than the doldrums? It either is or it isn't and we are a wonderful time in history to decide which one is for us.

I'm trying on different 'road names' or monikers, feel free to suggest one. So far my favorite suggestion was Hobo Hemingway but that would be more than a little presumptuous for me to try on. Thoughts . . .

Safford, AZ: Thank you Comfort Inn and Suites!!!

2009-04-25T18:33:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 11.3
Miles Total: 3200.0

Route

So close, so very close.

590

San Jose, AZ: Crimps and Cramps

2009-04-25T00:03:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 30.0
Miles Total: 3188.7

Route

15 miles into the walk today, my left calf seized. If you've seen my calf, you can begin to imagine how much this is super not cool. When you are 15 miles from the town behind you and 26 miles from the next town, there's simply not much you can do about a problem like this, or any problem really. I sat down and ate some goldfish crackers and tried to walk on favoring el injuro maximo, but when I came to a little dirt pull out I decided that I wasn't going to get a better chance for a rest. I laid there for about an hour which is always fun because inevitably a few people stop by to make sure you aren't dead, which is nice of them.

I got up and walked another 15 miles, a bit carefully. I was still favoring my left leg but I was also enamored with the high mountain desert I was walking through here on the Eastern edge of Arizona. Since my trip to Carlsbad Caverns I always look at craggy awesome mountains with a suspicious eye. Under the smooth rolling hills of red dirt and dried grass which are occasionally interrupted by broken red wisdom teeth of rocks I know something is hiding. I even saw a few caves from the road which I wanted to go explore, alas, my walk wanting to be finished and my calf cramping precluded this possibility even more than the fact that the caves are on private property. I'll be back mountains, when I'm not on route or injured.

The cramp, it's not a big problem, so long as it goes away. If it persists, my tentative date of a May 31st finish will slip slide away like Paul Simon. This is the crimp in the plan, it's always there, even if this cramp goes away and I stay as prepared and preventative as possible, a cramp or other problem could spring up at any time. I'm just outside of the relatively big town of Safford and I plan to walk in tomorrow morning and try to find a room for the night and walk out if I can't, no paying tomorrow. But even this bed rest puts a bit of a crimp in my timeline. This month I have already walked about 480 miles which is often what I do in an entire month and I have 6 more days to go. This month I will break 500 miles for only the second time in my travels, it's possible my body is just getting fussy with me.

I suppose I'll find out one way or another. On the bright side, it was cloudy today so it was cooler during the day and will be warmer tonight. Hooray for Arizona!

605

Franklin, AZ: Pacific Time

2009-04-24T00:27:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 35.0
Miles Total: 3158.7

Route

I had a diatribe in mind for tonight but it was kind of a downer so I booted it. I'm in Arizona! I'm on Pacific Time. Feel the awesomeness.

634

Lordsburg II: Chiming In and Selling Out

2009-04-22T20:32:00.002-04:00

"It's almost over." It's a thought that runs through my head a lot. "Less than 40 days until you get to the coast probably."

"Leave me alone," another thought chimes in.

"At 25 miles a day you have only 27 walking days left,"

"I know."

"If you average 30 miles a day, that's what you do, then its only 22 or 23 walking days left."

"I know," that voice, it's irritatingly persistent. I manage to run my thoughts onto something else, but it always jumps back in.

"You're only 240 miles from Phoenix. You'll be in Arizona tomorrow."

"Shut up."

One voice always pushing me on, revving me up, the other voice puts fingers in its ears and goes blah blah blah until the first voice shuts up. It's hard to escape this struggle.

"String Theory says that everything is made up of the same string substance," My iPod goes on, one of the many science podcasts I distract myself with when I need it one or two hours out of a long day. "And the way they appear differently is by vibrating in different ways, so you see -"

"DUDE!!! If you try, you might make it to the coasts by the 24th of May!" Chimes in the first voice.

"I'm trying to learn here, leave me alone, now I have to rewind it."

Sometimes I know exactly what I want, other times it's like this. Monotonous thought, routine, I hate routine. This circularity is the kind of thing I usually walk away from and come back to later with new tools of thought when I can actually make some headway. Normally I walk away, that says something huh? The problem is the further I walk, the louder the voices argue, and if I stop they just go completely insane with fervor.

Break the routine. Break. I need a break. This is the thought as I roll around in another dirt field another cold desert night. I smell, more precisely, my favorite shorts smell after 5 days on but I don't like any other pair. It's 3 am and I'm not falling asleep.

Then it's 8 am and I'm awake again. I need a break, it's funny how a repetitive thought before you sleep can wake you up like a call to war. By 10 am I have new tires and I know I am not going anywhere. Break the routine. There's a few hotels in town but none of them are donating a room tonight, I can see that. I buy in, sell out, break down, get a room somewhere with a pool and laundry and HBO, a place next to a McDonald's. It's not what I should have done, I should have walked to Duncan, AZ today and tried to take a break there, I didn't feel so bad this morning despite the lack of sleep and rough days behind me. it's the first time I've paid for a place to sleep in almost 8 months.

I'm in debt, I'm at peace with that, but it's true. A hotel room, for a homeless and unemployed guy, it's not cheap and doesn't help the cause in anyway, but it does accomplish something, one thing. Break the routine.

There's a crucial step missing somewhere in this whole quest. It's a part of the Heroes journey, not that I am a hero, but there's a reason literary journeys have steps, we need them. The short version is that the Hero 'Refuses to Return' (to the normal world) and then later through a multi-step process, returns anyway. In survival school, the final night we had a 14 mile solo walk in the moonlight back into camp to think, reflect and re-enter society. Something tells me that won't work here.

I don't know what it is, I don't know if there is a way back and I know I don't want to go back. I also know unless something big and unexpected happens, I am going to have to return to that world in some way. I just don't want to go back to the life I had before, dreaming back on the one glorious note that graced the song of my life. I see the longing in others. I've contacted and kept in contact with people who have done this before. BJ Hill, who I called Bizarro, suddenly and happily started calling and texting me as of last week.

"Can I give you some advice." he said, it wasn't a question. "Stay on the road. It's not great out here right now." I've heard the sentiment from others. I think it's because we've all gone the same way at some point, we've all had the same trials and thoughts, we all walked or ran or biked or drove off for the same reason. Break the routine.

Lordsburg, NM: Dust Devils

2009-04-22T00:33:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 32.3
Miles Total: 3123.7

Route

You know that road to hell, the one paved with good intentions, guess what, I walked down that road today.

Last night I decided to listen to my navigators and ignore my instincts which told me to brave the illegalities of Interstate trekking, I should always listen to my instincts. I'd say I've learned this lesson before, but obviously I didn't. The farmer, or rancher, whom I never met, was nice. He drove up a little before 6 am and then read my sign and left again without bothering me. I laid there for a long time in and out of sleep.

The day started innocuously enough, walking away from the interstate and into a the desert on a dirt and sand road, sand is my arch nemesis by the way. The road wasn't much of a road but rather two thin dirt paths that are a wheel well's width apart from each other but five miles in it's already to much work to go back. Shortly after I got 5 miles down my path I encountered the first of many gates, private property, both of my Nav. systems had agreed on this path and sent my off emptying my carrier, lifting it atop the gate, holding it in place with one arm while scaling the gate to take it down on the other and then go back again to get my things. It's pretty work intensive and on a hard, hot day it's the last thing you want to add to your trail several times over.

As I set down Ando (the carrier) the first time I noticed a problem. While I had been focused on my left tire which was low, the tread on a spot of the right tire had ripped open exposing the tube. I've barely had these tires for a month, hard roads out here. An hour or two later a bubble of tube started bulging out after a particularly hard hill where the road had eroded into two parallel chasms where wheels would have gone. The bubble caught my eye and I stood back just in time to see it explode, I guess I should have gotten new tires in Las cruces after all, green sealant goo exploded out and left a slimy spot on the dirt. I looked around, nothing, the interstate was miles and miles away with no path to it and town was still 20 more, mostly up these rough roads.

I should have trusted my instincts, I tried to be lawful and avoid the interstate only to break the law destroying my body and cart over private property. It was late when I finally arrived in the town of Lordsburg, I need to find a tire, there doesn't seem to be a bike store or wal-mart or anything I know of that would sell a tire for my cart. Somewhere in this town must exist a tire for me, tomorrow I'll have to find it pushing Ando who now has a limp where the bulbous burst was and I with a limp on the opposite side from the blisters and sore muscles of pushing on a dirt road for so long. The pair of us will hit the city looking for what will heal us both, a tire for Ando and a hotel room for me to have a day off and rest my smelly and dirt caked body.

The heat is getting intense out here and it only promises to get hotter.

666

Gage, NM: The Adventures of Blizzilla - Queen of the Desert

2009-04-20T20:46:00.005-04:00

MIles since last blog: 31.0
Miles Total: 3091.4

Route (Approximate, won't show real route)

If you've never heard of Gage, NM that's probably because you've never stopped there. In fact, you could even have driven by it and you'd never know it was anything big enough to have a name other than the Exxon station on exit 62 of I-10.

For a traveler on foot however it is an oasis of yore. foretold by billboards throughout the day which seems to stretch back several weeks now, my Motel 6 comforts as distant as Boston laid out here on this stretch of nothingness. A billboard says, "Thirsty?" another states, "Souvenirs" they follow each other sometimes in succession and at other times miles apart. One finally shoots across the highway the message, "Dairy Queen." Simple, complete.

Thirsty, sure, I'm thirsty but I have water. Souvenirs I can't carry. A nice dose of peanut butter cup blizzard however at one of the hottest parts of the day, it's a concession I have to make.

My day isn't done and I know it'll soon get dark and then the fast cold that sweeps into the desert will set upon me like zombies on well, also me in a zombie scenario. I still have about ten miles to go before I can rest within a comfortable distance of Lordsburg for tomorrow, my last town in New Mexico.

There's dozens of places like this in the sparse Southwest. Giant gas stations with a fast food place, souvenir shop, and even RV parks out back and nothing else for miles. These dusty mirages for weary travelers are the castles of the desert flats, and despite their cheesy consumerism and ridiculous middle of nowhere souvenirs and fireworks sales, they are a sort of majestic thing out here on their own, somehow thriving in a dead economy and a desolate land.

Coming inside also allows me certain other advantages aside from dairy goodness. On the road if I take a break it is rarely more than 15 minutes including a meal, there's simply nothing to do except think about the heat and how far you are from shelter if you sit still so there's no reason too, inside I sit and relax and give my muscles and feet a real break. I can also feel the heat of my burning skin radiating, I've been using more and more sunblock starting from none a few weeks ago but I want some burn, with how cold it gets at night a burn is a nighttime strategy for comfort.

Finally there is strategy, caffein I can get here will make me more likely to walk into the night. I want to get to Lordsburg early to try to get a room somewhere for the night, you have to do that in the hours the manager of a hotel is there generally so if I can't make it far enough tonight I either have to give up or slow down and take an extra day so that I'll arrive earlier in the day. Extra days aren't my favorite, so I had better get moving soon I've left route and am planning an experimental jaunt onto the interstate this evening or tomorrow morning, we'll see how it goes.

Update: I'm forgoing my venture onto the interstate until after Phoenix now, I was saved by the sudden reasonableness and agreement between my internet directions which I write down, and my cell phones navigator. The latter is the usual problem. For instance this morning when I was only 50 miles from Lordsburg it showed a 105 mile route into nowhere and back, but at 10 pm tonight it suddenly showed a similar path to the one put forth online. I had forsaken such a path because of the numerous roads without names, one of which I was supposed to follow for 38.5 miles, but the agreement and reception of my cell phone lent me the confidence to venture back out away from the interstate and onto the dirt roads which seem to be everywhere.

I've set up camp under a tree off one of these roads and I think I am actually on a farmers property not far from his house. I hope he's nice. (Note: I have come up with a possible strategy to get a 'de facto' day off, I am considering putting this stratagem into effect tomorrow)

700

Deming, NM: Thank You Motel 6!!!

2009-04-19T19:03:00.003-04:00

Miles since last job: 61.3
Miles Total: 3060.4

Route

Two days ago I sat in a little diner called Pancake Alley and was staring apprehensively at a Betty Boop license plate.

"Are you thinking about your walk?" My aunt asked me.

"Yeah," I said. It had been nice seeing my family, the night before I had stayed up late talking with my cousin and my aunt had been so happy and loving during the whole trip. I was about to head out again on my own, the longest stretch of my walk with out a planned place to stay and nowhere to take days off. Three hundred and fifty plus miles through the desert and mountains, but thanks to my new route there is a town at least every two days where I can get water and food. Twelve to Fourteen days without a break, my longest before was nine days.

It wasn't long before I was on the road and had passed my 3000 mile mark without me even remembering. A fellow mathematician road up on a bike and we chatted for a mile or so, me walking and he on his bike. We talked about education and brushed on politics, the major thing was the state of the country.

"It's been an incredible time to be traveling the USA. I know there's a lot of bad things happening right now but even the people who have always been for the status quo or who didn't vote for Obama it seems are ready for things to change. The feeling I get is one of hope everywhere I go. All the bad things maybe shocked people into waking up and being ready for something different." I said to him in conversation.

"It's good to hear you say that," he said, his head slightly bowed in thought. "I've gotten that feeling, but I'm sequestered in my little town in New Mexico, but you've been out there." He rode off feeling a little better for his stop and I felt good for giving him some peace of mind.

A short time later I was on the dirt roads that have begun to signify this part of the country for me. Hard pressed against the sand and heat I pushed Ando further into the desert and away from the interstate which, if I could walk, would lead me directly to my next destination with no opportunity to get lost. As it was, I was treading through country where signs didn't exist and it was nearly impossible to tell the county roads from the ones forged by four by four pickups and other machines of play. My compass hadn't worked in days, it just spins wildly when held to view, there must be something around this part of the state that is throwing it off, unless compasses can break, I'm not sure. The best way to navigate out in the dirt and dried fields is to keep moving, keep my pace constant as possible and turn down the road I come to at the time that approximates the distance I should have walked at my guessed speed. This can lead you down all kinds of wrong roads if you aren't careful, and if you don't pay attention to the fact that the sun isn't just East or West of you, but also to some degree South and to what degree, you can stay lost.

Almost twenty miles later I'm walking along the side of a set of railway tracks and it is almost sunset. I'm using the tracks to navigate, as a 'handrail' of what not to cross from what I remember of the map I saw while writing my directions down, something I learned in survival school. As I sit down to make myself dinner on the set of rails nearest to me, the sun sets. The tracks seem to head off eternally, lit orange by the fading sky light, but I know they have to end somewhere. It could be the beauty surrounding me, not knowing if I was on track, the newly reclaimed solo path, the science and philosophy crowding my brain from the podcasts and books I'm listening to, it could be anything, but for almost a whole minute I break down and cry. It doesn't feel like sadness, it just feels overwhelming and I don't know what it is about. I collect myself and start walking again down the dirt road beside the tracks.

The sun disappears and is replaced by a string of little pearls of light on the horizon, many are still, you can see a light on the flatlands for a dozen miles or more, things you'd never see during the day, and when daylight comes and reveals nothing for as far a you can see, you might wonder where the invisible midnight cities went. Other pearls of light move along the baseline of the land, they come together, become one and split apart again. It's the cars moving around along the far off interstate, another handrail, it's nice to see I'm heading the right direction. I go as far as I can and track across a brambly field to get to a NM highway that heads towards a distant gas station, even being so close to a place with food and water, electricity and toilets, I can't go any further and I set up my tent in the dirt behind some thorn bushes off the highway just in front of the barbed wire fence that is omnipresent along the roadsides of the Southwest. I know I am 24 miles from Deming near the gas station that constitutes the town of Akela, I know that it was a pretty average day and that I am exhausted and can only hope to get a shower the next.

Of today, there isn't much to say, walking, a few phone calls and an early arrival into Deming and to the gracious arms of the Motel 6, an oasis in the desert. A shower and a good nights sleep and I am off on the rest of what is still over 300 miles to Phoenix where I will hopefully meet some friends for a day or two.

731

Las Cruces, NM: A Reboot with Family

2009-04-17T00:13:00.006-04:00

I've been taking a few days off with family visiting me for the first time on the trek. Life has been good and it adds another dimension to the journey to be able to share some of my experiences from the past by revisiting them with someone.

In a 24 hour period we visited the hot desert of White Sands National Monument, The Space Museum, felt the snow fall on Cloudcroft in the Lincoln Nat'l Forest, hiked about a Sunspot Observatory and even spied a herd of African animals called an Oryx. The first time I ran into an Oryx was on the walk in, I looked out into the White Sands Missile Range and there was a long straight set of horns sticking up out of the grass. Patches of white and black moved slowly through the basin and slowly I made out the beige body which accompanying black and white spots.

Our eyes met. And I like to believe we shared a common thought, "You're not supposed to be there." I had the good sense to take a picture or two, the herd of Oryx was not so clever.

I hit the road again tomorrow, without my banner on Ando as it has finally been ripped to shreds by wind, and with my family as back up for a day into the desert. It's been a good time, a mental rest I needed and I'm ready to head for the coast again.

783

Organ, NM: Beef Thai Delight or Thanks Quality Inn of Las Cruces!!!

2009-04-14T14:21:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 25.6
Miles Total: 2999.1

Route

Update: It's not midday and I have a place to stay tonight thanks to the good people at the Quality Inn. Do them a solid next time you're in the LC, they have a pool and spa. It rocked.

It's midday and I am sitting at the only restaurant in the small satellite city of Organ, NM, Thai Delight. Immediately the fact that this is the restaurant for the outskirts of the city sends me a message, "This place is going to be okay."

My mouth is burning a little from the Beef Thai Delight 'hot' I ordered and my intestines are already thanking me for not getting 'Thai hot' even at the expense of my tongues pleasure. It occurs to me that this has all happened before, my future is already someone's past and it's thoughts like these that pass through me like I through the small mountain range outside of Las cruces which Organ is at the base of.

Tonight, for the first time, I'll see family on my trip. My aunt and cousin are coming from Northern California for a few days to help me through vast and unpopulated areas for a bit. Secretly the help I needed was simply seeing them even more than help with water or food or shelter.

I've been thinking about the problems with linear thought and the illusion of linear time today as I walked. It made me feel very calm. I remember from Mathematics that with a complex problem we often did not try to solve or prove it directly. but instead built skills and tools which may have at the outset seemed without purpose or for some other purpose entirely. When we had assembled enough background tools and problems, we sought after the main problem. This is what I mean with the problem with linear thought, that too often we try to attack a problem or thought head on, when we do not have the tools yet. Were we to try to develop these tools on the way our path would stray too often and branch out wildly and eventually become too much to keep in mind at once. By taking on smaller problems that seemed trivial or fruitless, we can understand them so well that later when we need them we may simply plug them in to the spot they fit without much effort at all.

It's the same way that conversations come back to you from months or years back and suddenly explain a situation at present which you could not have figured out just then. It's the reason we chase down things that seem to mean nothing in the practical world and discuss and think on them, because maybe at some point in the future, it will be of need. We may not know this at the time, but in retrospect I see that there are somethings I have been chasing after all my life and assembling pieces to so that I can come to the answer naturally in time. There are something you just can't do in a straight line, there is no path to these places.

I've been getting the feeling that time is similar, we may perceive time as a linear unknown stream simply because it is the only way we have to perceive it. Certainly the world is filled with all types of light even in darkness that we simply have too meager eyes to comprehend, isn't it possible that the same is true with time? This is perhaps one of those topics I mentioned earlier which I explore with no reason to do so, but often the reason comes later and there is no telling which stream of thought will be important so I try to chase them all down with whatever tenacity they are worthy of.

There have been times when I felt like I was on the verge of something great, I wonder now if these thoughts were not in vain then were they just not a sense of local time. Perhaps those moments were the moments which contribute to some great moment of realization in the future and there seeming fruitlessness at present is not so.

On the road ahead not too far is Las Cruces and family, I feel calm and it is moments like this that I feel much closer to finding my place in this world, not the world of taxes and work and gym memberships that we usually talk about, but the real vast world we live in. For now, my Beef Thai Delight 'hot' is long gone and it is time to head back out on the road again.

White Sands Missile Range, NM: Deserted

2009-04-14T01:25:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 29.0
Miles Total: 2973.5

Route

Tired. Sleep now.

805

White Sands Monument, NM: Thoughts on the Day

2009-04-12T22:50:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 20.0
Miles Total: 2944.5

Route

It's easy to see how things could be missed in a car. Coming out of the mountains and seeing another range ahead, you might be tempted to disregard the area between Alamogordo and Las Cruces which wasn't the brilliant white sand. In a car, trapped inside a box that turns the outside world into just another television show, the basin would seem dead, vapid, a wasteland of dirt and dried grass. For me though, after a day of rest in body and mind, it was a fertile valley of thought and philosophy.

While an SUV ran down the highway hitting a tumbleweed, I could almost see the driver inside shirking and cursing the godforsaken desert. As I watched the tumbleweed burst over the bumper it was like a desert firework exploding into the wind and I felt lucky to see it. In the distance the white sand blew up and in places blotted out the purple mountains behind them and connected the earth and sky and clouds into one living organism. Even when the wind died down the mountains seemed to float in the air on a small cloud of white, behind me the clouds and light of a dropping sun painted the Sacramento mountain range in a way I could never have appreciated through pains of glass.

On the road, aside from night and day, time ceases to exist somewhat. The boundaries that work in the standard world blur. While people in their cars are eminently aware of what day it is, to me it is a place and people and a thought process and experience. While I forget the names of the days of the week slowly, the weeks give unnatural breaks in time to the lives of others, showing them sheared and fractured portions of their lives, small portions from which you can't make out the entire picture clearly. Without these, time is like a stream or the road I travel, easier to view as a whole and take and mix any part with any other for something new. Your life is easier to see and thus it is clearer to understand and make decisions about.

Walking the highways alone, at times you become an engine of kinetic thought. There are times were an idea so pure or great or fleeting is so powerful that I actually make a noise, a shriek or a grunt, when it comes into my head and I understand it. The noise whether from the power of the idea or the knowledge that it will be lost in part, I do not know. The thoughts are like runny eggs, partially formed and unable to be grasped and held onto completely until they have been talked over, whether to discuss or simply put into memorable words. At the end of the day my arm looks as if I have some sort of compulsive writing disorder which left words scrawled all over it and most of the round thought behind them blows away in the wind like an exploded tumbleweed.

My thoughts turn back to exploring and the inherent excitement that comes with the idea. It seems partly ridiculous. Yes, you can go somewhere that no one has ever been and be the first human eyes to see a sight, but practically this doesn't really matter much. Practicality can be overrated though. It seems it isn't the land itself that is so inspiring, sure a mountain range is beautiful, but it is beautiful whether you see it or not or whether you are the first or the 5000th to see it. It is the new experience and possibilities that lie within them.

To explore the land physically is to understand it. I could tell you that that Mt. Everest is 29.035 ft tall and give you a scale model, I could get topographical maps and find the slope and composite at each step, but without going there and experiencing it, walking its trails and feeling its cold, you or I can never really understand it. It reminded me of a conversation I had once with Free.

"I can't explain some of the ideas I have to you Free," I said to my buddy as we drove ceaselessly through the city of Montgomery, Alabama in search of a McDonald's. "I could tell you them but you wouldn't understand them, not because of any lack of intelligence but simply because there is a process you have to go through to really get them. I need to explain what I mean by understanding first I guess."
"Okay," Free said with a reserve of doubt at the sense that despite my disclaimer he might be being insulted. It was a tricky subject altogether and I had to tread slow and carefully.
"I think there is a big difference between understanding something is true, understanding why something is true and understanding how something is true."
"Okay, what do you mean?" I had his attention now and the defense was starting to release.
"I'll go back to math because I was a mathematician and it's the easiest explanation I know. To start with, there's different kinds of infinity, that's not so hard so i'll step it up a bit. As far as Real Numbers go, there are rationals and irrationals. Rationals are any numbers that can be expressed as a ratio like x over y (x/y) and irrationals are like Pi, they go on as a decimal forever with no pattern or repetition, if they repeat, they are rational too."
"Uh huh," he said.
"Well, it's proven that between any two rationals you can find an irrrational, and between any two irrationals you can find a rational number. So you get this picture in your head of something like a picket fence, rational irrational, rational, irrational, but that isn't the way it is at all."
"It's not?"
"No, in fact, the infinite amount of irrationals is far bigger than the infinite amount of rationals. You wouldn't think it was possible with what I said about finding one of the other in between any two of the same, but it's true."
"Okay," he said trusting in my mathematical background more than anything else.
"See right now, you understand that it is true. You don't know why, but you know it's true. I could show you the proof and you would understand why it was true. This is pretty easy so far, right?"
"Yeah, okay."
"The trouble is, even as a mathematician, who knew the proof well, who knew it was undoubtably true, I could never quite grasp it. It didn't sit right with my picket fence view even though I knew it was right. Finally, now, after a long time, I understand how it is true. It's something that you can't explain because it is beyond our words, it's experience and time and thought but once you know how something is true you can feel it. That knowledge is a part of you and you can strum it like the fibers of the universe."
"Okay, I get it," he said understandingly and we drove on in silence for a while and thought. We had been talking about religion, spirituality and mysticism but it is a conversation for another time.

As I said, I thought a lot today. My mind ranged like the mountains behind and ahead of me, but these are the last snippets I remember from the runny eggs that ran through my fingers. As I walked on I realized that with every stage of my journey the previous step seemed tame and silly by the standards of the next. I realize that I have just been wading into the adventures that are ahead of me. My route has taken on the semblance of training wheels that I can sometimes coast for sometime without using as long as it goes where I want it to.

Now like a petulant child I have come not to need my training wheels most of the time and at times resent that they still remain even though there are times I still need them. While I started this walk to set me free from many things, I now find it the last shackle that binds me to something. The Santa Monica Pier awaits to set me free like the click of a cell door on the last day of a prison sentence. The click is anticlimactic, unimportant, simply a symbol of larger mechanisms and decisions whose function has long since past, all that is left is predesignated time and event that one must just wait for and endure. Still the wait, and the process, is what it is all about. I enjoyed today, and all the web of thought that ran through it, the sights I saw, I would love it unconditionally if only I were free to do it by choice and not because it is on my route.

My mind is set precariously between the present and the future balancing being in the here and now and wishing for the new and as yet unexplored. 834

Alamogordo II: Relaxamogordo

2009-04-12T00:14:00.002-04:00

I needed a day off. It's that simple.

My right Achilles heel was so tight that I felt it might snap, I'm not somebody for whom pain is all that much of a deturrent but in this case I decided that it was in my best interest to take a day of rest. As much as I would appreciate the irony of having weathered mountains, deserts, forests and everything else showing that I'm practically indestructible only to be brought down by my Achilles, I would like to finish even more.

As days off go, it was something to remember. Sleeping in turned into cupcakes and pancakes followed shortly by a sit in a sauna, a massage, a whirlpool, a steak dinner and an Eddie Izzard stand-up DVD. It's hard to make a better or more relaxing day than that. Even so, my tendon is still tight, but not so tight that I am worried and I will be heading out towards Las Cruces tomorrow.

I got a bit of a mental rest too which in part led to the new decision to jump right past Tucson and right into Phoenix after LC. As much as I would like to see Tucson I have gotten pushed the other way by the following reasons:

1) The walk on this route is both populated and beautiful along a well kept and easily followable highway.

2) It possibly avoids most of the most mountainous terrain.

3) It cuts 64 miles off of my journey and the next leg is only lengthened by 55 miles which means there are only two big blocks of walking after LC.

4) I can get supplies easier along the route and have just one more "long city break" plus I can visit Tucson later, it's time to finish the walking but not the traveling.

5) More that I can never remember.

So there you have it, things have changed. In my youth when I needed to take control over my life a bit and felt obligated to keep most of it the same, I'd change my hair. I was kind of a girl that way. I'd get a mohawk or dye it black or purple or blue or something, and I would feel better for a few days, long enough for a stress bout to subside. These days, I actually change my life which is probably the more reasonable option given that it is the problem. I like that, and when the walk is done it'll open up a whole new world of off un-routed options for me to chose from.

The only problem with a day off, my body, particularly this last week, has gotten used to extreme amounts of physical activity. While my legs didn't want to do anything, I had tons of excess energy and my upper body felt like it was ready to walk the rest of the way on my hands. Hmmm, visions of a post walk adjustment period coming on. No worries body, you'll get your walk tomorrow and in a few days my mind will get to see some familiar faces when my Aunt and Cousin visit me. My first family visit since I started walking and I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to it.

861.

Alamogordo, NM: It's all downhill from here

2009-04-11T01:35:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 14.0
Miles Total: 2924.5

Route

All walk and no play makes Skip a dull boy.

It wasn't a long walk but it was hard and my body is tired and my shoes are old. I won't bore you with the logistics of why today was hard but if you think of the week previous and a 100 pound cart on a 14 mile downhill and 1000 mile pair of shoes you can probably figure most of it out for yourself, you're a sharp cookie aren't you?

But metaphors aren't the only things I'm mixing these days, my plans they are a moving and a grooving. I don't know if I'll walk tomorrow or how far, I'm just so freaking tired and my legs, they are acting 'funny.'

We'll just see. For now the only thing I can see in front of me is white sand in the wind, looking like clouds and whisps trailing through the desert devoid of hue or purpose save keeping the desert free of anything with its gritty blasts. This is what Mr. Clean would look like if he were a force of nature. Still, I'm a pretty determined spot.

Cloudcroft, NM: Day 4 or Thank You Summit Inn & Cottages!

2009-04-10T00:59:00.005-04:00

If you are wondering what happened to me the last few days, I'd suggest looking at my last blog.

Those of you that pay strict attention might notice that I am a trifle off route from what I was supposed to be. The details of this are laid out in my previous blog but as a spoiler, I woke up in Weed.

Weed is a small town near the middle of nowhere (which I have been informed is slightly South of the town of Pinon in flats that are on the way to El Paso) and last night I slept behind their country store. I'm not sure what the elevation is, but it's high and it was a windy night. While I picked a good spot shielded from the wind by a small passage dug into a hill behind the store, the noise alone from the wind shooting through the pines overhead was enough to keep me awake for quite a while. Keep in mind, I normally sleep beside roads, noise is nothing worrisome to me typically but this was huge.

My phone dead and my alarm too quiet to rouse me, I woke up 20 minutes before the store opened and rushed to get my camp taken down before I was discovered. It's one thing to come clean about where you've been and another completely to be found out, people always assume the worst, better to open with the best then work backwards.

I walked out from the side of the building to find him unloading his truck. "Well where did you come from?"

"I'm walking across the country," I said in standard response. It didn't matter that this wasn't exactly the answer to his question or that the only place I could have come from was behind his store, it just mattered that I distracted him for a moment to make things okay. Nothing up my sleeve while my other hand is stashing a dove in my coat pocket.

I came inside and was happy to use the bathroom, brush my teeth and wash my hands first thing in the morning and all with running water. The man working the general store started a fire in the wood burning stove in the center of the store which clearly had once been a house. I sat by the fire and ate and drank and read, The Little Prince, which was given to me by a friend on this journey who said I was the title character. The man at the store laughed at the book and than confessed to reading another book meant for children several times as an adult, I told him I had never read it before.

He let me send an email to my family since I hadn't had reception in several days except to pick up a message that said they were worried about me and afterwards I sat until almost 9 am. I had a long day awaiting me on the way to Cloudcroft.

"Well, I reckon it's about a mile uphill, then a few miles steep downhill, and then you got 17 miles up to Cloudcroft. All uphill." He took my picture for a scrapbook of visitors to the store he had and I found out the long way just how accurate his assessment of the trip was. Twenty-two miles in total, and it was just over twenty before I crested the mountain. At 9000 feet at the crest of a hill, the natural world brimming over with natural life suddenly was spilling over with civilizations signs. My phone went suddenly from no signal to full signal, cars were abundant as well as power lines running up and down the mountain, a PA sounded a man's voice in the distance from some sort of event and a Brand new Ranger Station was just around the corner. Suddenly, I was starving.

It wasn't even 5 in the afternoon yet and I still had plenty of energy to try and make it part of the way down the mountain towards Alamogordo, just a quick bite to eat and a blog sent off to let people know I was alive . . . Pizza. I had dreamt of pizza for days with just a quick taste the day before. Daydreamed really, often, I don't remember my dreams but I had thought of pizza. At the first intersection in town lie a pizzeria ripe for the plundering. I strode in, ordered and sat and started to turn on my computer. My brain completely shut off. Everything moved on at normal speed except me and suddenly I felt like it took a minute to blink and my jaw sat slack, something I am normally much to prideful to do. I took a few moments to get functioning again.

Four days, 120 miles and up two mountain ranges with not enough food, flat tires, rocky roads. It all had been piling up, taking it's IOU's patiently for my body to let them loose and there they came. I have this theory about your body and mind, they won't get sick as long as they know they can't. They will just sort of hold on indefinitely until you have a down moment to deal with the sickness that has been so officiously brushed aside behind a velvet rope, just waiting for its time to strike. It's why you always get sick on vacation but never at work. My body was patient, it pushed through far more than it should have. It could have slowed down and still got me where I needed, later but there nonetheless. I pushed it, I always do. It's why I ran a marathon without training, it's why I chose math in college, learned Czech, and it's my natural place-in the red. As hard as the last few days were, many times I felt amazing, alive and like I was beating something I shouldn't be able to, pushing the limits of what is possible in my life and expanding my envelope. That's what this is.

I'll let you in on a secret now. At the end of my life, I want my story to be so unbelievable that no one would put any stock in it if it weren't well documented. I'm afraid this route will leave me alone with no family and a sad ending, but if not, it could be the greatest story I could come up with and the best gift I could give to people that are afraid of trying for something more. Even in such a life you need rest though, and tonight like few others I needed a shower and a place to rest my head. Instead of heading down the hill from the pizzeria, I crossed the street to the Summit Inn and was granted a night of peace and rest.

Tomorrow the story starts anew and before too long it changes completely. 939.

Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains, NM: A Matter of a Pinon

2009-04-09T19:05:00.007-04:00

Miles since last blog: 117
Days since last blog: 4
Miles Total: 2910.5

Route

About a week or so back I said something like, "I want to be broken and feel the rain wash over me in the desert and let the world pick me back up."

This definitely falls under the category of be careful what you wish for and secondarily that when vague prophecies come true, it's not exactly in the way you expect. But let me start from where I left you last.

Day 1

I woke up on the side of the highway after a short day previous due to charging of gizmos and doing various internet things I hadn't been able to while in Carlsbad with my ranger pals. Call me Yogi.

It was 7 am when I woke up but I just couldn't manage to pry myself from what I now considered a comfortable bed in my home, but what is, in actuality, a smelly unwashed sleeping bag in a one man tent. I laid there, unsleeping but relaxed until 9:30 deciding that if my body wanted to rest, I should. After all, I was ahead of schedule and had a few grueling days ahead of me.

Other than that, it's pretty hard to remember that first day. Thoughts that seemed important at the time flittered through my head as I walked deeper into the desert and saw less and less of populated world. I admired the torturous twist of dead trees. How they had clearly held on to a painful and arduous life to the last, winding their ways into poses that harkened to burnt bodies, wretched and ceased, but still somehow beautiful if only to see how hard life had tried.

I passed what I believed to be the marker for my last 1000 miles as well. I was wrong. I tired early and barely made what I guessed to be 30 miles before I had my second flat (one was flat before leaving). I cursed, set up camp, tried to fix the flat and went to sleep.

Day 2

It was cold. Again I woke up at 7 and again I stayed in until the sun hit my tent and warmed it passed comfort. It had gotten so cold the previous night that despite the heat which roused me from my glorious military cocoon sleeping bag, when I took a drink of water from the gallon jug I had kept in the warmth of the tent, it still had ice chunks in it. I was cold, very cold. I had about 7 miles of road before I hit dirt and on dirt I would stay.

This dirt was rocky and hard to push my carrier (which I have named Ando, yes, this one is a boy) and I saw nearly no one except a employee from the US Dept. of Ag. whose job it was to hunt Mountain Lions and Bobcats that threatened local farm business.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"I'm walking across America," I answered. I had taken my spare sign off my back since no one was out there almost.

"Well what are you doing out here?" He continued.

"I'm heading towards Pinon on my way to Las Cruces." I said. We talked a bit about the walk and his job, the country and the road I was about to travel through.

"Is there a restaurant in Pinon?" I queried.

"Nope."

"Is there a gas station?" I asked hopefully.

He shook his head 'no.' I had a lot riding on Pinon, it was the only town I would hit via my route for the next 150 miles and though 4.5 gallons of water seems like a lot, it isn't that much water to take with you on this distance. I had counted on Pinon.

"There's a small store, but sometimes it's open, and sometimes it ain't." He left me and said he'd probably pass me on the way out.

The day continued, tireless toiling of pushing Ando up hills and holding back Ando from rolling down hills was almost all of it for the hottest part of the day. Dust coated everything I had and I noted how fast I was going through my bread and peanutbutter, plenty of jelly left. Other than that was only energy bars and very old snickers, the chips I had bought were already gone.

True to his word the USDA man stopped by and gave me a gatorade.

"Just stay on the main road," he warned. "There's a lot of places to turn off, but don't do that."

I went on and before too long I came to a T intersection of dirt roads. Both directions went directly up mountains and it was not at all clear which way was correct. I consulted my compass and chose. Right, North West.

It deserves to be said that this was not on my directions. In fact, from this point on many things weren't on my directions, further, many thing were that did not actually exist. Had I been at this less time or was of a more worrisome personality, this probably would have really scared me being in an unpopulated desert and all. With the cold at night, the lack of people and the heat of day, this would be an excellent place to die on accident.

I headed straight up the mountain. I had been moving up in elevation since the 3110 feet of Carlsbad's main town, but this was the pass over the Guadalupe Mountains and once more, it was a rim trail that continually had sharp rises and falls until I came to the end of the trail and a cattle guard where the sign read "Private Property," another sign read, "Danger: Cyanide Gas" and a bit more about keeping your dog away from the containers on property.

Using selective logic and an unbreakable desire not to go back the way I had came I began the decent. A crazy grade that sometimes left me gravel skiing behind an overzealous Ando. I tread carefully as the sun was slowly sinking. I did not want to sleep in a private canyon, I was resolved to come out the other side or get a ride out back to where I had turned wrong and go the other way if it came to that. urning back to where the pavement had ended was not an option, it was already 20 dusty miles behind me.

As the sun set I found that I was indeed on course. It's happened before that my route unknowingly took me on private roads, I turned down a road I could not have been more thankful to see and heard a car rumbling toward me. I thought of hiding, I thought of getting shot, I though it was best to stay on the road and see what happened.

The beat down old truck pulled up next to me.

"How you doing?" A man with gray hair and a ball cap so sweat stained it was impossible to say what it originally looked like.

"I'm a little tired, but okay."

"Yup, I figured. Bill (USDA hunter) told me you'd be headed my way." We talked a few minutes but mostly it was awkward silences. By this time I had another flat, my last spare, these roads are harsh and unforgiving to tubes and he may have offered to fix it but I couldn't understand him.

"I was a little worried I was lost for a bit." I confessed.

He took a long look at me and spit a spray of chew out the window of his truck which had a big plastic sewage container on the back. He looked at me with squinted eyes. "It's kinda hard to get lost out here, ain't no real roads to turn down."

He thought I was an idiot. I explained about the turn behind me but it seemed to make no difference. He headed off and I pumped my tire again before trucking down the rocky road. My direction told me to turn right in 3 miles, only a few things you could barely call a road popped up and I traced the main road for a while before doubt nagged me. I headed back a ways without Ando, mildly worried I would return to Ando and a furry woodland creature friend trying to get at his tasty energy bar innards.

I walked for a ways and thought back to USDA and the Spitter, the main road cropped up in my brain again. It was all dark but I was pretty sure I hadn't missed it. I went back to Ando and headed up the road again for a bit before I found myself looking at the stars and my compass and judged myself to be heading straight South which was no direction I had wanted to go. I walked ahead a bit, then I took Ando miles back to a minor turn off and left him there while I went to explore. On my way to climb a peak and see what I could I passed the carcass of a Buck which had beat eaten through the rib cages and began a mild worry that I would return to Ando to find a woodland creature that wanted my tasty innards. Among the wildlife here is lions and wolves and bears, oh my, and coyotes but who cares.

I climbed the peak and saw the far off glow of a town on the skyline in an entirely different direction. Dejected, I wandered down the mountain back to Ando and set up camp hoping it would be clearer in the morning with the sun showing me direction. The sky was cloudy so I was unsure of the North Star and an ore deposit could effect my compass, better to wait. Besides, I was exhausted, still on private property as far as I could tell and having walked about 30 miles on dirt roads and over the Guadalupe Mountains in addition to the paved beginning of the day. My body hurt and the tendons in my right ankle seemed to be stretched over the bone the wrong way so that they clicked when I stepped, my old knee ached and I wasn't getting antwhere. It was definitely time to rest.

The highlight of the evening came slightly before this when a meteor skidded through the atmosphere. It was the brightest shooting star I've ever seen, big and brilliant green shooting off orange sparks. For a moment I was sure the world was about to end, from nuclear winter, zombie apocalypse or otherwise, take your pick. It was amazing like a natural firework out in the nothing desert.

Day 3

I was up and getting ready shortly after 7 am and heard a truck rolling down the road, hoping to get directions to town I made sure I was as presentable as I get. It was a USDA hunter from the other side of the range but he didn't stop. My whole body felt like rubber even after a good night's sleep, I was exhausted but I had to keep moving.

I tried to pump my tire but it was beyond help and my pump was a poor example of its kind. I swore and my eyes teared with rage. Pushing a 100 pound cart on a rocky road was hard enough, with a flat it was beginning to feel impossible. I had enough bread left for two sandwiches, less than two gallons of water which would last a day at best, I was lost and it sounded as if there might be nothing in town even if I made it there. I started walking the same stretch of road, in some parts now for the seventh time.

Follow the road.

I did. I gave up on my directions and aside from a small hope and the logic that this 'main road' should lead to town, I gave up on Pinon. I followed the road, South or wherever and gave in to it. Wherever the road went, that's where I was going. It was only a few miles and I found a road from my directions, I was more or less on track after all except for the in between roads which seemed not to exist. I gave up on it all, all except the walk and finishing. I was less than 1000 miles from the end finally and it didn't matter what the world threw at me. I would take it and keep going, I had to, there was no other option.

Continually I find the trip getting harder rather than easier, at each step I think, "if I didn't give up now, I won't." I do the same with rides, thinking, "if I didn't take a ride now, I won't." And although each time it is true, it always surprises me the lengths and efforts I will go to to finish this. Sometimes I think, "maybe I would take a ride now, I'm in pain, I'm tired." And someone will drive up and offer and a surprised "no thanks," falls from my lips.

I walked up the road for what seemed like an eternity. Every so often a local rancher would stop and talk to me for a moment.

"I wondered what made those tracks" or "No, the store isn't open," would pick me up or drag me down in turn.

One of the final men, was Rick, who offered to fix my tire. I followed him a thankfully short way to a paved road at last we worked together getting it all taken care of and filled with goo to protect it against future flats which would be less frequent on the paved road anyway.

"No, there's no store in town anymore. There used to be but the owner got sick and ever since he hasn't gotten it back open." He answered my questions with patience. "Yes, the nearest town with a store is Weed, it's North 19 miles from Pinon which is still 6 miles from here."

He invited me for lunch and I couldn't resist eating something other than PB&J sandwiches for a change. We had ham sandwiches and potato chips and it was devine, I washed my hands and was indoors for the first time in 4 days and it felt like luxury. When Rick figured out I could eat more he made me a quarter of a homemade pepperoni pizza and some cinnamon bread desert, I had been dreaming of pizza in the previous days and am hungry now as I write about it.

I set out again, to Weed, my old course abandoned for two reasons: 1) I needed supplies desperately, and 2) my original route took me through 19 miles of check pointed military base which my directions didn't disclose, along with a few mountain ranges. I was in a small gap in between the Guadalupes which I had just descended from and the Sacramentos which were ahead of me. Pinon was at over 6000 feet by Rick's guess.

I was making good time to the store in Weed until I heard news on the road that it closed early and I slowed down. My path now would take me through Cloudcroft, 9000 feet up. I ate my last sandwich and entered into the Lincoln Nat'l Forest where, already at over 7500 feet at times, it rained on my broken body in the sunlight and indeed I had been lifted by the earth, if only by it standing in mountain form in my way. After each rain the smell of pine became so strong and so reminiscent of my home in Northern California that I felt like I could have curled into a ball and fallen asleep in the road.

I was amazed to find that I ended what I guessed to be an almost 40 mile day through the mountains with an excess of energy after feeling so thoroughly broken before. I had been lost in every sense of the word and had only held that I would finish and now I was feeling triumphant almost as I set up camp behind the store I would visit in the morning.

That store is where I wrote this. finishing all but a few of my mummified fun sized Snickers bars and carefully evaluating how much i could stand to eat any more energy bars. I drank the last of my water and charged my phone which has not had reception in days, even had I wanted to quit, it wasn't an option really. The best I could do for my worried family was to get my Mom's phone to ring showing I was alive and had tried to call.

Tomorrow I will find reception in Cloudcroft, post this and make calls including to my hosts in Las Cruces to let them know I am running late. I've earned a pizza and a Superman tattoo I figure, and I'll gladly take either at the first opportunity.

Seven Rivers, NM: String Theory

2009-04-06T01:01:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 17.4
Miles Total: 2793.5

Route

I know that one of the things that fascinated me so deeply with the caverns, aside from their natural beauty, was that this was an area left for exploration. There are thousands of caves and caverns out in the world yet to discover and even those we know of are often left with question marks at the sides of the map.

It's exciting, to know there are still places you can go on this planet and be the first eyes ever to see them, the first feet ever to tread that ground. Even if it is subterranean.

By no means a I an accomplished caver now, I've just followed the path around the main cavern of CCNP like thousands of other people, but someone is out there finding new things still. Just a few decades ago they found a new cave, over a thousand feet deep with over 100 miles of passages and tons still unknown. I think this kind of excitement is part of what fueled the moon landings, there is something about the word 'explorer' that grabs your heart in your chest and says, "beat." Likewise, I think there is a part of many of us that is sad that this is no longer a viable profession, even if we are not the ones exploring, it feels good to know someone out there is.

When you explore a cave, there is danger and darkness and not much else. One of the methods used to make sure you don't get lost in the caves is simple, like a child's idea, you trail a string. The string shows you the way home and connects you to the outside world. Without that string, you may find your way out, you may even remember, but the string makes it easier and though you may have never needed it, the loss would bother you.

When I think back on my path across the country, I see it as a string. Along the string are the people I've met, people who I keep in contact in someway still and all the people who follow my blog or think about the crazy walker they met somewhere in their everyday life months ago. It's something I wouldn't have in a car, it's something that connects us all to each other, that string is our connection to the rest of the world when we get focused in on our immediate surroundings and forget, or have lost, that big world we are a part of.

It's easy to see for me, I travel the string. I met a man in Maryland who joined me on my walk, he knew a girl in South Carolina, she saw another man crossing the nation on the news. The man from Maryland and the girl from SC both knew the man walking from California home to Boston. Because they knew both him and I, we were able to meet in North Carolina. When we met he gave me a contact for a place to stay in Anderson, SC. I stayed there and was convinced by the man who hosted me to change my course to include Carlsbad Caverns Nat'l Park where a friend of his would be a ranger. And none of it would have happened if I hadn't stayed with the man in Maryland, which I almost didn't. The twists and turns and degrees of separation over states and strangers slipped away and the string connected us all.

It seems random and wonderful and strange, but it also feels somehow like the only way it ever could have been.

Carlsbad, NM: Come Sail Away

2009-04-04T01:03:00.007-04:00

MIles since last blog: 19.1
Miles Total: 2776.1

Route

The days walk took three acts followed by an epilogue today.

Act I:

Skip finds himself back on the road without his carrier (which has been christened as Ando now) since his cavern dwelling friends were willing to take it ahead on his course for him. The walk goes well and quickly and he is relaxed on the road.

Act II:

Skip decides to go 'off route' hiking through fields towards the city only to find one of the only rivers in New Mexico, the Pecos, and have to head out through several ranches and over several fences. In the process he loses his sign and later his phone. It is some time before he realizes either of these are missing and he is forced to track himself through the desert 1.5 miles to find his phone, no sign of the sign which was likely carried away by gale force winds.

Act III:

Having made his way back to the road Skip encounters winds which lead to him doing his best impression of a mime for two hours, his impression of the most boring and irritated mime ever. The act ends when a ranger friend picks him up for the day and takes him to a local franchise restaurant for his first meal of the day and a Margarita.

Epilogue:

After a brief shower and rest a commotion outside draws Skip out again. Clay, his host, is heading out with some other rangers to the salt flats of Texas on the other side of the Guadeloupe Mountains to test out his home made 'land yacht.'* The yacht moves well with no one in it but only sits with the weight of a man in it. They stand in the desert salt flats until after dark laughing and pushing each other in the land yacht across the flats.

*A land yacht is a special vehicle built for land but driven by a sail like a ship. This yacht was constructed of fence piping, a few sawed up bicycles and a bed sheet sail, it was a thing of beauty.

Carlsbad Caverns II: The Land of Enchantment

2009-04-03T02:24:00.005-04:00

Okay, it sounds ridiculous, but . . . sigh . . . I'm enchanted New Mexico. There. Are you happy?

Great, now I feel like I need a princess dress and a poster of a unicorn on the wall. Stupid, super awesome state. Enchanted. Ridiculous.

Nevertheless, it's true, I'm 'the E word.' I spent the day hiking around in giant caves that go down deep into the earth. How deep might you ask? Well, to get out you take a 75 story elevator (and that's not even the very bottom of the cave) to get back to the top. My host graciously set up for me to go into the caves and on a tour of the 'King's Palace' (enchanting) which included the 'Queen's Chamber' (also enchanting) and all for free. Apparently my normal 'getting stuff for free powers' were in full effect even before I picked up the tickets though as I walked through the caves before the tour for 2 hours without even knowing I needed admission for the area. My powers are not limited to this walk, I don't know why but I've always gotten a lot of things for free, I like to think it's because I'm adorable and oh so dreamy, but it's up for debate. I might only be adorable and highly dreamy but not quite "oh so" dreamy.

But enough about where I fit on the manly hotness scale, though I'm sure we could go on for hours. I got lots of film again and at this point I may need to take time off just to get some film edited and uploaded for you all to catch up with. I am constantly astounded by how busy I am, considering I am an unemployed homeless person who knows no one when he strolls into town (See above adorableness). Tomorrow, a day more than I was intending to stay, I am already slated to accompany my host on his way to work, go to breakfast with a few Park officials that have the day off and go on a day hike (because apparently hiking is what I do now when I take days off from walking) with yet another ranger with a day off. My hosts are seasonal park employees that live directly over the caverns, as in directly over them on the hollow hill that houses them.

I enjoy it here so much that I toyed with the idea of just settling for a few weeks in the spare room and when they leave being inherited by whomever moves in next.

"Okay guys," I can here my host saying to the new parkees. "You get my land yacht (a makeshift tricycle/bike device with a sail for the road) and Skip Potts with the place. The Yacht is self explanatory and Skip you just need to feed. Oh yeah and he likes beer. Take him for walks or hikes and he'll give you hours of good conversation and fun, here's the keys, watch for the skunks, see you next year."

Wouldn't that be fun? I wonder how the newbies would react.

No, I have people up the road to meet, things to see and places to get to and the road has brought me to life again. I'm enjoying myself while still looking forward to being done and seeing what's in store for me next. Do I see a giant flying squirrel suit? No, that's the distant future. Hmmmmm, in the near future I see . . . enchantment. So. Dorky. So. Enchanted.

Carlsbad Caverns, NM: 48 Hours in New Mexico

2009-04-02T00:41:00.007-04:00

Miles since last blog: 55.5
Miles Total: 2757.0

Route

Day 1. It was peaceful, serene. The desert is looking as I remembered it from Survival School and it isn't the barren desolation you feel it is when you are in a car, it is a beautiful world that probably inspired the camera setting 'sepia' and a place where it is unneeded. I felt at home. I felt alive. I was singing and dancing as I walked, filming and snapping photos which could in no way encapsulate the beauty I saw.

It's always part of a whole, a photo, like riding in a car, cuts so much out of the desert experience. The scent, sounds and feel. The air is dry and and cool and the sun feels like sheets just out of the dryer, it always feels good, even when it's hot out, at least for a while. A photo or windshield can't master the vastness of the sky or capture the blue of the far off land the way we can with nothing between us. I was at home again on the walk, even though I wanted to move fast and to finish, shaking off the mental drudgery of the giant state of Texas is proving a better boon than I truly thought it would be.

Day 2. To mix things up a bit, I've decided to let you in a bit on the process of how I work, write, exist. I'm not an orderly fellow in thought or planning for the most part. I keep a relatively tidy house when not homeless, but that's about it. The best way I can describe this is to describe my body and its various non-permanent to semi-permantent ink markings at the end of these two days.

Writing on myself is my version of a PDA or whatever electronic device is in vogue right now. On my left forearm is written the following:

T2 Donuts
Long Run
GJ (The Gentleman of Jal)
Extinction Cost
Mummified Snickers & Billy Holliday
1106 (In Semi-permanent)

On my Left hand:

Peaceful desert
Land of Enchantment

On my upper right leg above the shorts line:

The address and email of my Carlsbad Host (In Semi-permanent)

None of these is in this form. It's not a list. it's a dartboard of randomness that is the expression of how my brain works and the few things I deemed worthy of writing down to remember later and today is no different than most of my life. Hardly a day goes by that I don't write on myself.

Some of these things, they're just fleeting thoughts like when I opened a package of powdered donuts for dinner. The wind was blowing at up to 70 mph by some estimates and the donut simply crumbled and blew away right out of my hand as I pulled it out of the wrapper. It reminded me of the way those ash kids in Terminator 2 crumbled into the wind of the nuclear pulse after they were already toast, except this was much more sad because the donuts were real and were to have been a part of me.

Some of them, are ideas I wanted to track down, like is it possible to track the economic cost of an animal going extinct? Did it help commerce in any way and what potential benefits have we lost in the future?

The slogan of the state: Land of Enchantment. Embodied by my early morning walk through the quiet empty land listening to Billy Holliday and finally eating the mummified snickers that had been at the bottom of my pack since Georgia.

My host's info which i didn't want to lose or have washed off. In the event of my death I'm sure the poor guy would have been questioned thoroughly even before ever having met me.

1106. The mileage I estimated myself to have left when I left Jal, NM. I've taken to writing this on my arm when I know it, a little ticker that counts down although the similarity to the holocaust tattoos bothers me I don't know what to do about it.

Some are just memories I wanted to continue remembering. During the heat of the day all I could think about for a time was during my second failed attempt at marathon training (failed for the same knee problem I have been tactically ignoring lately) my running partner and I would do a long run in the morning, then get Jamba Juice and lay on the couch doing nothing but watching movies the rest of the day. I couldn't imagine anything that sounded more amazing or delicious than sitting on a couch with a friend and a cool smoothie and didn't call only because I knew the rest of the world was working.

And finally, sometimes, it's actually something I wanted to write about. The Gentleman of Jal is one of the kindest people I have met. I met him briefly while I was charging my computer in a gas station in Jal and barely remembered him the next morning when he drove up to me 30 miles down the road.

The Gentleman of Jal had brought me breakfast, a XXL breakfast burrito. It was nice but I didn't think anything extraordinary about it until I saw him turn his car around and drive back toward Jal. I thought he had been on his way to Carlsbad. He had driven 60 miles just to see how far I had gone, how I was and bring me food.

Imagine my shock when at a little after 5 pm, 50 miles from Jal, he drove up again. He brought Chicken fingers, Texas toast, French Fries, Cookies and an Energy drink. The Gentleman of Jal took my picture for the county paper and drove back to Jal. 160 miles to bring me food during the day. If one tenth of the people in this world were as good as the Gentleman of Jal then the world would be a truly amazing place.

This is just a glimpse into the random action firing of a brain that causes someone to up and walk across the country. The rest of the day was defined mostly by kind construction workers in the first 75% of the day who gave me reflective vests, the aforementioned donuts and also a host of beverages. The other 25% was defined by wind. Unbelievable stop you in your tracks wind that I have never seen the likes of in my life, thankfully very little sand . . . more on this in the future (See new arm note: Tom's All Natural Sand Blasting).

Jal, NM: Texas 0, Skip 1

2009-03-31T12:07:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 34.2
Miles Total: 2701.5

Route

Last night I made it out of Texas. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of great times and people in Texas, but it was just the mental battle. Texas doesn't just want to hold you there, it wants to break you in the process. I had a few choice words to deliver as I crossed the state line but was too tired to do so. I actually had a dance and several songs choreographed for the occasion in my head but it was a long day, so maybe I'll do it today after lunch. It won't be the same, but the joy of crossing a border and into a new time zone is still pretty fresh.

The day started out with fortune, "in the middle of nowhere" according to the two "bitchen" employees, was a roadside cafe. I sat down and enjoyed breakfast and a free t-shirt courtesy of the girls. From the outside it looked like there was no possible way that this was an open business, but inside the walls were decked with photos of all the 'famous' people that had come through. A few years back it seems an Aussie had even walked through on his walk across the USA. The waitress said she was famous too, locally, then corrected herself to say infamous.

"That's not to hard with a population of one." The other woman said.

Then the wind started kicking up outside and it sounded like the place was about to blow over. 35-40 mph winds were expected for the day. I could have sat all day in the heat, with food and good company but I braved the journey to New Mexico in the wind.

It was a harrowing day. It involved non-existent roads, wind, sand, uphills and at times all of those together for lengthy periods. As I approached the border a Sheriff even stopped me to question me about the tracks I had made across the desert and through a ranchers property after all semblance of roads had left me. I got plenty of video and rather than detail the whole day here I think I'll leave it for the moving picture show portion of my life.

Here I am, New Mexico, and the dark specter of Texas that tried so hard to hold me has been shaken off. I am free to walk again.

Goldsmith, TX: The Lone Star State

2009-03-29T22:28:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 22.6
Miles Total: 2667.4

Route

Another short day and early night. I found a place out of the wind and with a light so I felt obliged to settle in for the night rather than push on closer to the border. It was a hard day, I picked up speed in the afternoon with the realization that I could cross into a new state tomorrow and I felt light even. I hope this isn't some type of placebo, not crossing any borders in so long has taken a real toll on me and the possibility that that might actually be the problem and it could be alleviated shortly has given me a bit of hope and bounce. The bounce unfortunately has nothing to do with my shoes which never arrived and I now have no place to buy them until Las Cruces which will put this pair at almost 900 miles when they retire.

I was also called in off the street today and blessed in a small ministry, which was pretty cool I guess.

The down part of the day was that reality had forced my hand to cut something, I had to let my chance to teach at survival school this summer go. This might not sound like much to you but it is something I agonized over. I have a lot of things that need to be done this summer and even then will likely be in copious amounts of debt from this adventure that will no doubt haunt my future actions, but Survival School was a very important place for me and I saw the way it was able to touch people and change their lives. I can't say why, but there is something about being out there that can change a person greatly and for the good and it is a wonderful thing to be a part of. I feel that is what I have let go of for the Summer in exchange for other things that I care for or are responsibilities.

After I sent my email I walked slowly and for some time would tear up when I would think of what I had missed. If my legs had moved a little faster, been a little longer, if I hadn't taken a day of here or a week off there, could I have kept this treasure? Things along my journey have lined up as well though due to the speed, or lack there of, with which I moved. I would not want to trade my experiences or friends away even if I would have had others in their place. It is a curse that life is so short, that we have so few chances for so many things and what we can pass by.

I feel like life is one giant buffet and I have a stomach the size of a pea, I dream of all the delicious tastes and then break my own heart after I fill up on only one. Nevertheless, I'm not one who dwells, the decision and loss is in the past and tomorrow is a new day with greater opportunity and less pressure of speed and distance. I feel some love for this will come back at the border and with some loss already behind me.

I dream of seeing my friends, my family, my city-Prague, and of new foreign places like Honduras and Buenos Aires. I know some of these dreams will break my heart again, but a few will come true and they will be extraordinary. And the best part is that the dream of this walk will be complete, no regrets about things undone, no longing like I am missing a great adventure on my life checklist, I will be free to pick and choose from any dreams I wish knowing I will always have this.

Odessa, TX: The Edge of Nothing

2009-03-28T22:32:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 20.6
Miles Total: 2644.8

Route

The good news is: it sounds like I have a place to stay in Carlsbad.
The bad news is: it adds another 13 miles to my walk to get to the place.
The Better news is: the place is with a forestry ranger in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

What does this mean?

Well the down side is that another day of walking didn't actually get me much closer to my end point which is quickly becoming a stronger focus and I won't be heading through the town of Carlsbad so no big supply stop all the way to Las Cruces after tomorrow.

The upside is that I get to see the Caverns which I hear are really cool and my walk now takes me through the entire length of the park which is pretty cool.

I'm heading into an area that is truly desolate. If you look on a navigation or map program, even in big open spaces where it looks like there aren't any towns, when you zoom in there are little towns written in in gray as if they could be erased at any moment. Sometimes these towns have a Restaurant, sometimes it's just a few buildings and sometimes it just boarded up buildings, but there might be something there and at least there's a wall to shield the wind a bit if you are camping. Out where I am going, there are no little gray towns. The expanse between Carlsbad and Las Cruces, and even between Odessa and Carlsbad has long spaces of nothing at all. The roads don't even have names.

Here's an actual segment of my directions:

12. Turn right 453 ft
13. Turn left 1.7 mi
14. Turn right 4.1 mi
15. Turn left 1.7 mi
16. Turn left 0.3 mi
17. Turn right 2.0 mi
18. Turn left 8.2 mi
Entering New Mexico
19. Slight left 3.0 mi
20. Turn right 0.6 mi

As you can guess, this could make navigation a little tricky. I have to keep track of mileage by timing myself and making sure I try to remember what my route looks like, particularly around intersections.

Blogs, in all likelihood, will become more sparse in these areas. If not from lack of coverage, from lack of battery on my laptop. But there's a few days before that probably. I should be out of Texas in less than 75 hours if all goes well, I could definitely use the mental boost of the border and time zone change. Tomorrow will probably put me in, or past, Notrees, TX. I'm not kidding, that's actually the name of the town. After that is Kermit and then the nothing of the border and several more days in New Mexico with nothing.

1175 miles to go. Start the countdown.

Update: Changing routes again, back to bigger roads and the town of Carlsbad. I was assured by my forester friend that walking through the park wouldn't be a . . . walk through the park. Will keep you posted, but now I am heading out to nowhere for a day or two.

Midland, TX: Broke like the Wind

2009-03-26T23:15:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 65.7 (two days)
Miles Total: 2624.2

Route

Let's begin by just saying, "cars are magic."

Over the course of this trip I have found that I drastically overestimate the speed with which cars actually travel. That is to say, when people tell me it takes five hours to get some where by car, I think they must be out of their mind. After all, I waked that distance in a few weeks, surely a car can do it in an hour or two. So my perception of distance has changed too, when I was in Southern Alabama for instance, it just didn't seem like Maryland was all that far away, the idea that a trip would take 16 hours by car could barely fit in my head anymore, I mean, when you're walking, cars are just SO fast.

I thought this new perspective would possibly be dashed by my trip back to Sterling City, but just the opposite was true. Four hours to cover two weeks of travel was just astounding to me. I mean, I sometimes walk 13 hours in a day. I'm all for being green and I love the earth and I'm not encouraging anyone to go out and drive around and use a bunch of gas, but I will say that I doubt I will ever again understand someone not wanting to go somewhere because it's too far away, unless it is from one side of Russia to the other. The fact that my trip will take me another two months or more when I have driven the remaining distance in less than a day is incomprehensible to me. How could anyone use distance as an excuse in the age we live in, the world is so small and cars are magic speed pods, that's all there is to it.

Next, I saw another deer with a broken leg yesterday, which was depressing and hard to take. I wanted even more to help it but as I approached I could only see it's terror and pain grow as it tried to run off. On the other hand, I also saw my first couple tumbleweeds the last few days, so that was a bit exciting.

Finally, today was all about wind. I hate wind. Wind is terrible, why won't it go get sliced up by a windmill somewhere?

My walk today was a solid 20+ miles into a 15-25 mph headwind (according to the paper). I tried a little experiment today. I pushed my carrier (which weighs about 100 pounds) downhill and let it go. It stopped. Then it rolled back up the hill to me while picking up speed. That's what 15-25 mph winds do to a walking day. My legs are sore, I can't remember the last time that happened. Pushing something for 20+ miles uses a lot of new muscles for a long time. I couldn't even make three mph, I went through a gallon and a half of water, it was terrible. I spent most of my day swearing into the wind and on the verge of a Donald Duck freak out complete with me fighting air.

My fabulous hosts offered to keep me another night so i think I'll take them up on it. Especially since tomorrow is supposed to be 31 mph winds at a temp of 46 degrees. Welcome to the flat dessert.

Sterling City II: On the road again

2009-03-24T23:15:00.002-04:00

Hit the Willie, because I've headed out of Austin on the road to California again. I've just been dropped at the point I left off at when my Carrier broke and in the car I had the nervous yawns of an athlete before his event. And this is the event.

When I started, part of this was to test my limits. I wanted to see if I was the man I thought I could be, if I could find my limits then push through them and keep going when push came to shove. Physically, I did this long ago. But now, when I am tired, when I am alone and heading into the real desert in a week or so, when I feel like my journey is done even though my path isn't; now is when I test my mind and my spirit.

I've traveled the distance I have left twice over already. It's not that far but it stretches out in front of me, every day I feel further away rather than closer. Just as I should be speeding up with nothing to slow me down, I am moving slower than ever. Now is the time I learn the hard lessons, I have built myself up over the last six and a half months and it is time to learn humility and perseverance on a new scale.

I am alone, but friends will visit me, family will come, I can make this even though I don't always feel like I want to anymore. This is the great new test of my life and I only hope I can pass it. It is not the desert, it is not food, it is not water, it is not my knee, it is not my loneliness or my time; it is only myself I have left to deal with. Thanks to everyone who has supported me in so many ways, it has carried me so far and I hope to see you after this is all over so we can enjoy a meal. If you want to join me, you are welcome in the desert as well, and I can use the help, though my foe will still be the same.

I want to break down, I want to feel the rain pour over me in the desert and sit soaked and on the verge of tears but relieved to find strength and know I will keep going. I want to fall and let the world pick me up when I don't have the will to. I know this is waiting for me in the desert. I feel it in my whole body. I am not afraid.

ATX Redux VI: The Chicken Stands Alone

2009-03-24T00:56:00.003-04:00

On a Sunday afternoon a group of a hundred or more cloister in a small bar for an event unspoken of in normal society. It's dark inside and when you walk in, the first thing you notice, a small cage. It's a wooden frame with chicken wire completely surrounding it and people give it an excited look as they hurry by to go make their bets out back. Above the cage only inches above the top is a light, shaped as a popular NASCAR complete with decals. The light shines down into the small box giving an effect that I can only remember in finals wrestling matches from high school or interrogation rooms on TV, it pales all the other lights except for the sunlight which pours in through open doors at both ends of the bar. The doors have to stay open because the crowd would turn it into a sweltering heat even with air conditioning at full blast if they weren't.

At the far end of the bar in the corner there is a Rock-a-billy man setting up speakers and guitars. His hair is slicked back like a greaser of the 50's and his arms are covered in tattoos of American flags and music notes that encircled his elbows. Everyone knows him, he's a big name who plays for free every Sunday, but he's not why they're here mostly.

People crowd around the bar getting Lone Star Beer, the Texas equivalent of PBR. They're ordering from an older woman, Ginny, it's her bar. As one local puts it, "Ginny puts the charm into being un-charming." She's surly and reminds me of a smoking all-night diner waitress that I used to know and love around the casinos of Reno. There's excitement in the bar and people are getting twitchy and impatient, eyeing the back door and the cage alternately.

Eventually the event begins. It's hard to even find a place to see because it's so crowded. When you can see, the view is powerful. There in the cage stands a Rooster, people all around it shouting. He is backlit so that you see only a black shadow of an outline as he looks keenly at the crowd.

"Now! Do it now!" People shout.

They want it to defecate. They want it to defecate on their square. For 57 people lucky enough to have braved the line and gotten a ticket, there is a place in the cage where the chicken can shit that will win them $114 for their buy in of $2. It's called Chicken Shit Bingo and Ginny started it here at Ginny's Little Longhorn Bar decades ago because of the slow Sundays. Dale Watson, the Rock-a-Billy musician that has a big name, one patron estimates he runs $2k a night for gigs, he plays for free. Years back when he was a nobody he walked into Ginny's with a guitar and asked if they did live music.

"Well, we haven't before," said Ginny, "but I see you got a guitar. Let's see what you got."

He still plays for free, for fun, for Ginny. He's got songs for Lone Star Beer, for special tamales that come through, and for the event itself of course. There's also free chili dogs and hot dogs.

It all starts in the early afternoon and can go on into the night. Three rounds of CSB are played each starring Sissy, the chicken of note. In between rounds Sissy is taken out of the cage and taken back to her pen out back. People stop Ginny to get pictures with them both.

Thirty minutes in my scientific mind starts thinking: if Sissy likes attention, she would slowly be being trained to hold it in when in the cage over trial after trial, assuming a chicken is capable of such things, which it might not be. The thought of a starlet chicken holding it in for the attention of a bunch a drinking, laughing, shouting people seemed mildly hilarious. Whoever would have thought the behavior of so many could be determined by the bowel movements of a chicken?

When watching a chicken in a pen for as much as 45 minutes, people get a little nuts, people say things that you'd never hear anywhere else, they're funny, they're happy. It's a place you never thought you'd end up and yet even I found myself zooming in on Sissy's tail-end and leaving the camera running hoping to get the money shot when I could film between the people in the crowd.

"17!" Someone yells.

"Did it go? Was it 17?" Someone else asks. There's no need for the question and the person is revealed as a newcomer, when the shit hits one of the squares drawn on the ground, everyone knows. Screams rise up, people flip out, even if they lost. It is a communal event of patience and gregariousness that has come to fruition in a most unlikely form before us all. Outside, a line is already forming for the next round and people shuffle off to listen to Dale or chat in the back parking lot which is filled with drinking locals.

Is it the uniqueness of the event that brings us? The music, the tradition and institution of it after so many years. A strange redneck experience for city folk of Austin or a strange city experience for the rednecks of Austin? I couldn't say for them but for me, I just thought, "what a damn interesting thing, and what a great gathering it has wrought."

From where I stand, 'Chicken shit' no longer means 'coward,' it means 'good times.'

SXSW & CSB

Update: The times, they are a changing

2009-03-23T15:46:00.002-04:00

In the past I have had a few confederates in my journeys. I've been keeping tabs on these fellows as much as possible and I thought I might recap their time with me ever so briefly and give you a heads up on where you can see them performing. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Free: This was my buddy for about two months of my journey. I met him when I couch surfed his place in Maryland and saw in him great possibilities. I pushed him to come with me and I didn't have to push hard, at the time, it seemed like a godsend, the perfect travel companion for the trip of a lifetime. Well, Free was great, but if he was a godsend then heaven is a coffee plantation. Free drove ahead and helped with any number of things including but not limited too: Press Releases, meeting CS Hosts, recording film, drinking copious amounts of coffee, setting up camp, breaking down camp, feeding me, getting me water, inspiring me into trying to be a mediocre writer (when I had previously been happy with being a terrible writer) and just being an all around pretty good friend. I cried on his shoulder at least once that I can remember.

We had met up in Washington DC again after I left his place and we were together until my 'down time' in Gainesville, FL, or somewhere in Southern Alabama on my route at the time. We cracked each other up. An example on both sides -

When arriving at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Free pulled up to find me talking with a local sheriff who was searching me and a cluster of people coming out of trailers to see what was up.

"This is the most interesting thing to happen in a month," one said.

"What happened last month?" replied Free.

or

"That's the top of the list for this trip: witness a bris."

Now that he is living with a rabbi, perhaps his dream will come true. (I had an inappropriate joke for this occasion which I have left out for tastefulness)

***

When being woken up via air horn from a police car outside the tent, headlights glaring in, we opened the tent flap up and talked with the officer who informed us that people had been steeling the copper pipes off the church we were sleeping behind for scrap metal sales. He checked our IDs and went off and we zipped up the flap.

"Now how about we get to work on those pipes?" I said to Free before crashing back into sleep.

or

"Man, I want some apple juice, but not the natural stuff with all that crap floating in it."

In actuality, I've said funnier things, but it turns out I have a very dirty mind and many of my jokes aren't fit for the blogosphere. That, and well, I talk with Free on occasion and he tells me something I said that made coffee spray out of his nose months later, I never remember it. I'm glad one of us remembers it.

***

Life was good times with Free and I miss him, I recently read this on his blog "Within the week, I am moving to East Providence, Rhode Island, where I will be renting a basement apartment from a Rabbi and his wife, who has purple hair." Needless to say that made me proud and happy and I look forward to keeping track of his adventures. Previously he had become a waiter which was totally not befitting of a man of his unique disposition.

Kodiak: I met this guy on Couch Surfing, he was a 19 year old kid who wanted to get out into the world and travel but was afraid to go alone. We finally met up in La Grange, TX after a 43 mile day. His intent was to walk with me the whole distance to California. After 8 miles he decided that hitchhiking might be the way to go.

In the end Kodiak only hung around for about four days before he felt comfortable enough on the road to go it on his own. He headed off to Dallas out of Austin as I went towards San Angelo. I didn't have much time with Kodiak, but I like to think that it had a pretty profound effect on his life if only as training wheels. Kodiak is out riding by himself, running wild, here's a clip from one of his recent blogs, "I had to keep up my travels but I need the money for a new laptop so I will be hitching to Maryland to join a carnival temporarily."

I chat with Kodiak sometimes online still and keep up with him. He's leading an interesting journey very different from my own and I look forward to hearing about my friend, the kid who actually ran away and joined the circus.

***

It's not all though. Outside of my journeys I keep in contact with friends. In a matter of months there will be babies, lay offs, divorces, abandonment of businesses, the return from a life changing trip, and a number of other things. I can't think of a single person I know who is not going through, or about to go through, huge changes in their lives. Can we all expect such a drastic realignment? Is the 'swift spiritual boot to the head' that John Cusack talks about in Grosse Point Blank coming for us all? Perhaps since we see shifts coming in economy, government, and so many other areas, perhaps these are spurring us on to our own changes under the guise of "When in Rome."

I do feel like something big is coming, some great change. I can't say that it will start well, the economy, housing, I don't know, but I don't feel it's apocalyptical, I think it could be a new renaissance. I make no bones about being a huge dork when it comes to science, I spend a good amount of my time reading science news and listening to science podcasts. The things that are going on right now in the world are incredible, miraculous things that we could only dream of before. Invisible fabrics, pills that can re-grow amputated limbs, as you read this there are photos available to look at from the Hubble Telescope that look back in time about 10.5 billion years.

Right now we are in a period some have already begun to call "the Sixth Extinction." There have been five great extinctions before this, a great extinction is when an abundance of living species disappear during a relatively short time period. In the worst of these, over 90% of the species of earth disappeared with estimates as high as 95%.

Our world is changing, personal, national, species and the earth itself. To quote Ryan Renolds in Van Wilder, "Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere." Change is inevitable, some will be sad, but I think we could use it all the same.

ATX Redux V: The Hiccup with Hipsters

2009-03-21T15:21:00.008-04:00

If you want to get to the core stereotype of any group of people, the sure source is the lightbulb joke. It never fails. No matter how terrible or benign a stereotype is you'll find it well represented here. I'll give you an example, and as a disclaimer: I'm largely Irish so it's okay for me to say this.

"How many Irishmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

"?"

"10, one to hold the lightbulb and 9 to drink until the room spins."

From our lessons above we can take from this that Irishmen are reputed to be drunks. Having been to Ireland I can say that this is in large part true, but in a fun kind of country wide tailgate party for team Ireland that never ends because there's no game coming.

I bring this up solely to tell you this joke as an illustration of yet another group of people. Hipsters. I'll give you the joke first.

"How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

"?"

(Scoff) "You don't know?" said in an incredulous voice.

This is, at its essence, the hipster. In my standard roving urban anthropologist fashion I have been observing more in the way of Jane Goodall than partying with the hipster. The wikipedia definition has this as part :The term is sometimes used in a derogatory manner, referring to someone who moves from trend to trend while claiming to be outside of mainstream culture. I have made some notes as well.

1) Hipsters don't recognize themselves as hipsters, they only recognize other hipsters as hipsters, sort of like the dog that thinks it's human but still recognizes other dogs.

2) Hipsters are looking for the coolest 'uncool' thing, so there is more or less a small variety of uniforms available handily at thrift stores everywhere. The idea is that you want to be as cool as possible and live much of your life to this end while scoffing at those who are not and those who are also trying to look cool. You are supposed to look like you aren't trying, to this end there are a lot of carefully arranged mismatched clothes, bad hair and mustaches, etc.

3) Mainstream is not cool. The coolest things have the word 'indie' in front of them. Indie music, indie films, these are the things hipsters hoard to, apparently indie meaning independent is an irony lost on them, but only because they are trying so hard to look like an independent thinker which they accomplish be copying the other independent thinkers they know.

4) One of the most common things to exit a hipsters mouth, "God, this sucks, there are hipsters everywhere." (see note 1)

5) Although they are 'not mainstream,' if you are unaware of things inside their mainstream (i.e., indie movies, 'non-fashion' or indie music), you are immediately looked at sideways and are subject to scoffing condescension as: if you aren't cool, you must be mainstream.

6) Only other people can say if you are a hipster, you would never know of you were one. I could be a hipster (unlikely with respect to music but I like film a lot), you could be a hipster, you'll only know for sure if people you recognize as hipsters scoff at you and you overhear them calling you a hipster.

Those are my basic notes on the subculture. Some of you may have realized that the title of the blog was an allusion to an old Star Trek episode, 'the trouble with tribbles.' Tribbles were cute fluffy little breeders that were soon filling the starship enterprise with their adorable spawn which threatened the entire ship with smothering due to their numerous fuzzy couplings. Well, if you replace the Starship Enterprise with 6th street in Austin and Tribbles with Hipsters, you basically have it.

The streets are filled with people, all thinking their own group is cool and that everyone else is hipsters.

Why the hatred of hipsters? Well, I can only guess that the hate is due to hipsters in essence being, Super-Posers. Posers are people who are trying to be things they're not (see Vanilla Ice), picture Holden Caufield's smoldering fury at phonies, that's basically the principle. Except Hipsters are like an entire culture of posers who had nothing to pose as because they identified it all as uncool and then created an entire culture of their own, completely filled with effort and pretense, all fake. While posers wanted to be something some part of them identified with, hipsters just don't want to be anything else.

I don't mind hipsters anymore than any other fake people, I've got some friends I think are probably hipsters. Despite all the animosity they stir up tacitly with their existence, although no open hatred, they're just trying to figure it all out too. And they are sort of adorable in their own way, but I'm still glad they don't breed like tribbles, there's a population problem people.

ATX Redux IV: I want to ride my Bicycle

2009-03-20T23:11:00.003-04:00

Things have been going pretty well out here at the festival. Yeah, the passion of walking is a little bit waning, but not my passion for travel or new experiences.

My new hobby, in between free food and concerts, is ogling the bikes at REI. I'm learning a bit too. I went and got my carrier's broken part replaced and did some general stock up and wheel maintenance and the bike tech, a great guy named Jeff, taught me a bit about tires. It's not a lot, but I'm learning and salivating over the thought of fast and equally green travel that is as free as walking. I've been on more and more bikes in my down time and it just seems so fast.

My friend Jolly Green sent me a message today, he's at my end point in Santa Monica and had dinner with someone I'd met in Houston. Small world, and even mores so if you're on a bike. After all, Jolly Green was in Austin just a few weeks ago and he's already at the coast. The idea of traveling 100 miles in a day, awesome.

That's one of my two fantasy purchases for the end of the trip: an awesome bike and a guitar or banjo. Yeah, music is getting into my blood, even my heart is beating in time. Alright, my heart always beat in time, that's how it always was, it helps me, you know, stay alive. Still, you get my point.

I've always considered it one of my great faults that I am not a musician. If things were perfect and money wasn't a worry, after the walk I'd be taking guitar and language lessons while riding around the country with my teachers. Super awesome fictional world huh? In this world I would also be able to fly, but that's something else. Check out 'wing suit' on youtube, it'll make your heart race.

Yes, the intrepid traveler, the James Bond of Hobos, yours truly, is not always as down as I was the other night. What, like you never have a bad day? Walking is getting a bit old, but traveling isn't and I'm really looking forward to travel to see some good friends at the end of this all. This week I've been hanging with people from earlier in my trip who live here or are also in town during SXSW. It's been nice to see people and only makes me want to finish that much more. So I can buy that sweet bike.

Video of some SXSW coming soon.

ATX Redux III: SXSW

2009-03-19T23:49:00.001-04:00

You'll hear more later, but just thought I'd check in with a positive little, "having fun at South by South West." Wish you were here.

ATX Redux II: The Ghost of St. Patrick

2009-03-18T01:35:00.004-04:00

I'm nothing if not honest. Perhaps I've said this before. It's not to say I'm good, just that I admit what I've done wrong or poorly and there is plenty of that believe me. Often my honesty was probably the wrong thing and has gotten me into trouble. There was a time today when I was ready to abandon the walk altogether. At least for the time being. I'm not going to, but it was a fleeting thought.

Until now this walk has given me so much, it's hard when that tide turns on you. Now that I am slowing down when I want to be speeding up there is a cost associated with each day. If I am held up a week than there goes Hawaii or Buenos Aires or Honduras or Prague, one of the trips I felt I needed at the end of this vanishes in between the end of the walk and my time at Survival School. One of the many points of this walk for me was to let go of the silly things that become priorities so that I could really live life to it's fullest, what do I do now that that full life is being limited by this journey? I thought about putting the walk aside for a bit, taking a long break and returning to finish after the Summer when I might need it again. My head oscillates back and forth these days a lot, I find meaning and I lose it, it's not as present as before even though there is still something there. Right now, at this moment I am resolved to finish, I believe this side will always win the battle, the irony is, that if my knee continues to bother me than it may be a moot point anyway.

I would hate to have walked over 2500 miles and have it all end with such a whimper of a sore knee, but the reality is that the country I'm coming up against will need all of me. It's the hardest part of my journey in many ways and I need to be in good shape for it.

The day itself was what you would call wonderful, despite my interior monologue. I got to spend the day with my old friend from Philly, she's the singer whose amazing voice pulled me far more into the musical world than I had ever been before. She was also the start of the trend of banjos which have followed me across the country. I got to hear her perform at an open mic tonight for the first time and it was incredible, I wasn't the only one who thought so, person after person came up to tell her or I how good she was. Her band is called papertrees, check them out on myspace.

I can't say why her music effects me the way it does, I think that there are certain pitches or smells or tastes that just reach specific people in ways that they don't reach other people. For me it's Philly's voice or the scent of Vanilla, for someone else who knows, but it seems like I'm not the only one who likes Philly's voice. After the open mic she went outside and performed on the street for a bit, a young guy came up and after a while plugged his ears.

"If I hear this next part I'll fall in love with you," he said thinking of the note coming up. And with that he walked off, fingers still in his ears, homeless people dancing around in front of her. There was something very naked and brave about a street performance which i could see. No stage, no intended audience, just throwing yourself out there and hoping someone is listening and likes it enough to let you know. I've seen performers where this wasn't the case, where they were just stroking themselves by playing where people were, but that wasn't the case here and it is something to watch and empathize with.

When she went off I met up with my Irish friend who brought me to Austin, Colin, we went to a few bars in honor of the day and his nation and had a shot of whiskey each and a few beers before I headed off. He told me that he could definitely drop me off back in Sterling City next Tuesday and that sounded like an excellent plan to me.

Walking home I climbed the short fence into a playground where I sat on the swing set and looked up at the stars which weren't as bright as they were out on the edge of Sterling City. I was singing one of Philly's songs. The day was sweeping over me, through me, not just through my mind but through my body. I could feel the entire trip almost oozing through my body front to back, happiness pouring through my muscles and heartbreak making my bones brittle. It was like a whole life flashing through me but with none of the adrenalin of a near death experience to toughen you for the experience. Sometimes I wonder if I was meant to experience so much when the weigh of it all weighs me down so much I just want to collapse at times underneath it all, the good and the bad.

Call it fatigue, but it could be something else. Being confronted with the path behind me reminds me that in ways I am just a ghost passing through other peoples lives, no more permanent than a breeze and as grateful as you can sometimes be for a breeze, you just as quickly forget it until it comes through again. This is the thing about missing Honduras or Prague or wherever at the end of it all, the places will always be there, but it is friends I wanted to see as well. These places occupy the slot of permanence in my life that is so otherwise vacant, the things that were and if I take care of them, can always be. Permanence is something I miss on the road, a relationship, romantic or otherwise, is something that is natural to hunger for no matter how happy you may otherwise be.

Juxtaposed against the lack of permanence is also the newly felt lack of novelty. Although it is true that every place and person I meet is different and I take something from all of it, I felt incredibly alive yesterday moving at high speeds and doing the unexpected, going off course and tasting something that is really different from what I've had for the last six and a half months. With so short of a distance relatively speaking I have a hard time even logically drawing a line where I would want to take a break if I were to, and so I probably won't, but it seems like the desert that lies in front of me will act as a purgatory of sorts and that perhaps will hold within it many new challenges that perhaps I need to face but are not as exciting as the challenges from before. Maybe this is where I further my lessons in humility and the cost of dreams, maybe it will be a reality check or a realignment with societal thought, I can't say and honestly I feel tired a lot of the time even thinking about it. I've been rubber raw emotionally and it seems like the whole range of it is constantly flooding me, what keeps me going is the thought of seeing old, pre-walk friends along the way and feeling a moment of solid ground beneath me.

I've said to many people, "Everyone wants to find themselves but no one is willing to lose themselves first." I thought I had done this, but I suppose I could pull back another layer because amidst this wonderful day I felt like a lost bobbing buoy of a man.

As a special treat, here's some footage of Philly playing:

PHILLY

ATX - Redux: Luck o' the Irish

2009-03-17T14:30:00.003-04:00

When last we met, Skip was in trouble, stuck in a far off land; injured, afraid, alone . . . hungry.

A decision was made. I would head back to Austin where the closest REI was to get my carrier fixed. This meant Hitchhiking for the first time in my life.

Flashback to 9:45 the previous night where a white truck swerves around me in the dark and an Irishman in a Camo-ball cap wonders what a mother is doing out for a power-walk that late at night.

Flash forward to 9:45 the next morning when the wheel on my cart breaks.

Flash to me saying, "awwwwwwww, F@#$@%#$#@k."

Flash to after the decision to hitch back when I have a plan. I walk into a small diner in Sterling City and ask where I can get a dry erase pen, I'm allowed to take any of a number of colors. I choose purple because it's my favorite color and it makes me feel pretty. Things are going my way.

Flash to a San Angelo Gas station where I am using the pen to write on the back of my normal sign:

AUSTIN
BROKEN WHEEL
HELP? RIDE?

Flash to traveling at 70 mph into Austin, me a giggling idiot drowning in Surrealism and a bad case of the 'weirds.'

Flash back to me walking through San Angelo to get to another gas station and meeting a man who saw me in the paper.

Flash to him letting me out at the same gas station in Wall that I got picked up from and dropped off at by B, my San Angelo host, when I was in town.

Flashback to the diner in Sterling City after I ask for a pen. A man offers me a ride into San Angelo in an hour if I'm willing to wait. I am. I sit down and talk with the girls that work there and show them Couchsurfing. The ride is fast and surrealism begins. I also get a free coke, which was cold, a luxury I haven't had in a while.

Flash forward to sitting on the side of the highway in Wall at the gas station I'd seen so many times from my San Angelo time. I sit for about an hour and half before walking back to the gas station where I chat with the workers, who know me fairly well by now, and then catch a ride with a Grandma, Mother and her 4 kids in a mini-van. Note that they were very patient as I deconstructed my carrier and tied it to the roof. 60 miles into Brady.

Flash to the phone calls I got all day from people concerned people wanting to help, but who were too far away. Thanks all.

Flash to walking to the outskirts of Brady and waiting for a ride minutes before sunset.

Flash to me having beers at 2 am with my CS host from last time I was here. They're running us out of the bar along with everyone else. It's last call.

Flash back to the Highway in Brady, we'll settle here, if it's been disorienting there's a reason for it. That's exactly how it felt. A truck rounds the corner a few minutes after sunset it's the time called magic hour in the movies where the light is beautiful and just about perfect for anything you might want to see. I can see something on the side of the truck and I almost don't throw out my thumb in case it's a sheriff, hitching is illegal and I'm not about to get arrested.

For the first time all day, someone pulls over for me. The rest of the day I picked up rides in diners and gas stations, this was my first true hitch. A man in a Camo-baseball cap gets out of the truck and he seems to have an Irish accent.

"Where are you going?" he asked. He had an Irish sticker on the back of his truck and an emblem on his shirt.

"Austin." I said and told him what I was doing and why I needed a ride. At first I wasn't sure he was going to offer me a ride but then he told me to put the carrier in the truck bed. Hitching with a stroller is hard, you need a truck or something that can hold you, it's much more for a driver to get involved in than simply opening a door.

I called my mom and left a message saying I got a ride.

"So let me tell you a story," Colin, my Irish benefactor, said. He proceeded to tell me about how he hadn't picked up a hiker for 6 years, because the first time it had been a bad experience. It had been a barrier he had wanted to break for a while. We talked for most of the trip, about fate mostly, and the strange coincidences that follow you when you stir things up. There was a lot more to it and I really should have written about it last night, but I was distracted.

We agreed to meet up and have a Guinness, the coincidence of being picked up by an Irishman on the eve of St. Patrick's, who was going all the way to Austin was enough for both of us, then he said he was probably going back through Sterling City in a week and he could give me a ride. Great fortune smiled upon me, and I feel like he felt lucky too. Over dinner he realized he had seen me the night before and swerved around me. It was about 9:45 when we were entering town, 24 hours later.

He dropped me off at my CS host's place and I let myself in and sat on the stairs in a surreal daze.

If you ever want a surreal experience, really, do this:

1. Travel slowly and deliberately in one direction for two weeks. Make sure you keep moving and that each place has only one specific memory associated to it.

2. Travel at a fast pace in the reverse direction

In normal life, you are in the same places over and over again, no place has any overpowering moment. Traveling like this, and then in reverse. You live the entire last 2 weeks in reverse at high speed. Very surreal. In addition to that, I was coming back to a place and people I had seen and met before. It was strange, I haven't really known where I've been in almost a year now. Suddenly I was somewhere familiar meeting people I knew.

It all was too much and it made me start to laugh, giggling to myself. When my CS host arrived home we did the hug thing and I was easily convinced to go get a beer (which turned into 3) despite my earlier desire to go right to sleep. I couldn't help smiling and laughing.

The thing about the day was this: Any given day, you don't know what's gonna happen, but you probably know where you're going to end up. If you are traveling you have an idea of where you are going, if you are staying in town than you know something too. But it had been a day, where contrary to everything I thought when I woke up, I was almost 300 miles away from where I thought I was going to be and doing things I had been sure I wasn't going to do. Doing things I had even lamented missing already. It was a day of true adventure.

And there I was, back in ATX, for SXSW.

Sterling City, TX: When morning comes

2009-03-16T00:03:00.005-04:00

Miles since last blog: 26.5
Miles Total: 2558.5

Route

I had a whole blog prepared last night and it got erased and in the light of morning, most of it seems trivial.

Before I stopped for the evening last night my knee started hurting, an old and familiar pain. It's the pain that stopped me from training from a marathon, it's the pain that has rendered my leg stiff for a week when I have ignored it in the past. I hoped it'd be gone by morning. Shortly after I started walking two things happened, the front wheel on my carrier broke off and the pain returned. I'm over 200 miles from the nearest place I can get the carrier fixed, way back in Austin with no place ahead of me.

The wheel isn't a big problem, I can probably hitch back to Austin and then back again to Sterling city in a matter of days to pick up where I left off. My worry is my knee. I can walk for a while every day even with it injured, but only a few hours, not nearly far enough and at a pace that would quite literally kill me out in New Mexico. I looked at the route from Carlsbad, NM to Las Cruces, NM yesterday. There's nothing. And not Texas nothing where when you look at the map there are little gray lettered towns pencilled in so light you can barely see them, ready to be erased when they die. There's nothing, not even the gray towns. The gray towns of Texas were my salvation, sometimes there'd be nothing there but a few boarded up old houses, sometimes just a gas station and sometimes even a restaurant, but in either of the latter cases it left me with something. Even the boarded up houses block the wind at night if I had to camp.

I'd been looking forward to this span of nothing, a personal time that had no interruption or hope of civilization to spoil it. No phone, no computer, just nature, me and my feet. Now I don't know what the future holds. I'll try to take it like I have everything else though, one step at a time. First step, get my wheel fixed somehow so that I can carry enough water with me into the desert.

Carlsbad, TX: Happy Happy, Joy Joy

2009-03-14T23:35:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 29.6
Miles Total: 2532.0

Route

First off, I have yet another video for you today (as I did yesterday if you didn't check), so if you are an impatient little weevil you can wriggle your way to the bottom of the blog and look at that now.

My last day in San Angelo was yesterday and it was the best of the bunch without a doubt. I woke up late, and was off to speak to the 4th and 5th grades of Bonham Elementary School during their respective gym periods. It was a blast, I told the fourth graders a little about what I was doing and they paid rapt attention until all their kiddie energy was just bubbling up and out of them and the gym teacher had to put on music for them to dance to. Kids were sliding like Superman across the floor on their stomachs and jumping around and a few hung at the back of the classroom with me to ask me more questions and wish me well on my journey. The 5th grade was similar but we headed out early to see a first grade class.

Kids are awesome. It's amazing to see humans so naturally and unquestionably filled with wonder and excitement. In just a few years we manage to repress and destroy that capacity for such pure joy. When an adult is happy, or excited, there is always a small amount of restraint and wariness from being burnt by the world, when a kid is happy, it encompasses them. Every muscle in their face and body is twitching and jumping with a singular goal of expressing their happiness, they aren't worried about homework or school or car payments, their eyes are wide, their mouths can't hold the words in and their legs won't let them sit. Anyone lucky enough to be a part of this kind of moment has the kind of luck it takes to see bigfoot, something that is just a rumor or a faint memory in our grown up world. We try so hard as adults to recapture this kind of joy but I think we are afraid to more than unable, I kind of Icaruian lesson has been taught to us by life and no one wants to build a new set of wings only to have them destroyed again.

If the difference between 4th and 5th grades was surprising, the difference between 5th and 8th is staggering. It's hard to imagine the the mechanisms of society, even the social grind of teendom could so effectively douse such bright lights in such few years but it is certain when you have seen them both that these are the years when we start to change out of those amazing little people and into the grey oblivion of adulthood.

The joy that I take in my life is meeting people, teens, adults, the elderly and seeing that spark of joy flicker in their eyes when they see someone doing something crazy. That light still seems to be inside of many people, even if it never escapes again there is a place where they can revel in it and run through the fields of their mind when they take a step towards believing they can have their own adventure.

The evening was no less spectacular. I made dinner. A stir fry of venison, peppers, onions and quinoa. I don't cook often, I haven't cooked since I started this walk that I can remember, but it has also been a long time since I spent a substantial (four nights being substantial these days) period of time in a family. While I sliced and diced and marinated and fried, B and her youngest daughter made cupcakes for desert, my favorite food. I never cook for myself, I only cook when there are people there I care about and it felt good to have that chance on the road. Life on the road is good, even wonderful if not miraculous or should I go even higher? And yet the draw of a family tugs intermittently on my pant leg, nagging me to let it in, and I want to, but I no longer think they are entirely mutually exclusive. It may be harder and I may need to find an even more perfect partner than I had previously thought, but there was a time I never thought I could have the life I am leading now and I have found it is actually quite easy. The world is nothing if not a web of possibilities to get caught up in.

Walking into and then out of San Angelo I realized I had hardly done anything, and had seen very little up close and yet I knew that I would have a great fondness for it forever because of the people I met there and the kids I talked to, a place is it's people regardless of the buildings that stand there. During my stay the television news and newspaper had run stories on me and periodically someone would stop and talk to me. Each of them were great, fellow teachers, fellow travelers (63 countries is very impressive my fine feathered friend), and just plain old good curious people. My day ended in a church, having dinner with a teacher from the middle school I spoke at. His family was there and we enjoyed an italian dinner and they put me up for the night. It's hard to get momentum up every time I sit somewhere, it's hard to want to keep walking at times but I always do. I wonder sometimes whether it is hard because I don't want to leave the place I'm at, or because when I go I come closer to the end and I am not ready for this experience to stop.

THE ROAD TO SAN ANGELO

San Angelo III: Flashbacks of ATX

2009-03-13T21:45:00.002-04:00

Just a video today kids, more tomorrow.

ATX - VARIETY HOURS

San Angelo II: A thank you to those outside the box

2009-03-12T23:47:00.003-04:00

It was a fine night in the city as we sat down together. A rag tag group. B's father who was turning 80, a german exchange student and a chinese/german exchange student, B's friend P, B and her family and I, all sitting around a salad and lasagna and red glass goblets filled with water. We talked about travel and couchsurfing, about dumpster diving and experiences that were all unique and still universal.

The guests left and slowly and B and her husband L and I, were all that was left in the kitchen as the kids went to bed. More serious topics were broached, we skidded along the course of religion and atheism and into schools and education, into quantum physics and spirituality, health and diet. The clock ticked off the minutes and each time I thought the conversation was over we'd break onto another course that was worth exploring. Sometimes you have a teacher whose lessons you don't appreciate until years later, 12 or 13 in this case.

I champion education, but in fact, until College, I wasn't always the greatest student. I won't go into the specifics of things that I did or what my teachers did to help me, but I'll say that there are a few teachers from High School that I still visit, Mr. Brown and Mr. Baxter. I always knew I liked them, I always knew I respected them as teachers, and at times they did things that may even have appeared to not be very good teaching practices, but until tonight I had never really realized some of the things they had done for me, I don't even know if they realized it or if it was just instinct. Nevertheless, I am eternally thankful to them and as always to my parents who were extremely patient when I would, on occasion, get into what could have been serious trouble with lesser role models.

Thanks if you are reading this, you are part of the reason I am the man I have become.

San Angelo, TX: Do it for the Kids

2009-03-11T23:48:00.002-04:00

The main thing you should know is that I don't plan my days. Things happen the way they do and I just kind of roll through it all enjoying the trip. I know where I'm going more or less, the major cities and my approximate route, but very little about when I'll actually arrive or what's waiting for me there or on the way. Imagine a relaxed version of Quantum Leap, me roaming the planet trying to put right what once went wrong, or maybe it's more like the old Kung Fu television show without the fights. I like to think it's The Hulk, that's the comic book dork in me, except I don't get angry or green and my legs never de-hulk, seriously, they are freakishly big.

I don't plan my blogs either, I sit down and word vomit just erupts from my fingers, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always honest and with at best a few notes jotted down on my arm as a guide. With all this said, I do have a plan today for this blog, but first I'm gonna try to butter you up.

I spent the day talking to students at Lee Middle School, three classes in two sittings. I didn't plan these either, it was all thanks to B, my host, who worked really hard to make sure that I got to speak to as many people as possible today and for the rest of my time in San Angelo. It always feels good being in front of a class for me, it's not the attention, I'm terribly shy sometimes, but I just love the learning process from either side. Really there is only one side, if you've never been a teacher let me enlighten you to the fact that we learn a lot from our students as well. The information might not be presented in a lecture with easily digestible visual aids, but there is a message that each student is delivering to you while you interact. An interested face can be an entire dialogue between a student and a teacher even without words. As a teacher you can see when someone understands something, that 'AHA! moment,' I live for that moment, and I get to experience it with people as I learn how to reach them.

It was middle school, some kids were too scared, too cool, or too . . . whatever, to get too involved, but for some of them, maybe, I reminded them just how big and wonderful the world can be.

"We're not surrounded by water," B said to me in the car, "but this is an island. We're out here on our own and there's not much around." She was telling me about how easy it was, especially for kids who grow up here, to forget about the rest of the world and the possibilities it held.

"You never know what kids are going to be interested in," she continued. "When Jolly Green (my friend bike riding all 48 states) came through he talked with a younger group and they were just shocked that he was 26 and didn't have kids. It was like that had never occurred as a possibility to them. They thought that you graduated High School and you start having kids, some of their parents were only 16 when they got pregnant." This, for us, is the kind of huge AHA moment we can get from a class. A big trade in reality checks on world views. In a simple static world the idea that Jolly Green and I could do these things only because we DIDN'T have a house and a car and all the things we were supposed to have according to the rest of the world, it can be disorienting. And for JG or I, in our tumbling sunshine world of chaos, the view of these kids can grind us to a halt and make us take notice of the 'real world' that we so casually inhabit.

I can't say that I changed any lives today, but I got my shot at it thanks to some good people, parents, teachers, a principle and the kids. I also can't say that the idea that I may be one of those cheesy inspirational speakers that was invited to schools when I was younger is all that comfortable, but it is what it is and if it's a chance to help I'll take it.

I spoke with a good friend on the phone tonight and she said she could tell that I had changed. It's hard to say it so simply but you could if you wanted to, say that I'm just more positive. It's more complex than that, but that'll do. I know I've changed but I'm happy to say that I feel like at my core, in most ways, I'm still the same person I was when I started personality wise. I have the same sense of humor and like the same things. This is good for me, as my friend out it, "Skip likes Skip, everybody knows that."

I suppose I can't ask for much more than that, but here I go anyway.

I need help. I want to help as many people as I can and I think that the best way for me to do that is to make the end of this walk as successful as possible. If the end of all this is successful, maybe it will open a door to continue work like this and I welcome anyone who can help me.

Here's what I want: I want to put together a walk, hear me out, a walk to the coast where people can join me on the last day. It would start maybe 13 miles out with places to join at 10 and 5 miles and maybe the 5k mark. The idea is different from that of other walks, instead of being a race or separating the groups, it will be about bringing them together. The walk would start from 13 miles or wherever was reasonable, then as we hit the 10, 5 and 5k marks, the people going these distances would join in. It is not about finishing first, but together as one group. The thing that would be stressed wouldn't be distance, not mine or any participants, but rather the decision to join us and the idea that that can be a changing point in a life no matter when it comes.

So there it is, what I want. I need help, I don't know how to do this and more importantly, even if I did it would be impossible to put together and walk at the same time.

I realize that this would be quick to put something together and that everyone has jobs and lives, so I won't be disappointed if you can't help, or if it doesn't happen at all. I just wanted to put it out there and see what happens, with the additional tag, "What if it did happen?"

Wall, TX: The Broken and Mending Hearts of Texas

2009-03-11T00:08:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 31.2
Miles Total: 2502.4

Route

I woke up late as I tend to do when I am indoors and then strolled to the edge of town to have a huge and leisurely breakfast. The day felt slow and sad in a beautiful type of way with the overcasting of clouds threatening the first storm in the area in who knows how long. Everyone I meet tells me about Blue Bonnets, a blue/violet flower that sprinkles the roadway here and there. They tell me about how it used to be before the droughts here, that when you looked at a field it was like looking at the ocean it was so filled with that blue. They always look proud and forlorn like an athlete talking about their glory days while bagging your groceries.

It's a different kind of beauty out here that is built on the shining souls of the people in what could be a desolate land. I am indoors again and it is not due to Couch Surfing, but again to a good person who saw someone in need - neither of these people were me, but I'll get to that.

I want the rain for the people of Texas, it would be base and selfish to wish that it didn't fall on me simply because I was walking. I can feel it ready to fall in the air and I welcome it (especially now that I'm inside). I had a long way to make it today to get to San Angelo, 44 miles, If I hadn't woken up so late I'd have made it probably, but then, I've found that the path my life takes has markers that lead its way even if I don't always know how to read them.

The roads here are littered with deer, dead, reeking of death and rot on the highway and if you smell it before you see it, it's that much worse because you're caught off guard. I'm used to road kill, it doesn't phase me in the slightest. I don't believe in Bigfoot for the simple reason that I haven't seen one dead on the side of the road and I have seen everything else, even things I didn't know existed. Today was different though.

Walking up the highway I saw a deer, it looked as if its back legs were half sized so that its body slid towards the ground at its end like a hyena. The highways out here are fenced with barbed wire on both sides everywhere, the deer leap over them with ease and move around, though once I saw a carcass hanging by one leg twisted between two strands of wire. The deer I was watching tried to leap the fence but only threw itself into the barbed wire. It looked up at it again and turned to run across the highway for the other side. When it hit the road I saw what was wrong, its legs had been broken in half. It was running as fast as it could on the broken knees with the rest of it's hind legs sticking out at odd angles. My hand immediately went to my mouth. I couldn't imagine the pain that it was going through, or the terror which had to be driving it to continue on like this. It ran across the highway and tried the other fence but ended up again thrusting its body again and again into the barbed wire there.

I wanted to flag someone down, someone would have a rifle, a gun, something. My eyes were tearing and for the first time I regretted not having a gun myself. I've never owned a gun, I've never shot a gun and before that moment I couldn't imagine why I would want too. I had a knife that was sharp and had found on the road in Louisiana, I knew how to kill an animal quickly and with relatively little pain but I knew I would never get close enough to do it. It was the most painful thing I have experienced on this walk so far and it killed me that all I did was keep walking.

This was the same road, possibly the same area, that Jolly Green, my friend bike riding the states, had gotten dehydrated on and nearly ended up very sick except that a woman picked him up out of the kindness of her heart. Jolly isn't a scary guy, but in the middle of night, in the middle of nowhere, nobody looks all that safe. Still someone helped him and it is because of that that I am inside tonight. Jolly gave me the number of a few people he met here in San Angelo, the woman who picked him up, P, and her friend who showed him the town while she was working, B.

Tonight B picked me up in the little town of Wall, not far from San Angelo, I'll be heading back there sometime to finish the walk in, but for now I am here. She's excited about having me speak to schools and inspiring kids in local schools she feels have broken spirits. I'm excited too. She told me about meeting Jolly. Her father had been found to have cancer around Thanksgiving and she said that it was so wonderful to have Jolly around, they all needed a distraction and to be reminded of a bigger world since their world had become so small, the size of a mass in a body. She felt it was amazing that two of us had come through and that we could do so much good not only for her but for anyone we met and she wanted me to meet as many people as possible. I was planning on moving out of San Angelo rather quickly but I'll stay to talk to kids for a while.

My walk has been filled with a lot of joy and inspiration, but it is a time in our country of great sadness, drought of water and economy and spirit. I've lived without water, I've lived without money, I want to tell everyone it will be okay and that you can dream of great things while struggling with the ordinary. I don't know what would give me the right to tell people this, but I said it anyway. I like to think that is in the hard times that love is proven, that is when you find something truly great because it can survive and flourish even in adversity, it is easy to be in love when times are good, but when times are bad and everything else is gone you find out what you truly have. Right now we have a great chance to find all the things that really are meaningful in life, it's not money, it's not things, but if you look you'll find something much more in the people all around you and the beauty in the world that is free for all. I like to think that that deer made it over the fence somewhere, I like to think it found a quiet place to lie down. I know it still hurt, but I like to think that it stopped feeling afraid.

Eden, TX: The Top Ten List

2009-03-09T22:40:00.003-04:00

Miles since last blog: 32.2
Miles Total: 2471.2

Route

I woke up a little earlier than I expected this morning but it's all good. My sleepiness drove me into a restaurant for breakfast and before too long I had a place to stay for the night in the town of Eden, TX. It was the right direction and distance, what were the odds? Pretty good if you know my life, but that's beside the point. The place is a closed down Motel that the family owned but was tired of the hassle of caring for since it wasn't turning a profit. I have another shower, and even cable TV!

The big news for the day is that I have 10 days or less of walking left in Texas. I may be in Texas longer while visiting towns and such, but only 10 days of actual walking before I hit a new time zone, my final three states and more than likely have two months or less left. It'll be huge, I'm choreographing a dance in my head right now. You may or may not be privy to it via video depending on how ridiculous it looks and if my feet feel good enough to actually complete the task. Also, I envision being so light and enlightened that I should be able to dance on tree tops, should no trees be available I'll have to improvise and I don't have much confidence on my ethereal sign top dancing - it's real meant for trees.

In honor of my 10 final walking days in Texas, I am, on the spur of the moment, going to do a top ten rules of walking the road list. Here we go in no particular order:

10. Never turn down help, except for a ride. Sometimes the nicest thing you can do for someone is to let them help you and let them be a part of your story.

9. Eat what you want. Your body knows a lot more about it self than the meager few centuries our medical field of research has found. I've always liked chicken McNuggets and I'm not alone. World Record Holder/Gold Medalist Usain Bolt said they were a significant portion of his diet during the Olympics. Seriously people they are a super food, the only things I eat when I'm sick. They're filled with all the hormones, antibiotics and steriods you need to defeat any virus or alien invasion and apparently also world class sprinters.

8. Don't pick stuff on the side of the road unless you're pretty sure it's clean. I wanted to throw a golfball today and after I did my hand smelled like dead stuff for hours.

7. Cops are your friends. Like any friends at times they can be annoying but they are there to help and if you remember that and stay friendly it all be fine. Not breaking the law also helps.

6. The bad times are as much a part of any story as the good, they lend spice and climaxes, don't run from them, savor them like any other part.

5. The answer is always, "No," if you don't ask. Thanks for that Free.

4. People are the most important, they are more important than anywhere you go or anything you do and are likely the reasons for both. Treat them well as you can and they will do the same.

3. DO what you want, don't just think about it. My friend Jolly Green calls it, "Paralysis by Analysis." Be selfish, he also says, "Be selfishly selfless," the idea is that if you start to do what you want, it's a positive thing and will likely lead to you doing good in the world even if it's only your attitude. In my experience, people start out a little selfish and then find that what they want to do IS helping people, as Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."

2. Get water, food and bathroom breaks when you can, you'll regret it if you don't.

1. Get used to stealth pooping.

Brady, TX: The Heart of Texas

2009-03-09T02:03:00.004-04:00

Miles since last blog: 25.0
Miles Total: 2439.0

Route

I'm in the heart, a lot of towns in Texas say it, that they are the heart of Texas, but Brady not only means it but is geographically the closest to being correct I was informed tonight.

The man telling me was Brian, who I am staying with tonight. Another day, another shower and life is good. Twice in a row now as I have been ready to set off into the night to see just how far I can go and shave a bit off my walk the next night since I had no place to stay, I have been saved from myself by a good samaritan.

"Where you going?" Brian shouted from his car.

"California," I yelled back. He asked if I needed food or money and after a donation offered me a place to stay at his dad's house (his father apparently is one of the many people in the area who sleeps with a gun under their pillow) down the street a little hesitantly. I, of course, accepted. The only catch was that I had to go to a party with them for a while because he couldn't leave me alone in the house, I was, of course, amenable to this too.

It was pretty fun too. I was one of the few token white guys in the Mexican-American congregation and although I said I wouldn't drink I gave in with very little arm twisting, in fact they may only have looked at my arm sideways and that was enough. I ended up playing 'Washers' which is a pretty simple game on the level with shuffleboard, cornhole, beanbags and horseshoes in which you throw what looked like about 2" washers across a yard and into or around a piece of PVC pipe. If it goes in it's 5 points, if it's within 2 washer lengths it's 1 point. We were at 17-16 on the road to 20 when the game was called on account of drunkenness unofficially, which means our teammates sort of just wandered off and forgot they were playing.

I turned into a small time celeb for a half minute too which is always amusing. People were taking pictures with me and asking questions, they also all thought Brian was insane for offering to let me stay with him and Forest Gump and Serial Killer jokes ran rampant. I had a few good laughs and conversations, the best of which was with Brian, before we headed back and I got a shower. If this isn't the heart of Texas, it is certainly close, nowhere have I had such luck and warmth with continuously finding places to sleep and shower. I feel fortunate to be here doing what I am doing again and I just hope I can spread a little of that around.

Oh yeah, and to Chasity from Pizza Hut, "Hi there, and thanks for letting me sit so long and hang out."

The Middle of Nowhere, TX: Home, Home on the Range

2009-03-08T16:18:00.002-04:00

Miles since last blog: 27.2
Miles Total: 2414.0

Route

A blog in three parts:

1) Today I met James Bond. Really. This guy's name was James Bond, he was older and even had a little card that said "James Bond 007" on it amongst the other writing. He was in a truck outside of Llano and pulled over to see what I was doing. He introduced himself and explained that he had been named that long before the fictional character existed, I'm guessing the '007' part was new though.

I don't really get excited about celebrities, maybe one or two would make me go ooh, or ahh, but they aren't the standard celebs either, more like Adam West and Bruce Campbell, people that make their living off of being living jokes. That takes some profound awesomeness and inner peace. To me for the most part, celebs are like screwed up versions of normal people that just have PR agents to make them look good, not my bag. Fictional characters however are quite alluring, they are, for all intents and purposes, exactly as they appear. No one dresses them up or takes their picture under the right light, that's just who they are. Superman never trips, Sherlock Holmes never belched and Rocky never gave up.

So meeting James Bond, the name, was maybe even better than any actor that played him. It was so pure, just the character. There wasn't to much interaction between us, mostly he talked about how he had met Johnny Depp working in Austin on the movie "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"

"Oh wow, that was a really good movie," I said.

"Yeah, well, it was interesting." He responded in clear disagreement. He drove off shortly after giving me his card. I got the feeling his name and working on that one movie was about 70% of what he talked about.

2) Hill Country. That's where I've been for the last 70 miles or so, and according to James Bond, I've got another 30 left at least. Going into Llano was 33 miles of rolling hills and a dramatic elevation climb leaving me in high hills overlooking the ground I had covered. Since the hills were rolling there would be a climb, then a drop almost as low as before, followed by a slightly higher climb. What ever the elevation I gained was that day, I climbed at least 50% more than that due to downhills which are none to exciting for me either.

To here was all rolling hills to a lower elevation, I'm looking forward to the plains beyond Brady and into San Angelo where I should arrive in 4 days. Hills aren't so bad until you couple them with heat, when the sun comes out it melts me, almost immediately.

One of the many ways in which I am not like Superman is that the sun is not necessarily my friend. Put Superman in Hawaii for a week and he could bench press Jupiter for kicks, put me in the sun for a few minutes and you wind up with a week and whining pile of goo that does nothing much except ooze sweat. Here's to the last two days of cloud cover and torturous future in the West.

3) Have you ever wondered who would ask some strange bum wandering down the road if they would want to stay the night at their house? Or well, ranch?

Well, I now know the answer and it's exactly what you might expect, even here in 'The Middle of Nowhere,' TX. I didn't know who the person in the VW was that had turned around to talk to me, or why, it turned out to be a man and his daughter on their way to a music recital of some sort. I assumed he wanted me to talk to his daughter or give me a donation but in fact he was asking me where I was staying.

"I don't know," I said, "I'm on my way to Brady about 30 miles up the road, I figured I'd just walk till I got tired."

He gave me directions to his house a mile off the highway down dirt county roads and told me his wife's name, C. When I arrived a grueling hour and a half later I heard the sound of music, not the movie, actual, man-made music. Man and boy made as it turns out. I knocked on the door and came in to find a boy and his grandfather putting away instruments and a grandmother in the kitchen. It's been a while since I just walked into a house unexpected, but they seemed to be unphased in the least. I explained who I was and what I was doing there (I was mildly nervous since I didn't know the gentleman's name, only C's name).

Immediately they told me that his wife would be back shortly and started making me dinner. It turns out these were C's parents who were visiting from Oregon. It turns out that C herself, had ridden her bike across the country and her husband had hitchhiked from Texas to Alaska and back. They had met about 20 years ago at an organic gardening course in California and now were full fledged organic farmers for six months out of the year while traveling the rest.

"Are you a vegetarian?" C asked.

"No," I said.

"Well you are tonight," C's mother replied giving me a bowl of delicious chili, some raw veggie spring rolls and a jello with fruit dessert.

They had seen me yesterday on my way to Llano while taking one of their bi-weekly runs to Austin. Whole Foods Market had grown over the years and they had grown a bit with it, they now had two interns that also lived on the properties in trailers not unlike the one I was in when I wrote this. I learned most of this from C's son, who is young, plays an instrument, is well spoken and clearly intelligent, they had done quite a good job with him.

I asked about internet and was told they had just gotten dial-up because their newest intern couldn't live without it. There's no cell phone reception out here, they don't have a TV and said they had even gone without a phone for a long time but that they were slowly being dragged into the twentieth century. Luddites, not like the green people, hippies and wannabes that normally throw the word around, real live luddites, I was impressed and opted to skip out on the net for the night, sorry fans.

We talked for a while before they showed me to a shower and my trailer. Very nice people, all of them, unfortunately I went off to bed before S, the husband, came home. There you have it. Who would take in a traveling hobo? Vegetarian Luddite Organic Farmers from the West Coast, how about that? I'm almost home.

Llano, TX: THANK YOU!!! Days Inn & Suites

2009-03-06T20:51:00.002-05:00

Miles since last blog: 33.6
Miles Total: 2389.8

Route

And thank you to the many people who have contacted me about yesterday's blog. Don't worry, I won't let you down, I'll reach the coast one BYAHHH!!! at a time.

Tonight I have been shown very generous hospitality here in Llano, the clerk at the Days Inn got a room donated to me for the night and it doesn't get much better than a really good shower and a nearby laundromat after having no clean clothes for the last week. Being dirty and gross shouldn't slow you down much but it really effects how you feel and as I've said before, it's all mental out here. The only things you need to take care of are your head and your feet ultimately. The feet you get the hang of, the head is a constant battle.

Down to business.

Everything in Texas is bigger, even the variety in responses I get. Whereas in the south I would wave at people and they would always wave and smile back, here that happens about 50% of the time, 25% of the time I get no response at all, and lastly about 25% of people give me a glare. I was stopped by a police officer today again, like I said, I don't really mind this, but I was surprised. It's the first time I have ever been stopped during the day. Things went normally and I could here the woman over the radio say, "it's clean!?!" with complete surprise to my record. I think, for those 25%, the thought process is something like this, but probably not exactly:

I am normal
I am good
normal=good
That isn't normal
That isn't good
It's bad
Bad is probably illegal
If it's not illegal, it's probably immoral

On a more specific level relating to me I think it goes like this:

What the hell is that weirdo doing with a stroller? He must be up to no good.

In fact, I have received emails to this effect that were from before people saw the sign.

With that said, I did say, "everything is bigger in Texas." And that includes the generosity and goodness, today was the single biggest day for donations that I have had on the walk and I am not even in a heavily populated area. The donations today in fact exceeded that of most states entire course.

And never before has an employee, rather than a manager, approved a room being donated. The exceptionally nice man behind the counter here at the hotel gave me a room saying, "I can't get ahold of my manager, you are doing good work, I will give you the room and deal with it later." I hope that his manager doesn't mind or dock his pay, I am continually astounded with the goodness and generosity of strangers.

Once again, thanks to all who wrote me. I'll continue on for you and everyone else that doesn't have the chances I do. I'll continue on for the charity. I'll continue on because it's the right thing to do and because everyday I meet people who are inspired but what I'm doing and who I can remind for a moment that the world is at once very big and very small, and there are good people out there.

Marble Falls, TX: What is this 'momentum' and why don't I have it?

2009-03-05T20:43:00.003-05:00

Miles since last blog: 17.3
Miles Total: 2356.2

Route

I've got a case of the slows. I'm just not moving. Every time I come to anything with food and a chair I settle in for hours at a time. Perhaps you've noticed that my blogs over the last few weeks have been searching for the meaning left in this walk. I'm sure it's there but with so much personally already achieved it's hard to stay motivated to move at a good pace, without that great calling I have always felt, well, it becomes dangerously close to turning into a job. Shiver, let's just forget I even used that word, that's for later, after the walk if need be.

Even as I type this I am sitting in a gas station not far from where I started the day with the excuse of charging my computer. Later I will get up and move, but I question how far and I do have certain goals and self imposed deadlines that need to be met. They, in and of themselves simply aren't enough to drive me though. When I settle in for the evening I'll update and publish the blog, but more and more I find myself in a midday bitch session online. I like this, I'll finish, but I was spoiled with a deep and meaningful life that now is markedly absent. I keep feeling that something will take it's place, some new meaning and deep resounding goals, but right now, I got nothing but hope that it will come and endless calculations on when this walk will end given different scenarios.

**********

Lack of momentum still very much in effect. Today in total was a very poor showing, in fact, I've been up for less than 11 hours. Something besides motivation may be to blame here, hmmmm . . . At least I met a lot of nice people today who encouraged me, going to sleep, hopefully I'll be magically all better tomorrow.

Spicewood, TX: Officer #2

2009-03-05T05:52:00.004-05:00

Miles since last blog: 22.2
Miles Total: 2338.9

Route

I think by now if you have read my blog or met me it is fair to say that I am a fairly good person who is hard to upset. Most of the time I don't even view what others would call problems as problems, more just, things that happened. But one of the points I will be attempting to make tonight is that even I sometimes still get peeved if the circumstances are right and you hit one of my few 'hot buttons.'

Originally I was going to try to be very delicate about this, because I didn't want to embarrass anyone, but the right circumstances are present: I'm tired, I'm cranky and the only hot button I can think of was pressed. I blame this, in part, on my new reflective vest from REI, which surely keeps me slightly safer, but would be covered up by my sign, hence, I wasn't wearing it tonight which probably would have made this slightly less likely to have happened. Now I've gone and built it up when really it's nothing. There, I've taken care of it scaling it back down now.

I am walking at night now at times, largely to conserve water saving myself from dehydration and sunburn to boot. As is typical of night walking, I was stopped by a police officer, this is normal and doesn't bother me in the slightest, he ran my ID which happens about half the time and we talked for a minute before we were on our way. Fine and dandy.

Then a few miles up the road I was stopped again, by his partner, who had heard the story and knew "something wasn't right." He was accompanied by the first officer, back up I guess. What ultimately pressed that hot button that I was talking about was this, he asked me to search my carrier. I generally think that this is a bad practice on an officers part because it puts innocent people in the position where they have to be troubled with no cause (remember I had already been checked and found to have no record, not even a speeding ticket) or they seem suspicious for refusing. I had already been checked once and explained that I was walking at night for the reasons I've already stated. My hot button is abuse of authority, and while this is a minor abuse, the manor with which it was done and unapologetically hassling me for a second time when I was already tired gnawed at me long after #2 left. I should note that this is only the second time in over 2300 miles anyone has asked to search my carrier, and the only time someone has come back after my ID was run and came back clean.

But none of this was really my point, I'll get to that in a minute but first let's go for a bit of logic and lay down some foundations. He thought I was up to no good. Let's examine the detective work used here:

1 - I have no record and I'm 30 years old, which means, assuming I was a criminal, I've been smart or lucky.

2 - Since walking is not illegal and he searched me (which I submitted to despite the ethical and litigious reasons not to and due to practicality), which meant he thought that my suspected crime involved transporting something illegal.

3 - Walking, at night, in reflective gear, is hardly what you would call inconspicuous behavior which coupled with part one, means I would not be smart, just lucky.

4 - I have a worn banner that says 'Walk Across America' on the front of my carrier, which would mean that my cover story would have been both idiotic and well planned with supporting props, not incredibly likely I feel.

And so you have it, I would have to be a well planned idiot who allegedly was transporting a dead body, drugs, a bomb, weapons or kidnapped victim through the middle of nowhere in a stroller. Which apparently was much more likely than someone walking across the country for charity and traveling at night to stay out of the heat. I know that neither is common, I know that my life leads me to the best of most people and #2's job probably often leads him to the worst of people, but my point is this. If you think that someone, wearing in a banner for a made up charity and walk as a cover to transport something illegal through the desert by walking it in a stroller is more likely than walking at night to stay out of the heat, maybe it's time to switch jobs, or at least change your life so that you are around good people more. There are plenty of good people out there.

Incidentally, if you think that criminals would be dumb enough to try something like this, perhaps you should donate to my charity. It is for education.

Austin VII: Potts Committed

2009-03-04T17:12:00.007-05:00

In every state it seems like there is one bubble, one spot on the map where all the states misfit toys end up. Originally, I wasn't even supposed to walk through Austin, but the people along my way, the other misfit toys of the world all steered me gently on towards Austin, a place not to be missed, at least until you go. It's a city made of glue and suction cups if you are one of us, it's hard to rip yourself away. I've been introduced to so many new and unique things here that my sense of adventure and novelty never wavered in the wind. Many times I thought of simply stopping for a few months and settling in for the music festivals and events coming up so that I could soak it all in. But I'm pot committed.

Pot committed is a term from poker that means the point at which you have thrown so much into a hand that you can't back out no matter how high the stakes get, you've committed most of your chips to the pot and to back out would mean certain doom whereas staying in gives you a chance at surviving, even winning, no matter how small. That's where I am on this walk. I'm sitting in a Jack in the Box on the way out of the city, enjoying one last meal in the comfort of civilization before I head into what many people would say was the geographical equivalent of oblivion.

Sadness about leaving this wonderful place is already being drown in the rising waters of adventure alone in the desert and solitary peace. I still don't know what the rest of this trip holds for me other than reaching the coast, but I am feeling more and more certain with every step that something is out there left to find. In Austin I dumpster dove for the first time, I was introduced to a subculture of human drug testers that are like migrant lab rats, floating from city to city going through drug trials and experiments for loads of cash and then enjoying life in the multitudes of down time they have.

At the core of it, these new lives and experiences are what we are out there trying to find each other for, whether by travel, couchsurfing or whatever, the misfit toys survive in the nooks and crannies of society. I found one of these misfit toys here at Jack, he was my dining companion and we talked about Austin and the road, how so many people, us misfits come here rolling through and then are happily trapped in its web. I'd heard it before, my host for the last few nights has many friends who were never supposed to stay, but just ended up here.

One of the only things pressing me to leave even now is the surprising loom of a deadline, I have a number of people I want to visit this summer before I go to work at the Survival School and the sudden realization that I may not even have a week in each place shocked me into movement. I suppose I'll gain momentum fast in the desert with nothing to hold me back but shaking off the tar baby that is Austin is taking a while. I should have left much earlier, I'm not out yet and it is late afternoon already, but I did go to REI several times to my benefit.

Cherry, alas, will be in a future REI Austin Garage Sale, they replaced her for me completely so my worries of her breaking mid-desert are drastically reduced. REI was not the only store which was friendly though. Storyville, a shop here had a shirt I simply had to have and they were nice enough to give it to me half-price (Seen above). It's been a good town and I thank all my ambassadors to Austin, you know who you are. I'm sure I'll be back someday and I hope to see many of you on the road somewhere again. Misfit toy: 'Skip in the Box,' signing out.

Austin VI: Eat Your Garbage & The Month in Math

2009-03-02T00:34:00.003-05:00

It goes without saying that food is a major part of any trip into a new area. You can't help but eat, and if you are at all interested in a culture or adventure than the minimal inkling one can do is to delve into locals dishes. There is however more than the food, the culture surrounding food is quite interesting, where, how, what is prepared, where it is eaten, why it is so, etc. For instance, in Alabama there are a lot of what they call, 'meat and three' buffets, where you choose one main meat dish from a selection and three side dishes. I bring these up now because I am wildly behind on blogging, but some of the most significant experiences I've had recently revolve around food and its unique subcultures.

In a few days which involved live bands, art shows, two house parts for people I had just met, a Kite Festival, canoeing and a fair amount of adventure, the thing that sticks out the most in my memory is food. But just what have I been doing? Well, I've prepared a video . . .

D & D

Yeah, I ate trash. Yeah, I climbed around in a dumpster looking for food. It wasn't my favorite experience, but it was a hell of an experience. I can't say that I'll be making this a habit, but it's an incredible little subculture to stumble upon and explore if only as a spectator. After the dive, while a few people rifled half heartedly at the thoroughly sifted top of the dumpster, the experienced leaders talked about the best places to go, what you would find there and the best scores they had ever had. Wine, Chocolates, Cake and Pie that were boxed and untouched, pounds and pounds of every variety of cheese were all finds that both parties had gotten. The leader of the other group told my host how to make cheese out of the sometimes gallons of milk that they find.

I realize that for many people this blog will be weird and more than likely worry or creep you out, perhaps both alternately, which I think would look interesting if you wear your emotions, but it's an experience and who am I to deny it?

Miles Total: 2316.7
Miles this Month: 443.1
Miles Left: 1500 +/- 50
States this Month: 2
Milestones: 2 (Halfway point and 2000 miles)
Average Daily Mileage: 15.83
Average Walking Day Mileage: 24.62
Twitter Followers: 187
Countries that have viewed my blog: 33

Austin V: Ummmm . . .

2009-03-01T05:33:00.001-05:00

I can only say at this moment (4:30 in the morning), that it has been a hell of a day where I have tried to get as much video as possible and simply don't have the time or energy to blog it all. Hang in there gang, it's coming.

Austin IV: A Little Help from My Friends

2009-02-27T14:58:00.004-05:00

Miles since last blog: 4.1 (but much further off route for kets and such)
Miles Total: 2316.7

Route

Ahem, sorry about the whiny outburst of yesterblog, I've manned up and it's all good now.

Today, was a good day. I met great people though it had been several days in the making to line up a meet, and I changed couches so I am now surfing close to downtown. The walk was great, it was a hot day and by the time I got to my host's work my shirt was soaked through, it was also white, good thing I'm not a college girl or the hooting would have been merciless as I passed the construction sites. As it was I feel fairly sexy but not objectified, just right. Of course my new host has cats too, I've pretty much resigned myself to the idea that almost everyone in America has cats, which would be fine if I wasn't allergic to them.

Back to the walk though, I got to see new parts of the city which is always a great experience. It would be a lie if, even as a traveler, I said that as I move along I'm not constantly evaluating each new town for . . . livability. It's natural, even if you can't imagine yourself ever coming into circumstances to visit a place again, you always think about living there and what it has to offer, or what it lacks.

Walking down Lamar towards downtown takes you directly through the Pease District Park. If you are in the North of the country, you'll appreciate this, even if you didn't catch the full ramifications of my sweaty heat earlier. There were, at first, great gnarly oaks and grass fields filled with college students, they were playing disc golf, directly on the horizon, not far off at all, was the unique skyline of the city reaching high up into a territory some might say we were never meant to tread in. Just blocks away from these giants, kids were shirtless and frolicking in the sun lie it was summer, there three full bore co-ed beach volleyball games in full swing in sand pits in the grass. It's still February. I could definitely Winter here, Summer . . .

The cafes and bars I've been spending time at are all artistically decorated and novel and homey, all of them have outside patios which are constantly busy and the cafe I spent the most time at was 24 hours and didn't even seem to get really busy until after midnight when it was filled with University kids working on various projects and homework. I almost wanted to scoot up to a table and help them out, I was sure I could help with almost anything they were studying, I'm pretty well informed, for undergrad coursework anyhow. Okay, so school could keep me here in Fall and Spring, but Summer . . . Summer's a good time to travel, let's leave that at good enough, 3 out of 4 seasons isn't bad.

Tonight I found myself tagging along to a Whole Foods Market, actually THE Whole Foods Market, the center for the whole company where the headquarters and attached culinary school is, and most importantly, the buffet/cafeteria. You pick up a recycled paper trough and pile in whatever you want then go to weigh it and pay by the pound. I, being the eater I am and also a slight idiot at times, figured I would just fill up the trough. When one of the CSers I was with saw it she simply burst out laughing and her face turned red and eyes watered, it was the first moment that I realized I had gotten quite a bit of food. 3.6 pounds to be exact when we weighed it. The clerks reactions weren't much different.

"You have the record," the checkout girl said.

"If you eat all that we'll give you free dessert," the manager said.

Well, I am nothing if not idiotically competitive, even if I have no one to compete against and at risk of great personal injury (see my entire life). I set about my work, Pork Soul (which I had thought was intangible, but is apparently not and also quite delicious), Madras Potatoes, Chicken Pasta, Hummus, Beef Curry, and a number of other things all mixed into a heaping orgy of food. It came down to the fistful of rice I had wedged into one corner of the trough. I looked at it pensively, one of the CSers laughed at me when I started talking to it.

"Alright rice, here we go." I'd say. "I'm not gonna like this any more than you will." The CSers were nothing but supportive, even when you are watching something completely disgusting and ridiculous, sometimes you can't help but get wrapped up in it and start rooting, if only because despite all that, it truly is amazing. Forkload by forkload, the rice trickled down my gullet, just as we were readying to go I held up the empty container to the shock of a few at the table.

I think that once I was really full, what pushed me to finish the last few bites was the inherent joke that the prize for eating a ridiculous amount of food, was more food. I had to finish if only for that ridiculousness. We went inside and redeemed my empty trough for an amazing Oreo cake with tons of frosting which I tried to pawn off on several people and even looked for a homeless person to give it to before carting it around the rest of the night and finally eating it around 1 am.

From gluttony I went to culture, a bar/art show where I met a number of interesting people including a few other surfers that I regret not getting to chat with more. The prize of this portion of the evening was a coveted clip of video I recorded and will use in an upcoming video if I can get my act together. Thank you Adam if you are reading this.

From culture went to a house party where some interesting jokes and good conversation popped up sporadically, but as always it is the little things and the connections with people during the day that stick with you and set the tone. The comment you got about something you wrote, a text from a friend, or in one case a tweet from a man who just keeps astounding me with his generosity of spirit and friendship. When he knew I was down, he sent me the link below, enjoy.

SONG

Austin III.V: I Walk Alone

2009-02-27T01:06:00.002-05:00

Kodiak and I split directions today, I'm not sure at this point whether I will move on from Austin or not. I was speaking with Kodiak the other morning about the loneliness of the road, how it goes, when it passes, how it was gone for me. This evening at the CS meet up, I met another surfer, a german who is traveling across the entire USA from NYC and back, seeing more of it in these four months than most Americans ever do. He was lonely sometimes too but felt that this might just be the beginning for him. With the freedom of the road come its consequences as well, I thought I was past them, but in just the last hour I've been proven wrong.

I'm toying with the idea that it's sympathy pains for my traveling brethren, but I don't think that's the case. I've learned to survive on a different level of human contact over my time traveling, meeting new people and connecting quickly and deeply in a way that makes them feel like old friends and makes me feel like I am not alone, not homeless and without friends and companionship of a more lasting kind. Here in Austin, a town that is so clearly amazing to me with fantastic hang outs and wild people, how could I have not found that here. I have found people to talk to on occasion, but I'm shy and need a way to start off, but the conversations have been fleeting or don't really connect with me, those that have have ended too quickly leaving me with nothing.

I do realize now that there are these times as well. When swinging from branch to branch in humanity occasionally you reach out your hand for the next vine and there's . . . nothing, except for a long fall to the earth that leaves the wind knocked out of you. It's not that I don't have some options, numbers to call, friends of friends, but everything until now has been so organic and easy, and I'm really surprisingly shy, though you might not know it even if you met me.

Part of it is that even though I have these incredible and intense short relationships, they are all friendships and I like being with someone in life. Though I like my life and am comfortable with it in most ways, all the travelers I meet are men, and just like I know I will never be happy locked into an office, I can't stay happy forever without a deep and meaningful relationship. I miss finding someone more beautiful than anyone else in the world, I miss morning kisses where you have to hold your breath because your breath stinks, the smell of a woman's wet hair while lying in bed. I miss a lot of those stupid things that all come back in a flood when a woman across a coffee shop catches your eye. I miss contact that is more than a handshake or a hug goodbye.

I think this is the main cause of my indecision in leaving tomorrow, I think this pain drives me to move on, I think if it weren't here I would want to stay. Part of me knows it's not time to leave yet, there are great people to meet, things to experience. Part of me wants to push on, closer to where all this ends, closer to where I can have true freedom. While in so many respects I have become free in choosing a path that I love, until the coast, I am bound to that path. True freedom will be at the end, when I can follow or abandon a path as I please, to return to a path when it suits me, or choose something else entirely. Don't get me wrong, I like this walk, but I am looking forward to a day where I can be somewhere for an entire week without getting an itch to move on, or maybe that's the way it'll be now, I don't know and can't, until I finish.

1500 miles. 1500 miles. It's not that far to an uncertain future. What will happen when I get to the pier? Probably nothing really, then I'll just be standing at the end of it all, confused and wondering what to do. When the right song comes on, something slow and with the right lyrics, I imagine that short walk down the pier as I'd film it. I imagine it with no one there, I imagine it with friends and family, I imagine it with a news crew, I imagine kneeling down in the surf and putting my face in it, I imagine it a thousand different ways. All of them bring tears to my eyes.

Sadness and joy, I finally understand crying because you are so happy. It's a joy that you can never have again, and while you love that moment, you are aware that something is changing, everything that was will now be slightly different, you lose that moment and the life you had forever. You can cry for a lost life while being happy for a new one, even if they are the same life to everyone else.

Austin III: Walk Slow

2009-02-26T01:27:00.002-05:00

I'd been pushing my pace a bit on the off chance that I might be selected for the 'best job in the world,' but it seems that they don't want the James Bond of Hobos working for them :) That's okay, it'd still be a job I guess . . . in the wake of this I believe I may spend a day or two more in Austin than I was originally planning for. Here's a little vid of my trip here:

H-TOWN TO ATX

ATX: Deserts and Dumpsters

2009-02-25T15:26:00.004-05:00

I knew immediately that I liked Austin when I got here. I saw a girl get off the bus and she was wearing big 60's starlet glasses with a breezy dress and big fuzzy boots, her hair was bleach blonde except on the left side where it had been cut down to a buzz showing her natural light brown hair. It's a free spirited town full of life, individuality, youth and a touch of rebellion - the city slogan for the Austinites, "Keep Austin Weird."

It wasn't long before a man with dreadlocks, a long grown goatee and tribal looking facial tattoos was walking down the block towards me. He had that bull piercing that goes through both nostrils and bandages on the fingers of his left hand which was holding a small white box.

"You're walking across the country?" This is how people always address me at first, they've read the sign on my back and this seems to be the standard greeting.

"Yeah," I said. We talked for a few minutes, he gave me the box which was filled with organic high energy pomegranate juice and told me how he had biked from Seattle to Maine a few years back. We hit the road again separately and it was only then I noticed he had come from a white van which was old and rusted in places. I thought it was nice for him to donate the juice, it seemed clear to me that it was all he had on him and that spirit of giving and helping inspired him to give even that away, life on the road will force you to see how good people are, despite what they say on the news.

Austin is filled with tattoos and piercings and it is bringing out my natural proclivity for them as I consider which of the numerous tattoos I want would be next if I got one today. The more I get the more I realize the necessity for a long term plan to fit them all together or else I'll wind up a hodgepodge of eccentric ink and skin with ugly negative space and no semblance of design.

When my mind turns to body art it turns to the man with facial tattoos and the visible commitment he has made to never returning to the life that so many people think is the only choice, I'm not that brave, and besides, I like my face just like it is. His ride made me think of Jolly Green and this morning I ended up calling him.

Jolly Green had just left Austin as I was coming in. He had made the 200 mile ride to San Angelo, TX just a while ago, or had tried at least. He told me about my future route, 60 miles of nothing to the town of Llano, then 60 more miles of nothing to Brady, nothing but hills and 88 degree heat. It had nearly killed him. He reached a stage of dehydration where your body pours water, you vomit and you simply are starting to lose function. I had seen this before in Survival School, it's not pretty and it would be pretty scary in the middle of the desert nothingness West of Austin. He was 10 minutes from calling an ambulance when a trucker drove up in the night and gave him a ride to San Angelo. The nice thing about dehydration is you can make a very fast recovery, he's fine, the problem wasn't lack of water, but that of electrolytes, his body simply had nothing to hold the water in him. I thanked him for the warning and the description of my route and we talked about CSing and hosts.

In Austin he had stayed with a host that had taken him dumpster diving - this is generally a practice in which you go to a dumpster behind a grocery store and root through all the things they have thrown out. Often entire cases of some product which are fine to eat still but have passed the date by which they are sellable, it's a skill that you learn eventually if you make this a permanent lifestyle or opt for some other alternative life-path. He said they had walked away with probably several thousands of dollars in free groceries, later on I thought of the man with the face tattoos and the box of juice he had give me, was it a dumpster dive? Did I care anymore?

I've never dumpster dove myself, but I can't say that I wouldn't. What once seemed disgusting now seems like a still slightly scary but feasible way to cut out my only major expense: food. I have no rent, no insurance, no transportation, no taxes, no gas, just food. I immediately suggested to Kodiak that he surf with these people before he left Austin, I may not be there yet, but it seems like it might be a wise skill for him to learn. Couch surfing had seemed scary at first too, but now it is one of the great loves of my life, like rock climbers love rock climbing, I love Couch Surfing, could Dumpster diving be too far off?

Like I said, I'm not there yet, I like restaurants way too much, but as you get deeper and deeper into the road, and real freedom, not the cereal box brand name freedom we are fed in the papers, you start to hear rumors not unlike those of a new world where the streets are lined with gold. You find communities with bright lights of leaders that have been traveling and living extraordinary lives for years, no money, no job, just life. You wonder, is this another fountain of youth, an el Dorado? Is it a revolution? Is it a coincidence that all the people I meet are getting filled with wanderlust and the spirit of travel and possibilities, and not just the ones I meet anew, but the old friends that always seemed so stable. A stream of mission statements and manifestos and value changes is running in a wave over the country as I see it. Is it that collective consciousness that we here about so often where an idea suddenly, and out of nowhere, is everywhere, like when two people simultaneously came up with calculus. Are these leaders the non-militant generals of a new age of subculture freedom fighters that fight by simply living and inspiring others? Could I be one of them? A ball of Tim Leary and Kerouac and Johnny Appleseed and Che all rolled into one with no fight except the one to find a full life and it spread like a rumor.

Could it be Kodiak? He's ready to fly on his own already to Dallas from Austin while I head West to San Angelo. Are we all standing on the precipice of a great but quiet change that will lead many of us down a new and novel road. Who else will walk into this precipice, do you feel anything inside you that says, "I'd like it to be me?" Do you hear another part that is afraid it is? I implore you to listen to the desire to do absolutely whatever you want without fear if only for one day. See what it is like and join us.

Austin, TX: R & R

2009-02-25T01:08:00.002-05:00

Miles since last blog: 33.3
Miles Total: 2312.6

Route

Only 1500 miles to go! Well, it doesn't sound that small on paper, but believe me, from where I'm standing, that's looking pretty good. Once I finish this I can go on with my life of being homeless and unemployed, but much much faster. Speaking of where I'm standing, that is in a CS host's place in ATX, or Austin to you who are not in the loop, seriously, what's with you, get in here already, THE LOOP ROCKS!

Austin seems like a pretty cool place, actually it seems like a Seattle if someone stuck Seattle under a heat lamp. The day started with my new friends in Bastrop though. I got a ride to where I had left off, and on the way i bought myself a new cowboy hat at the gas station to keep me from looking so much like a lobster all the time. On my walk into Austin my friends drove by again and delivered some much needed sustenance in the form of candy and sports drinks and hugs, good group of people they be. Then the forever trip to Austin, the problem with why I am having such a hard time moving I figured out, is that I am already in break mode. I knew I was taking a few days off when I got to Austin and my mind was already there waiting for my poor wretched body to catch up. Either that our the terrible allergies that have now followed me halfway across Texas. If it's the allergies, I understand it'll stop when I leave Austin, ding dong the nose is dead, I'll sing it all the way to San Angelo.

Bastrop II: The Legend of Zkipo

2009-02-23T22:35:00.004-05:00

MIles since last blog: 5.5 (more like 10, but who's counting)
Miles Total: 2279.3

Route

Earlier my mind was busting at the seems with thought, now, two beers later, it has mostly abandoned me. But damn if it didn't feel like it was all very important at the time.

Anyhoo, the day started slow, not out of the house until noon slow. I had 38.4 miles to my CS host's in Austin and two days to get there which maybe felt like not enough of a challenge for a walker of my caliber, not to be conceded, but seriously, it's walking, how cocky can you seem about that?

I wouldn't call it faith, but I am starting to believe in something. Things, the way they happen, it's just too much to be completely random. Most of me, when I stop and think, still believes that there are rational, logical explanations for this, but the soft travel and wanderlust side wants it to be something more like fate, a beautiful feminine spirit which guides us all and moves us towards our lives purposes. In actuality, if it is something ethereal, it's probably an ethereal being that wears coke-bottle-glasses, stays up all night watching sci-fi marathons of Battlestar Galactica and programs hyped up on cola until the wee hours of the morning.

Lately, life, which I enjoy, has started feeling life a video game, which I don't really care for either way. I haven't been dodging fireballs or fighting dragons to get over bridges or anything; I haven't been saving any princesses or anything either (unfortunately, but I guess that usually comes at the end of the game right?). No, my life is more like one of those old (it has to be old because I remember it and I haven't played video games in decades) role play games where you're an elf that has to walk a huge frustrating world to look for some trinket that you need to proceed further into the game. Have I mentioned this elf character is exceedingly slow? Remind you of anyone? Except normally I don't need to meet anyone or do anything or find anything to move on.

Today however, I constantly felt drag. I set out and quickly lost Kodiak who hitched a ride into Austin and had his own adventures. I stopped at a gas station, an apartment complex, and four hotels, I couldn't pick up any traction as I moved only 7.5 miles during the time before 4 pm. Something was keeping me, for some reason I just didn't feel like I was ready to make the trek or leave Bastrop. After being turned down by every hotel in town I went and sat down in a McDonald's to stall again.

My phone rang. It was the reception woman at the last hotel I went to, she had been looking over my website and called to have me stay with her and her boyfriend. I had stopped at the McD's on the corner of where my path would have diverged from the route to her apartment, my dorky spirit guide had struck again. I've been spending the evening with some great people, drinking, laughing, listening to music both recorded and live, I can't say what it was here that was special or necessary, but I needed it whatever it was. I had to walk East for two miles to get to her flat, it was my first time heading East on the walk, and the first time walking had felt right all day.

Kodiak fared well too. He originally joined me because he wanted to travel and be out adventuring but was too nervous to head out on his own. After a day and two nights he's already on his own living it up in a new city. I think this bird is ready to fly already, I hope he sticks around for a little while at least, probably not right next to me in the way that we originally thought, but somewhere in my vicinity and route.

The good thing in all of this is that I feel like i am helping people. Even if it isn't in the way I originally intended. I didn't really do anything at all for Kodiak, just existed and did my thing, I was just a springboard, training wheels to be quickly set aside. For the people I'm staying with, it would be presumptuous for me to guess what I give them, but I feel like I help them in some way, like I give them something.

So . . . do I get to go to the next level or do I need to find a magic stick or something?

Bastrop, TX: Bears, Sharifs, Olympians and Rockstars, oh my!

2009-02-22T22:45:00.007-05:00

Miles since last blog: 27.5
Miles Total: 2273.8

Route

What do all these things have in common, nothing really, except that they blasted through my day somehow.

1. The Bear - Kodiak, this is my new traveling companion. He is a bear, imagine a bear in a felt hat and a dark hawaiian shirt, viola, my new buddy. Nice young kid that I'm helping to ruin with road fever and ever deepening wanderlust. He traveled with me for the first time today, about 9 miles, the farthest he had ever walked in his life. Lets just say that bears aren't necessarily built to walk, but he tried admirably and stubbornly, two important qualities out here. I'm suggesting a bike to him, but either way he'll be fine in a few weeks, always happy to have company. That's a picture of him that you see there.

2. Sharifs - This is for my fellow lovers of the 80's.

Rocking the Casbah - Directions

Step One: Find a Casbah

Step Two: Rock thoroughly

Warning: The Sharif may not like it.

3. Olympians - "After about six weeks," my friend Jolly Green says. "Your body gets into what they call olympic conditioning. It turns into a furnace and burns calories and gives you tons of energy." I just recently passed the 6 week mark after my holiday break and it's true. Unless of course you have just walked 42.6 miles that day, then you feel like a zombie olympian.

It also means that I am losing weight even though I eat like that Phelps kid. It does not however mean that I look like Phelps, unless he was stretched horizontally and wearing a skin-toned inner tube.

4. Time Travel - Today while I was walking a nice couple drove up in a pick up and handed me an energy drink called a 'Rockstar.' Having never really drank energy drinks but having a few miles left of my 130 mile trek in the last 4 days, I opened it up. This is what happened:

After that everything turned purple for a minute and I woke up face down in a ditch twelve miles down the road with little flaming trails still smoldering behind Cherry's wheels. It's a good thing I disabled the flux capacitor or I might be in 1955 right now. Then again at least I'd be way ahead of schedule and I could probably sell all my technological do-dads to various companies or governments for millions. Note to self, enable flux capacitor.

But for now, I'm Back to the Future.

La Grange, TX: The Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy, or, Company B

2009-02-21T13:17:00.006-05:00

Miles since last blog: 42.6
Miles Total: 2246.3

Route

Midday blog, skip lower to get the full effect.

Only noon and I had already hit 15 miles, I'm sitting in a gas station in the city of Industry, TX, which at population 304 is less than half the size of my high school class. I'm feeling good. Today, it's raining. A guy on the road asked me if I wanted a ride up to the next town just before it started raining but I declined. A few miles and a bit of rain later, he drove by again asking if I wanted a ride now.

"How far is it?" I inquired.javascript:void(0)

"About two miles," He said. I declined again and for the first time in maybe the whole journey, I felt slightly heroic. It probably didn't hurt that I was in a cap and green poncho which make me look more than a little bit like Bruce Willis in 'Unbreakable' or that said poncho's back was flapping behind me in the wind in a fashion that looked more than a little like a cape.

It would have been very easy to take the ride, to ignore the pittance that is two miles in the grand scheme, but what a slippery slope. Just think: What Would Superman Do? Yeah, that's my dork coming out, but he's pretty hardcore and does the right thing generally.

The guy gave me some info on where there was food up ahead and that's why y'all are getting a nooner today. Admittedly, I feel a little less superhero-esque sitting in a gas station and resting, but to my credit, I'm getting a new sidekick tonight.

Stay Tuned!

Thanks for staying tuned!

Yeah, a while back I had a companion along for a bit named Free. Sadly, he left, as his name said he would, but now I have a new travel buddy named Cody, hopefully he'll be around for a bit too. His plan is to accompany me all the way to the coast. For the next few days, except tomorrow where I will play the part of Ivan Drago (See 'Rocky IV' and 'I will break you'), I'll be taking it a bit slower for his sake.

Our chosen destination to meet up was the Bugle Boy, a music club in La Grange where I was lucky enough to show up early and catch a great little blues show. If you have the chance to visit this place don't hesitate. After getting over my aching legs (see today's mileage) I was actually able to focus on the music and enjoyed it quite a bit. Over the last few years I've been getting more and more into blues and the one man acoustic show was a nice taste at the end of the long day.

Kodiak showed up a bit later, he's a big guy, quite a bit taller than me, those extra inches on his legs will serve him well I hope. I'm interested in how this will go with a partner, but we'll see in the future and I'm sure you'll here a lot more about him then so I won't bore you with the details now.

Bellville, TX: The Good, The Bad and The Funky

2009-02-20T23:23:00.004-05:00

Miles since last blog: 35.0
Miles Total: 2203.7

Route

Reverse order shall we? Why not, it's my blog after all.

I know from my experience at Survival School that there comes a point where the fact that you haven't had a shower becomes inconsequential. This does not happen in the first few days. Consequently on the second day of any venture out into the bold world of camping after 30+ mile walks you sometimes catch a whiff of some element of odor that you are sad that you have any part in. What's worse is it's probably largely created by you and not anything you stepped in so it's not going away. This is compounded by the fact that I am in a used sleeping bag, a sleeping bag which I only use after log sweaty walks with no shower. It has never been cleaned, I don't know if it ever will get cleaned, but there is definitely something magical inside it. Not the good kind of magic, dark magic, like the shadows that take bad guys away after they die in the movie 'Ghost,' that kind of magic. Yes. my life is glamourous.

Also, I have 70 miles to cover in the next two days (and tomorrow is supposed to be rainy) in order to reach my next couchsurf/opportunity for a shower on time, long days, I really shouldn't even be blogging, need my rest you know.

People continue to be surprising and kind. I was approached in a unique way tonight while I was dining at the fine Texan cuisine of the DQ (Dairy Queen). I man came up with his little girl and she was wide eyed and shy. He told me that she wanted to know what I was doing. It was adorable the way she was so interested and the way her eyes got wider when I told her I was walking across the country. I wondered if she had ever imagined something so big or if it was the first time she was encountering it, it's a great light to see in someone for the first time. The parents were very kind and asked questions and then they even gave me a new bright headlamp which will come in handy pretty soon here. It was probably the highlight of my day.

Now I am off to bed, behind a church as per my normal M.O., but this time I scored the trifecta: church, power outlet, under a covering, that's just about as good as it gets out here people. Alas, I have a 40 mile walk tomorrow and a Saturday night, which means no Church camping due to Sunday morning service. I'll find something, always do.

Oh yeah, and my luck holds, this power outlet is the only reason I'm not covered in water thanks to a sprinkler right now.

Cypress, TX: Why did the Skip cross the country?

2009-02-19T13:59:00.006-05:00

Miles since last blog: 23.2
Miles Total: 2168.7

Route

I know, I know. After three days off I made it a mere 23.2 miles, but give me a break I think I might be sick or something. Just real tired most of the day and I found a church to camp behind so I'm letting myself 'get better,' or whatever semblance of that you can get on the road.

Earlier today I was relaxing in a restaurant (as I am tending to relax more and more and take breaks when leaving a city I like) and I was wondering: What is left for me?

I love my journey still, I realize it often, as I started today I felt lucky to be doing what I was doing. I love helping people and making what I think is starting to be a real difference both within the charity and in the day to day world with the people I meet. Still, the first part of this pilgrimage was fraught with personal realizations and growth, I'm not saying by any means I'm perfect mind you, but I have achieved the changes in my life and myself that I dreamed of at the outset. By continuing, do I grow further? I couldn't imagine which way that would go whereas earlier I knew exactly where I was deficient, I see ways to grow, I do, but walking perhaps has brought me what it can for now.

Perhaps you have heard the phrase, "If you want to change the world, change yourself." My biking buddy says, "be selfishly selfless." The point in both of these trusts right to the core of the goodness in humanity, if you become the person you want, that will likely lead you to do good in the world around you. One part of me that has always been true and there through all my changes and lives has been the teacher, like a friend of mine, I am innately a teacher, if nothing else.

I've been lucky enough to lead a life composed largely of thought over the past 2200 miles and I have learned a lot. Perhaps the meaning for me lies in, not teaching, but helping others discover the people they can be. A good teacher never leads, only guides. In Austin I have one, maybe two people joining me in my walk, maybe they are coming along right at this time because we need each other, all three teachers in our own right, all three students. I've said before, changing the world isn't about a tidal wave, it's about ripples, perhaps this is the beginning of that.

I also realized that a benefit of continuing on is the time for reflection and understanding, a change is nothing if it does not sustain itself. Understanding the process that got me here is as valuable as the process itself. I realized that for so long I was trying to relax and be the person that I wanted to be, but as long as I was trying, I was forcing something that wasn't genuine. I had to make the person I am now autonomic, a part of me that is the natural reaction to the world, not an effort. I like this person, the person who is good and free not because he desires to be, but just because he is.

And thought about the external world is on the rise for me, which is interesting. I find myself continually drawn to religions of different sorts to learn more and take from them what I will, to interpret them as I might and move on. I've found some very interesting things and I'm starting to think that when I go back to school it might be for religious studies or philosophy. It's such a deep part of so many lives and a part I have never had but there are certain things that seem to be universally believed and it's these parts that interest me the most.

All in all, by one o'clock it had already been a great day if only because the reason that I am continuing isn't just "to get to the other side."

Houston IV: Here comes the Sun

2009-02-18T21:53:00.003-05:00

The hardest part about staying in a city for more than a night is leaving behind a new home with new friends, neither of which feel all that new but more like an already slightly warn in shirt that still has years to go and is on the verge of becoming a favorite.

I've met some great people here, like I do everywhere, but here was special in the sense that the community I met, largely due to my host and his friend J.R., rallied so heartily behind this cause and I. Yes, it is a fast paced world of networking that I left behind long ago for my own reasons, but it is well suited to this place and community and it was nice to see how comforting and welcoming even a virtual community could be when it materialized in reality. I'll be leaving behind this fast paced life sadly, but returning to my walk which is always a place I find joy and peace now.

Before I go though, someone else will leave, Sun. Sun is my fellow couchsurfer here in Houston, he stays on the big sofa and I on the love seat. Sun is a South Korean here for school but now touring the USA a bit before heading home in 10 days, in less than an hour he'll be heading off to Fort Worth by train. There are a lot of people I have met here, but there is sort of a special bond while surfing and especially since he speaks somewhat broken English which brings out all the EFL teacher (English as a foreign language) joy in me. He is polite and kind and finds himself amidst large groups of yelling Americans more frequently than he probably would have guessed at the outset of this leg of his journey.

I like that english teacher bit a lot, I don't know why, maybe because for once I feel a little like a host instead of a guest, maybe it is because I can help him or even more likely because I can understand him and communicate better than anyone else around him after years of teaching. I like being able to pick out the exact words or phrases people use in conversations that he is least likely to understand, explain them quickly and keep him in on the whole experience. I remember being around another language I was not totally fluent in, it can be exhausting, frustrating and even isolating, particularly because the people around you assume you can understand because you do speak the language.

Maybe the real reason I like him and want to help him so much is because I admire what he is doing greatly. As much as people give me credit for what I am doing, Sun is in a foreign country, staying with people he has never met and relying on strangers just for the sake of experiencing something and somewhere new. I made him his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich last night after we got back from heading out on the town, it was pretty cool. He didn't think he was going to like, but he did. He also liked Hostess Cupcakes, so I know he's a good person, right?

Ah, I'll be leaving behind lots of new friends here and that will be sad, but it is one of the first times that someone is leaving me, well not me, but the place I am staying at. I wonder if it will be at all different seeing someone go, instead of doing the going myself, I wonder if in him I see my left behind life in Prague and teaching English and if that will be going too. Life takes on strange shapes out here in the world of professional hoboism, do-gooding and existential voyaging. Could a small Korean guy be my past riding away on a train?

Houston III: Insanity

2009-02-17T15:15:00.007-05:00

My last day in Houston, TX and the whole visit has been a whirlwind.

As a walker, I am accustomed to a lot of time alone, and at a very slow pace, 3-3.7 mph to be exact. When my CS host introduced me to roughly a billion people all talking in technical jargon and internetese, well, while wonderful, it was also overwhelming. It's a kind of culture shock on LSD.

The whole scene I've been in here is a lot of net savvy individuals with gadgets and toys and an incredibly fast paced networking world that while I am thankful it exists, is one of the things I that I thought I was leaving behind me what with being unemployed and homeless and all. Wasn't it just this last summer I was wandering the high deserts with only a knife as a tool?

We've been doing video and setting me up on various sites like twitter.com and they are even trying to get me sponsors. Tonight is a happy hour where a portion of the proceeds go to the charity, they are trying to get me set to speak to classes while on the road via the internet so that I can do more with schools and keep moving on my journey, a welcoming party is being planned in Austin. All this in the last four hours. Fast paced. Suddenly I have 50 people following me on a internet site I hadn't even used before yesterday, it's very good, and a lot to take in during a few hour stretch for my now slow moving cranium.

If you are in Houston, come on down to Coffee Groundz tonight @ 7 for the happy hour or to meet me and call me Forest Gump, yeah, everybody does that but it's okay, you can too. Let the insanity continue!

INTERVIEW @ COFFEE GROUNDZ

B-YEEHAW!

Houston II: 3, 2, 1 . . .

2009-02-16T15:26:00.002-05:00

No miles walked today, except to delicious Jack in the Box and back. The Jack I went to was filled almost entirely with crazy people, homeless, or, like me, crazy homeless people. It's probably a pretty good town for it, weather considered and all.

Armies of homeless and crazies is something that you expect in a large city but sometimes forget about when you are other places, small places, for so long. And Houston is big. I didn't realize how big Houston was before I walked in during the first hour of night and saw the enormous skyline so indicative of our big city horizons. It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first really big city I had been in since probably Atlanta, GA. And that was months ago.

Talking on the phone with a close friend of mine who had taken a friend out of the county to Pittsburgh for the first time and saw the wonder on her face, I realized I had succumbed a bit to it myself even though I had been in many large cities. It was as if the skyscrapers snuck up on me, I was struck with awe, and for a time I stood on an overpass and just gazed at it. We are pretty industrious little creatures, us humans. It's hard to believe anything so giant and nearly epic really came from our soft fleshy little hands.

On the way home from Jack I wondered slowly through the city, the barrios, the ghettos, the worn out edge of town that is ragged like a flag left out in a storm. It's hard to take that this too is America, that we could let any place in our land wear and fray like this, that we would leave our fellow countrymen to wallow in squalor. It's not Houston, it's everywhere. For all the amazing people in our country there are still many problems which, like our cities, seem epic, but we know how to build something, there's a system, to fix a society . . . it's a task which seems beyond epic, like sifting the sand on a beach to find pebble. I can't help thinking that it wouldn't be all that hard though, if people wouldn't break bottles or leave trash everywhere, if the city would fix the broken sidewalks that are symptomatic of poor neighborhoods, if the rest of us would just do anything to let the people who have found themselves on the lower rungs of society know that they are important and there are possibilities beyond the world they may have been born into. But, I am like the rest of you, I don't know what to do or where to start, I'm trying something, but I can't say I am helping the people who need it most, I just hope I am.

I have about 1650 miles left, which is roughly 3 months, and a countdown of days is in my mind. I would like to think that when I finish there will be a way to continue to help people, that I can live a life worth living and with it inspire and help others, but I also realize that when I am done I may end up in hard times with many of the people I wish i could help. In debt, no work or home, though the future is far and approaching slowly, it is nowhere near as sneaky as a skyline, and I am as weary of its approach as I am excited for it.

Houston, TX: Might as well face it, your allergic to . . . ?

2009-02-16T01:15:00.004-05:00

Miles since last blog: 33.5
Miles Total: 2145.5

Route

It's been made clear to me that I am staying here until at least Tuesday. Tomorrow's docket: foot massage and fixing my video problems.

In other news, I may be allergic to sitting still. Seriously, I'm fine all day but when I lay down towards the end of the day my nose starts running and I need to sneeze. I've been in different places and different clothes, so what's this all about?

Dayton II: Ouch

2009-02-14T23:11:00.002-05:00

Took the day off today because I woke up with a ceased muscle in my calf, any of you who have seen one of my calves can imagine a fraction of the painful problem this could be. I'll be heading out tomorrow with a poor, but recovering leg and a newly duct taped Cherry's hip. I had hoped to get some miles in today to lessen the load tomorrow but it wasn't to be. 33.5 tomorrow, I'll be leaving early and taking plenty of breaks, or at least that's the plan. Wish me luck, I have a 7 day straight haul through Houston and into Austin with mostly 30 mile days ahead.

oh yeah, and until I get my "rugged external hard-drive" replaced (it seems 'rugged' doesn't cover normal usage, the port broke but the drive is fine) no more videos, bummed but undeterred. Over and out.