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Bill Buys a Hat I called Kip�an old high school track teammate who has kept up with his running�to see if he�d accompany me on a long walk, and Kip gave me some scary news: he�d had a basal cell carcinoma removed. Not to be confused with the tasty spice basil one might find in a kitchen cupboard, this basal is a cancerous splotch on the skin. Kip's best guess is that he got it from all the running he does on the roads, which got me thinking: "Hey, I go out on the roads plenty, and I never wear sunscreen." I sweat so much, any lotion I put on runs off in rivulets. You can't imagine how much that stuff stings the eyes when it trickles down from your forehead. I clasped my hands in prayer and called up to the sky in my most angelic voice, �You wouldn�t blight a face as handsome as mine, would you?� I dodged the sudden bolt of lightning and figured I�d have to beat the sun on my own. At a nearby Army surplus store, I found the perfect piece of solar protection: a boonie hat. It was one of those big, tan, floppy affairs that I could picture Steve Irwin wearing when he was out hunting crocodiles. Never mind the fact that Irwin actually wore a bush hat; I got that Aussie image stuck in my head and I wasn't going to let a little thing like the truth spoil it. As soon as I put the hat on my head, I felt like exclaiming �Crikey,� and so, of course, I did, in the worst possible Australian accent you can imagine. On the trip home, I noticed scores of jealous drivers staring at me and my lovely hat. It was mere coincidence they were laughing at the moment I passed by. Thus girded for battle, I met up with Kip and regaled him on my recent and most splendid purchase. When I was done I folded my arms and awaited his praising comments on how I�d outsmarted the sun. �What about your arms and legs?� he said. I held up my arms and noticed how rough their texture and crispy brown their appearance. I made a mental note: �By Crikey, I will wear sunscreen from now on when I�m out walking during the day.� We drove over the Coleman Bridge in two cars, dropping one at the end point in Gloucester Courthouse and the other 8 miles away at the starting point in Ordinary. Along the way we passed a digital sign outside a bank that was part clock and part thermometer. The sign said it was 94 degrees outside. Yikes! At the outset of our walk, the sun was baking us but good. Kip scanned the sky and saw a large bank of clouds west of the sun. �If we�re lucky, they�ll blow over this way and give us some shade,� he said. He got his wish, and by the time we passed the digital thermometer on foot, it read 83 degrees. I pushed my hat back and let it ride between my neck and my rucksack, the rawhide chinstrap preventing it from going too far. While we were walking, Kip told me about Indian artifacts he�d found while running through the trails and backwoods near his home. He spoke with passion on the subject and interwove stories about Indian and Colonial folklore from the region we were currently walking through. It was like I was getting a free lecture from a visiting professor. I listened intently, wishing I could add something more than an occasional �Uh huh� and �Is that so?� I felt small and insignificant, like those drivers must have felt when they'd seen me in my spiffy new hat. I started scanning the shoulder to see if I could find something important among all the usual clutter of cigarette butts and soda cans. After all, many of Kip's finds�rocks shaped into hand tools and things like that�had appeared ordinary at first glance. So imagine my excitement when I noticed on the side of the road a round, 2-� foot-wide piece of wood with a metal plate affixed to its center. It resembled a shield from the prop department for some Medieval play. Kip also saw it and promptly said, �Hey, a Viking shield.� Paying no heed to his joking tone, I scrambled over and turned it over, disturbing a napping snake. Vicious python or harmless garden snake, whichever it was, it was too dazed by the sun or dazzled by my hat to move. Flipped over, the wood turned out to be nothing more than a round tabletop, the type you might see in a caf�. So much for my archaeological adventure. A scene from Blazing Saddles popped into my head, except I was the one chained to jail cell doors instead of Alex Karras and I was saying, Mongo only pawn in game of life. Kip commented some more on our good fortune with the weather and that jinxed it. As we trod on, the clouds kept expanding, growing darker until they blotted out the sky. Then, when we had less than 2 miles to go, they opened up and poured a sudden torrent upon us. We saw flashes of lightning, not close enough to strike us but near enough for inspiration. We raced the final stretch to Kip�s car and reached it by 9:30 p.m.; we�d covered the 8 miles in 2-� hours. Kip�s car was parked at the perfect spot to end our journey: right at the intersection of Main Street and Walker Avenue. Man, I wish I could have that sign! Soaked and bedraggled, we hopped in his car and he dropped me off at mine. We drove our separate ways and by 10:30 I was home. When I finally crawled into bed, I realized I had forgotten to eat dinner that night. Oh well, if I hadn�t remembered, I couldn�t have been that hungry in the first place. Either that or exhaustion had simply been the more urgent of my needs. Whatever the case, I was asleep moments after my head hit the pillow. My dreams were filled with spongy roads for soft walking, puffy white clouds overhead, and people sitting on porches commenting on my hat. By Crikey, it was beautiful. The Kindness of Strangers Today's walk took me from Gloucester Courthouse, where Kip and I left off two days ago, 7 miles out to the edge of Mathews County. Dawn came along with me today. Our plan was to drive out of Newport News at 6 a.m. so we could avoid the heat of the day, but we got a slow start and left more than 3 hours late. It was a beautiful day when we the courthouse parking lot and we were contentedly jibber-jabbering about historic buildings, the quaint feel of Main Street, and the wrought-iron lampposts, which were both beautiful and impractical, rising up in the middle of the sidewalk and forcing us to skirt around them. But once we turned onto Route 14, the sun and the hilly terrain combined to beat us down.   Dawn and Bill, before and after the walk to Mathews County Dawn had made fun of my boonie hat earlier, so I taunted her now with some comment about the shade it was throwing on my face. Dawn reached up and plucked at the corrugated strap encircling its brim. Before this morning, I'd thought those circular grooves were the perfect storage space for shotgun shells or crocodile teeth, if I ever had the need of either. But Dawn saw another purpose in my wavy strap. "It's perfect for holding my lipstick," she said. "I don't think so," I replied. She must have noticed that she'd struck a nerve, her needling took on a renewed vigor. "Oh, come on, let me put my lipstick in your pretty little hat." When she gets like this, nothing can stop her. Any reply would just fuel her further, so I said nothing. "I'll even let you wear some if you want." "Never!" "Not even if you were in the desert and your lips were starting to crack?" "Not even if they dried up like blackened banana peels and fell off my face." She huffed and said, "Men," putting more derision into a single syllable than I thought possible. "You sound just like Judge Mills. He says he wouldn't use an umbrella even if it were raining rocks." "Smart man," I said. "I see why he's a judge." She rattled on then about wishing she had an umbrella for portable shade, and I figured this was a hint that it was about time for us to take a break. I dropped my pack and dug out some fig newtons, raisins, and a quart of Gatorade. As we were chilling out, a runner came striding up the long hill we had just struggled to climb and we called out hello. He joined us for a "shade break" and, as is my nature, I asked him a few questions. His name was Tom Richmond and he was training up to run an Ironman Triathalon (What I wouldn't give to be able to do that!). This morning, he'd run 19 miles in the heat so far and had 2-� more to go. Wow. I felt guilty with all the whining we'd done after only covering 3 miles. And we were only walking. We chatted about our various road scars�blisters and what not�and he asked me if I'd ever gotten Runner's Nipple. I had, indeed, which is why I always wear Underarmour beneath my t-shirts (for more on this, read the August 5, 2008 blog entry titled Monkey Butt). Tom told me that several triathletes he trains with created an informal group called the red 11's. They came up with that name from the two bloody streaks that dribble down your chest when your nipples bleed. Pretty nasty, and serious, stuff. He then told me what he did to stop this from happening to him again. "Duct tape," he said. He lifted his shirt and showed us two half-inch squares of chrome covering his nipples. "And I've never had them come off. I'd tried Band-Aids before, but they do come off at some point [during his run]. But I have a whole roll I've been using for 2 years and I'm not even a third of the way through the roll...The trick is making sure you don't forget it when you get home. When it's wet, it's easy to take off; but when it's dry�" Here, he scrunched up his face in a painful expression. And on that note, we bid each other farewell. He ran down the road and we followed shortly after. Within three minutes though, Tom was a blur on the horizon. Tom wasn't the only helpful person we ran into that day. One woman stopped to see if we needed a lift. "No one should be outside in this heat carrying that thing," she said, indicating my rucksack. I was really touched, more so because she had been driving on the other side of the divided highway and had to turn around at the next cut-through to come back and check on us. And Gloucester County's hospitality didn't end there. When we were only about a half-mile from where I'd parked my car, a big white truck pulled off the road ahead of us and a hand stuck out the window holding two bottles of water. The driver was Brian Bayford, the owner of a nearby business called Water Pro. He apologized that the water wasn't chilled and asked if I wanted some ice cold water from a cooler in his showroom. I was touched more than you can imagine, but the water he gave us was plenty refreshing at that moment. We'd already polised my 3-quart water supply and were still thirsty. I have to dip into some backstory here for a moment, for we had passed the Water Pro building about a fifteen minutes earlier, and when we'd walked by Dawn had made a joke about us rearranging the letters on their sign to create some crude message. So now, as Brian drove off, I turned to Dawn and shook my finger at her. "And you wanted to mess with his sign." (Water Pro, by the way, sets up filtration systems, builds wells, sells water coolers and bottled water, and does pretty much anything to do with water that you can imagine. If you have any water-related needs, call 804-693-7294...Hey, I figure his generosity deserves some kind of plug). At the end of our walk, I grabbed the lunch I'd packed in my car. We laid out a blanket in the shade of an elm tree and had a picnic behind a big white church. We had sandwiches, grapes, and even some wine (of the Bartles & James "cooler" variety). We didn't feast too long before ants swarmed over us. We wolfed down our chow and hopped back in the car. Ants may have cut short our little picnic, but it would take a lot more than that to blight our beautiful day. So far, my mind has been occupied by the hardships I would have to face; but now, I'm looking forward with a sense of hopeful anticipation, wondering what wonderful surprises the next leg of my journey will bring. The Day After a Beautiful Day "Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything."Yesterday, Terry and I were planning to walk around her neighborhood in the morning. But, since it was July 4th, I thought we deserved something a little more majestic. I'd never visited the waterfront on the southern edge of Newport News and heard that it was a beautiful place to walk. It was. The 3-mile stretch of Chesapeake Avenue running from LaSalle Avenue to the southern tip of Newport News fronted the James River and included numerous benches on which to stop and sit. At each of these locations was a historical marker telling the story of Ironclad battles and the importance of Newport News in several wars. And, as if that weren't enough, the houses on the other side of the sidewalk were beautiful enough to be on display in one of those Parades of Homes. We walked 3-� miles, but our time was hampered by my dawdling. I kept stopping to take pictures of various houses and ask Terry questions about the architecture. Poor girl, she had no idea she was in for a pop quiz that morning.  Chesapeake Avenue boasts beautiful houses, historical markers, and a sweeping view of the James River After I got home, I planned to go on another walk, but one thing led to another and next thing I knew it was time to head over to my sister's house for a Fourth-of-July barbeque. At the fete, I threw caution to the wind and feasted on several portions of chicken, chips with Mexican dip, some veggies, and a thick blob of gooey, mayonnaise-laden 7-layer salad. As if that weren't enough, I joined in on dessert: apple pie smothered with vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, but the next morning when I checked my Diet Manager computer program, it let me know I'd far exceeded my caloric goals for the previous day (duh!). I would have to pay for my delicious dalliance. So, this morning I took off at 4:30 and put in 12.2 miles on the road. I can have a slack mileage day once in a while or even splurge a little on what I eat, but if I want to stay on track with my weight loss I shouldn't do both at the same time (duh, again). But, I still think I did it right. Celebrations like this don't come up that frequently and as long as I'm willing to pay the check when it comes time to work out, I say party on! Now, where did I put that leftover 7-layer salad? Altered States When I take my mid-morning snack break at the office, I prefer to eat it outside. So one day last week, I'm standing at the building entrance, gazing out over a sculpted garden, crunching away on a crisp apple�I could have been posing for a Zen scene in some health & nutrition calendar. But then a fog of cigarette smoke wafted my way from the nearby designated smoking area and clogged up all my chakras. Thirty feet away stood a couple of twiggy women sucking down menthols, and the dichotomy struck me as funny. Here were two fit-looking women doing their best to harm their bodies, and here I was, a veritable side of beef, doing all I could to improve myself. I dumped my apple core in my supervisor�s trash can and saw the remnants of his last meal: a McDonalds bag along with grease-stained wrappers and a crumpled Styrofoam coffee cup. The irony continued for he, too, is a lean fellow. Once upon a time, I was also svelte. And, just as with the slimsters I witnessed that morning, I paid no attention to what went into my body. Well, that�s not entirely true; I never smoked, but I have always eaten much more than I was hungry for. When I was growing up, the catchphrase around the dinner table was �Clean everything off your plate� or �Think of the starving children in China.� I never figured out how some poor kid on the other side of the world would starve if I didn't sop up the gravy dregs on my plate, but I wasn't going to risk it. I've been putting in overtime hours at work and my walking has been suffering. In the first three days this week, I missed two of my morning walks and the one I did do was shorter than normal. The reason my weight loss has been so successful so far is that I've been logging so many hours of walking. I exercise so much that I can eat a decent amount of food each day and still lose weight�a large amount of weight at that, as long as I'm sensible about what I eat. But this week has been tougher. As my miles have dropped, so have my allowable calories. With less food comes the hunger. And the cravings. The temptations are out there. Every other ad on TV is promoting some deliciously gooey dinner and everytime I see someone eating, they're putting something I can't have into their pieholes. The surprising thing is, the food part hasn't been that difficult...until now. The only solution was to get my walking program back on track. I went to bed last night at 7, woke up this morning at 3, and knocked out a quick 8 miles before heading in to the office. The extra calories I burned off allowed me to eat a buffet-style lunch at Nawab without feeling guilty. I even went back to the buffet for seconds, certain I was somehow helping the children in India. There are people out there who try losing weight by diet alone; some of them even succeed. But, for me, I find all the time I spend working out pays off by making life easier during the rest of the day. Not only for the obvious results of improved health and mobility, but for the way it alters how I look at food. I'm able to eat enough to keep me from being hungry, and that keeps me from binging. If I choose to, I can pig out anytime I want. I just have to lace up my walking shoes afterwards and hit the road. When I first started, the prospect of a long walk was too daunting to consider. At the time, I felt as if knives were piercing my gut when I lumbered down the street. These days, I look forward to long treks. 10 miles now is easier than it a half-mile was back then. And with each passing day, the walking gets a little easier. And I get a little thinner. And if that thought doesn't put harmony back in my chakras, nothing will. (Lack of) Poetry in Motion
For those of you who don't know, Carolyn is the former Poet Laureate of Virginia. The day she was sworn in, I accompanied her to the ceremony and went with her to lunch afterwards in downtown Richmond. I surprised her with a poem I'd been working on for a few weeks and as she read it I thought how special it was that mine would be the first poem read by the state's official poet. Here's how it went: Roses are redKind of brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? I began my walk at 3 in the morning, my mind full of poetic thoughts. I wanted to top the special poem I'd given her before. It would be hard, I knew, but I had faith I could do it. I thought of myself as poetry in motion and juggled rhyme and imagery while I walked. I was so busy juggling, I nearly missed my first turn. Actually, I did miss it, but I realized that fact after I'd only passed it by 20-or-so steps. I walked back and promised myself to pay more attention. It was a promise I would fail to keep. Before I say what happened, let me first explain that it was very dark outside. Plus, I was trying to be safe. See, I was walking along the white stripe at the side of the road when I saw headlights approaching from ahead. I wear a reflective vest, but I also carry a flashlight, which I turned on and pointed it at the blacktop in front of me. Usually, cars will veer over into the other lane when they see my light but this truck kept plowing straight ahead. So, I did what I always do: I stepped off the road onto the shoulder as far as I could. I never saw the chuckhole that did me in, but I'm sure there's a groundhog somewhere bragging to his friends about the wooly mammoth he almost bagged. When I stepped into it, there was a loud crack and I tumbled in a heap, scraping my knee and shin in the process.
Blood dripped down my leg, but overall the damage from the scrapes was minor; my ankle was another matter. I would find out later I'd suffered a grade two sprain and that I was an idiot to keep walking on it (the first part was news; the second part, not so much). Instead of turning around and going back less than a mile to my car�I fell a mere 20 minutes into my walk�I opted to go 12 miles in the other direction on a bad wheel. My plan to "walk it off" seemed to be working, too. The ankle was a little uncomfortable, but I didn't think it was bad enough to keep me from pressing on. Somewhere around the halfway point, I crossed the bridge over the Piankatank River just as the sun was beginning to rise. The view was breathtaking and I stopped to enjoy it. Dropping my ruck, I swapped my empty bottle of water for a full one and stowed my flashlight. When I geared up and started down the bridge, I felt as if the groundhog had returned and was gnawing on my ankle. Now, I'm not an expert in physiology, but my best guess is that the constant movement had kept the blood flowing through the injured zone and when I stopped it allowed the blood to pool and swell. Or something like that. All I know for sure is that walking was painful from that point on. Wait, there's more! My glasses were fogged over and useless, so I had them hanging on my ruck's chest strap. When I stopped a second time to swap water bottles and fish out some Fig Newtons, I was careful to set my glasses aside and watch out for them as I dropped my ruck. The last thing I needed was a broken pair of glasses. When I rucked up again, I shimmied around to get it settled on my back and for the second time that morning I heard a distressing crack. I lifted my size-12 canoe and revealed the twisted frames and popped-out lens from my glasses. Shit. As if that weren't bad enough, my ankle seized up some more during the second stop and the pain over the last 3 or 4 miles was intense. I considered calling Carolyn to pick me up, but humiliation beat out pain (and common sense) and I wobbled down the road with a pronounced stutter in my gait. Instead of poetry in motion, my walk had become a comedy of errors. I do have a theory, though, about why I was so discombobulated. I only got 3�-hours sleep last night, which, of course, was not my fault. Last night, Dawn and Terry came over to my house dressed as French maids and they did incredible things that I promised not to reveal. But, seeing how I'm so untrustworthy, I'll fill you in anyway. On second thought, someone as classy and refined as YOU probably wouldn't be interested....  ...if I'm wrong though, just click here for all the lurid details. Road Hazards Since my ankle injury has me laid up this week, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the hazards of the road. Most, if not all, of these can be avoided with a little forethought. Unfortunately, I learn most of my lessons through experience. And, all too often, one experience is not enough for me to learn. So, without further ado, here are some of the road hazards I've discovered. Night Blindness I do much of my walking during the darkness of early morning, either to beat the sun or sneak a walk in before heading to work, and whenever it's dark outside I always wear a reflective vest. If I'm out on one of my long walks, I strap a second vest to the back of my rucksack and I carry a flashlight. I do everything I can to make sure everyone on the road is aware of my presence. General Tso�s Revenge This is the hazard that strikes the most fear into a walker's heart. General Tso�s Revenge is that gurgling sensation in your guts that creates a pained expression on your face as you realize you're not going to make it to a restroom in time. Click HERE if you want to read about the last time he got me, but if you wish to avoid my potty mouth, move on and I promise to speak no more on this subject. Cramps What are you, a sissy? Only sissies get cramps! Suck it up! Keep moving! Whoa, sorry. Army flashback. Cramps are your body's way of letting you know that you're pushing yourself further than its used to being pushed. It could be that you've grown used to lethargy and the long walk down the drive to fetch the morning paper is too much, or it could be that you're actually pushing too hard. In either case, listen to your body. If it's minor, keep going, but ease up your pace. Cramping will lessen as your body gets used to working out. Unless you're a sissy or something. Bugs This is one of those hazards that falls in the "inconvenience" category. When you walk outside, you're in their domain and you just have to suffer. Sure, you can use bug spray, though that only seems to work my hometown mosquitoes up into a fever pitch. They take it as an affront to their bughood if you think you can keep them away with a few squirts of some stinky juice. They seem to really like going for my ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and any other orifice that I wish to bear. When I wear my hat or drape a towel over my head, that seems to thwart them enough to get past a bad stretch. Of more concern to me is a problem that accompanies the bugs, and that is my city's efforts to battle them. We have a bug spray truck that sometimes trolls our city streets, usually in the late evenings or early morning hours when most people are inside eating Pop Tarts or watching TV. Except for walkers avoiding the scorching sun. One time I was walking down a long street with no outlet when the dreaded orange truck came my way, trailing its deadly fog behind in its wake. I had nowhere to go but back through the mist as fast as I could. A week later, my meals still tasted like detergent. Animals Mostly this refers to problems with dogs. Sure, walking outside includes the risk of a rabid squirrel jumping down from a tree and going for your jugular and even the less-life-threatening inconvenience of a bird dropping some "white treasure" on you (sorry, I know I promised no more potty mouth, but, as I've mentioned before, I aman untrustworthy git). But, the most animal problem that most walkers might encounter is of the canine sort. Most towns have ordinances requiring owners to keep dogs on leashes or otherwise restrained when outside. But, unless a dog actually bites someone, it's a law that's seldom enforced. That's because unprovoked dog bites not of the nip-from-a-rambunctious-pup type are rare. Dogs are territorial creatures, and their barks and growls are usually just warnings. If you leave them alone and get off their land, they'll be proud of the good job they did and you'll be unmolested. If you become combative, anything can happen. Not everyone agrees. One of my friends once suggested that I could disperse "country dogs" by bending down to pick up a clod of dirt and taking up a throwing posture. Doesn't matter if I even had something in my hand. Dogs are smart enough to recognize the intent. Or so the theory goes. I tried it one time when I strayed onto someone's property and three big dogs came growling out of the back yard. I picked up a plum-sized stone and took up the position and waited for that moment when the dogs would recognize the imminent danger and back off. I'd still be waiting for that moment if not for the command from their owner to "Shut up" and "Come here." Of course, I can't say these were "country dogs," but still, I can't recommend this tact based on my limited track record. Generally speaking, it's best to stick to main streets and neighborhoods you already know to have no free-range dogs. Walking surface I prefer walking on the grassy shoulder instead of the hard surface of the road; but only if the grass is short and the ground even. Some road shoulders are covered with ankle-twisting rocks and chuckholes (as evidenced by my current situation) and one should tread with care when straying from smooth blacktop or sidewalk. The roads in my hometown (and many others I've walked) present another problem: crowns. Many roads are sloped so water will run off from the high point in the middle out toward the sides. Great for rain; not so great for walkers. When you walk on the side of a crowned road, your ankles endure a constant strain from supporting your weight while your feet are slanted. This might not be a big problem in the short term, but I don't see how walking with your ankles twisted sideways can be good for you long-term. I avoid this problem by walking up on the grass or, if traffic allows, as far toward the center stripe as possible. Misorientation As anyone can attest who has ever walked, run, or driven around a bend and thought, Hey, that's not supposed to be here, getting lost is no fun. Paul F. Crickmore, a USAF test pilot, once said, �You�ve never been lost until you�ve been lost at Mach 3.� He only says that because he never met my friend Terry. One time she was driving to a friend's house in Pennsylvania and wound up in another town driving circles around their streets. She kept referring to the Post-It note where she'd written her directions and couldn't figure out where she'd gone wrong. Finally, giving up, she called her friend. As he explained the directions again, Terry cut in. "But it doesn't say that on my note." "Turn the note over," he said. She'd forgotten that she'd written the rest of the directions on the back. Oops. I, too, have been misoriented a time or two. Sometimes while walking. When you miss a turn in your car, it's a minor inconvenience. A wrong turn when you're on foot, however, can add hours to your walk. On my walk a couple of weeks ago from Williamsburg to Yorktown, I turned off the Colonial Parkway one exit too early and wove through the Riverwalk area before making my way to where my nephew was waiting in a parked car. That wrong turn tacked 1-� miles onto 14 miles I'd already hiked, and by the time I made it to the car I was a shambling wreck. Common Sense (or lack thereof) There are a host of other problems I haven't listed that fall into the category of not using your brain for what it was intended: thinking. If it's a scorching day, wear sunscreen. To prevent dehydration, drink water. If your sweaty clothes are chafing you, go naked. The point is, most damage that walkers (or anyone else for that matter) do to themselves are injuries that could be avoided with just a tiny bit of forethought. As my drill sergeant loved saying: "Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance." Not all of his catchphrases were so alliterative. He was, after all, the guy who told me only sissies got cramps. And with that thought in mind, I'm going to say goodnight and cry myself to sleep. The Peninsula Campaign: Day Six Williamsburg halfway to Jamestown It was pointed out to me that my Peninsula Campaign was deficient because I had not actually visited every city/county on the Peninsula. I had forgotten about Jamestown, the first permanent colony of English-speaking settlers in the New World. Shame on me. This morning, I made plans to rectify the situation. Or at least half of the situation. Since my ankle is still tender, I only made plans to go half the distance. I felt as if I were somehow cheating, but I needn't have worried. Before the day was out, I would walk much farther than planned. Dawn came along and I warned her about the Colonial Parkway's undulating surface. She drives the Parkway every spring and is familiar with the route. "I never noticed anything like that," she said. But one views rises and drops in elevation differently while walking the terrain as opposed to driving over it in a car. As we hoofed up the first long hill, our breathing started to sound like an obscene phone call. "See what I mean," I said. She nodded, too winded to waste air on a verbal response. Once we crested the hill, Dawn started singing a tune I recognized: the Petula Clark song "Downtown." Except, she'd modified the lyrics to match the moment: "DOWN-HILL, things are so great, we're walking DOWN-HILL, I hope we can keep on walking DOWN-HILL." I joined in and we belted out the tune as loud as we could, aiming more for spectacle than melody. When we reached the bottom and started back up again, we started singing at the same moment. Without planning it, we changed the lyrics and sung in the lethargic tone of a teenager who's just been asked to mow the lawn. "Uphill, luh luh luh lum luh luh. Uphill, luh luh luh lum luh luh." It would have been a thing of beauty if it weren't so God-awful bad. Early in our walk, we encountered a bit of a snag. We were just about to walk through the tunnel that runs beneath the length of Colonial Williamsburg when a park ranger pulled up alongside us. "You weren't planning to walk through the tunnel, were you?" What was your first clue? I thought, the fact that we are headed in that direction and only a dozen-or-so steps away from entering it? What I said though, in the most respectful tone I could muster, "Why, gee, officer, yes we are." "Didn't you see the sign back there?" We turned and looked back about 50 feet at a cluster of roadsigns facing the other direction. I hadn't recalled seeing them when we'd walked past. Maybe we'd been singing at the time. "No," I said. "What did it say?" He squinted, probably thinking, Are these two brain dead or something? What he said though, in the kindest protect-and-serve voice he could muster, "It says you can't walk through the tunnel. You'll have to go back, divert through Colonial Williamsburg, and pick up the Parkway on the other side."
For my part, I snapped some decent pictures of old buildings and costumed folk and I almost got a shot of Dawn falling out of a tree. Here's what happened: We stopped to avail ourselves of the restroom and when I came back outside, Dawn was nowhere to be found. I heard her making fake bird sounds nearby, but I couldn't find her anywhere. She had climbed into a magnolia tree and was hoping to scare the Bejesus out of me when I walked by. But I finally saw her and when I came over she lost her footing and started to slip. My first thought was not to jump to her rescue; it was to reach for my camera. But, by the time I'd pulled it from the webbed pocket on the side of my rucksack, she'd righted herself and had climbed down. Rats!
I've been dreaming of pancakes ever since seeing this place the first time I walked by. I almost stopped in the second time I passed it on the return leg to Yorktown. Finally, my pancake jones would be satiated. While we waited to be seated, Dawn nudged me and pointed at the wall. "Those better be some darn good pancakes," she said. On the wall was a framed "Resolution of Recognition" signed by the mayor. Wow. I'd never seen anything like that in a pancake house before. It seemed I'd picked a good place indeed for our post-walk victory meal. Unfortunately, the third time wasn't quite the charm I hoped it'd be. The pancakes were mediocre and the service was worse. Dawn also thought the service was poor, but she was happy enough with her meal: a bacon omelette. "It's been on my mind since I smelled that girl," she quipped. When we come back to do the second half of the trip to Jamestown, I'm bringing a picnic basket and we're hitting the beach. If Dawn's lucky, I might pack some bacon. And if she's really lucky, I might even bring enough to share. Backsliding Grrr. For the first time since I started my walking program, I've added weight instead of losing it. I gained two pounds last week. That result is directly related to three factors:
I've still got a couple more restaurants to visit this week, but I think I'll bring along a friend to "check them out." That way, I can stick to the healthy menu and still get a feel for the delicious taste of the cheesy and greasy items on everyone else's plates. Lunch with an Old Friend I've got a lot of work piled up, so I only have time for a quick note. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so this entry should be worth two grand. I had lunch yesterday with Michelle, a friend of mine whom I haven�t seen in a while. I�ve been using a picture of the two of us together on my �Transformation� page. Now I finally have an �after� picture to go with the �before� version. She looks the same in both�great�and while I don't look particulary marvelous in either shot, there is quite a bit of noticible change. And that's a great way to get a day started. Even when you're facing a pile of work.  
Back in the Saddle The past two weeks have been miserable for me. I was told to stay off my ankle for two weeks, so, of course, I got back on it after one. Last weekend I did a hike on the Colonial Parkway to test the ankle out and I thought it held up pretty well. But, when I got home it was a little stiff and swollen like a water balloon filled to the bursting point. Guess I should have waited another week, huh? So, I stayed off of it for the rest of the week, but man was it tough. Once you get into the swing of regular walking, it becomes an endorphin high you are addicted to. I compensated by eating far too much during my first week of no walking. This week I�ve been much better and I hope the scales are kind to me when Monday rolls around. It�s been two weeks now. My ankle is still a little fatter than normal, but it feels fine when I walk around on it just doing everyday things like walking through grocery store aisles, roughhousing with the dogs, and doing the Saturday Night Fever disco dance in the Playboy Mansion�no, wait, I dreamed that last one. Even so, my ankle had served its two-week sentence in solitary and was ready to get back into general population. This morning I took it out and strolled through a neighborhood I�ve never visited before. I turned down a bike path that sent me into a nearby neighborhood and followed another bike path that went between a couple of lakes and next thing I knew I was back out on the main street right at the point where the sidewalk begins. Not only was my ankle feeling fine, but I�d just discovered a great way to bypass a mile of crowned road with skinny shoulders. Ta da! The walk ended up being about 5 miles and my ankle held up like a champ. It�s ready to get back out there for some serious mileage again. Sure it�s still a little thick, but hey, what on me isn�t? A Walk on the Southside: Day 1 Laskin Road "No plan survives first contact with the enemy."Now that I�ve walked across the Peninsula and trekked almost to the Northern Neck, I thought I�d take some time to explore the south side of the metropolis in which I live. Hampton Roads, believe it or not, is the 35th largest metropolis in the country, with Virginia Beach being the state�s most populous city (433,746 residents by 2008 Census estimates) and Norfolk and Chesapeake coming in second and third. It seemed high time to include them in my walking adventure. So here was the plan: Dawn and I were going to walk from the First Landing Monument on Fort Story, stroll down Atlantic Avenue, and move over to the boardwalk once that started up. The First Landing Monument is a statue built on the spot where English speaking settlers first landed in this country. A little over 400 years ago, Christopher Newport pulled up on shore, scanned the long length of Virginia Beach, and said, �Hast thou ever seen a more beautiful and bountiful land?� �Nay,� John Smith replied. �It is splendid indeed. Let us build thee up a row of hotels and tee-shirt shops!� But, first they had to find a place for their crew to settle down. They set off to explore the land and find someone to validate their parking ticket. They happened upon a finger of land jutting out into the James River and built the colony of Jamestown, which still stands today. With such grand history behind this stepping-off point, it seemed the perfect spot to set off my own quest. Although it was Sunday, I still put in a full day at the office. I figured that by the time I was ready to hike, the sun would be low on the horizon and the temperature would drop to something bearable. With a high in the 90�s today, my plan sounded perfect. I was excited and confident. Nothing was going stop me. Nothing, that is, except for a military policeman. When Dawn and I reached the entrance to Fort Story, we discovered the fort closes its gate to civilians after 5 p.m. I told the guard, �But I�m the Incredible Shrinking Bill. Doesn�t that give me special privileges?� After he stopped beating me with his baton, we drove back to 31st Street where Dawn had parked her car and hammered out a plan B. If we couldn�t walk the first Southside leg, we�d just have to walk the second one. We can backtrack next Saturday and do the �first leg� at that time. It won�t be the first time I�ve done things bass ackwards. Nor the last. So off we went 5-or-so miles down Laskin Road to a shopping center near the Lynnhaven Parkway intersection. I hoisted my rucksack, which was considerably heavier�30 pounds now�and we were off. The walk down Laskin was fairly dull for most of the trip, until we walked by a Saturn dealership where Dawn went bonkers over the Saturn Sky. She rubbed her body all over one of them and chanted, �I love you. I love you. I love you.� I wiped some of her drool off the bumper and pried her from the hood.
I pushed slowly at first, but then I went faster and faster. The ruck was bouncing on my back and I can only imagine what we looked like to cars driving by. The cart jumped every time it hit a pavement joint and Dawn was losing her breath from laughing. �It�s like a ride at Busch Gardens,� she said. When the sidewalk ended, I pushed the cart into the grass and helped unwedge Dawn from the grip of the cart�s cage. It was dark by the time we made it back to the strip and beachgoers were eyeballing us in a way that told us how out of place we were. All around were young folk baring as much skin as the law allowed. Bikinied waifs wove in and out of traffic rolling by at 5 mph and bronzed boys strutted past with surfboards under their arms. As we strode the last few blocks, the sounds of a party rose to greet us. There was a band playing beach music beside the King Neptune statue, so we copped a squat on the grass and joined the party. From my ruck, I removed a cooler filled with ice, crab, and 7-layer salad (the extra weight I mentioned earlier). From another pocket, I pulled dessert: peanut butter granola bars my pal Ann gave me as a present. Music, food, and soft ground to sit on. What more could we want? The only thing that could have made my day any better would have been if I�d remember to take a picture of Dawn wedged in the shopping cart before I helped her out. You�ll just have to use your imagination on that one. Whatever picture you conjure up, though, I promise you it was funnier. Walks With Horses "The white man the soldiers are looking for no longer exists. Now there is only a Sioux named Dances With Wolves."On the tiny island of Assateague lives a herd of wild horses that have roamed its shores for centuries. They are rumored to have come from a Spanish galleon that ran aground in 1750 during a hurricane. Every July for the past 87 years, they have been rounded up and herded across the channel that separates Assategue from its sister island, Chincoteague. The annual "Pony Swim" was popularized in 1947 by the book Misty of Chincoteague, and spectators have come in the thousands ever since. For 10 years, I've been telling myself that I would go but always found a reason to beg off. Until this year. As usual, my partner in crime on this trip was Dawn. We took off from Hampton Roads around 1:30 a.m. so we could catch the first shuttle bus at 5 a.m. to the swim site. The buses dropped visitors off at Chincoteague's Memorial Park where everyone milled in a jovial mood. Dawn, gadabout that she is, asked everyone she could find where the horses would actually swim from and to, and we discovered that we were situated a half-mile away from the actual landing site. Walking through a few neighborhoods, we wound our way to the end of Pony Swim Lane, where we plopped down on a dock jutting into the channel. The vantage point appeared too good to be true. It was. Before we had time to settle in, officials came along and all of us "trespassers" off the dock. This, however, was not a bad thing, for the spot we ended at was even better. The landing site for the swimming ponies sits on a few acres of marsh grass. Strung between stakes is an orange mesh netting that marks the area much like crime scene tape. Though it also acts as a funnel for the horses, I suspect its main purpose is crowd control. Booted from the dock, we made our way into the throng of spectators lining the orange wall and wormed our way into prime position. We were right next to the flags marking the spot where the horses would pass by on their way to the fairgrounds. Much better than our original position on the dock. Then came the big wait. The horses weren't actually due until sometime between 8:30 and 10 a.m. We chatted with our neighbors and tried to catch tiny crabs the size of beetles, which were skittering across people's toes. Much of the crowd had brought beach towels or chairs and were passing the time in comfort. Even the Amish behind us had some. They also had books and binoculars; this obviously wasn't their first round-up. I told Dawn I wanted to get a shot of them. "I don't know," Dawn said. "It might be against their religion to have their picture taken." So, I surreptitiously popped the lens from the camera hanging from my neck, and thumbed the shutter while looking somewhere else. The spy routine wasn't necessary (as should have been obvious from their various modern accoutrements). These were Mennonites, not Amish, and modern ones at that. This fact was brought home when one of them later whipped out a digital camera to shoot pictures of the ponies. Later, one of the Amish�I mean, Mennonites�even bought a tie-dye tee shirt from a vendor passing through the crowd. The tee-shirt guy worked the crowd like a champ. He hawked his wares like a vendor selling hot dogs in a baseball stadium. "Tee shirts," he called out. "Get your tee shirts!" It struck Dawn as funny, and she called out in a mimicking voice (though not as loud), "Red hots. Get your red hots." As he wove through the crowd, someone asked him, "Do you have a large?" "Yeah, they're all large," he said, passing her a shirt. Farther on, someone else asked, "Do you have an extra-large?" "Yeah, here you go," he said, passing a shirt from the same stack. Ah, the entrepreneurial spirit, you can't get away from it anywhere in America, not even in out-of-the-way Chincoteauge. Set up in Memorial Park were tents selling framed photos and various commemorative trinkets. On our walk to Pony Swim Lane, we'd passed impromptu front-yard parking lots where young boys sat in lawn chairs with cardboard signs reading $20 Parking. Even after it was all over, residents unwound their garden hoses and stood outside their homes with signs that read, "Water spray. Donations accepted." The need from the water spray arose from the mud slop we had to trudge through, but that didn't come till later. Now, it was time for ponies. At 9:40 a.m., a Coast Guard boat popped red smoke and Salt Water Volunteer Cowboys herded the ponies across the channel. Their heads bobbed like reed baskets floating on the water. Boats formed twin picket lines in the channel to funnel them in the right direction and a few minutes later the majestic creatures popped up on shore right in front of us, gleaming in the early morning light. Young colts shivered from the swim and stayed close to their mothers, eyes wide in wonderment. They whinnied and grazed and jostled about just a few feet from me, close enough at times for me to reach out and touch. I wish I could share pictures of the sight, but my camera's batteries had run out of juice by this point. Had I known that, I wouldn't have snapped the picture of the surreptitious picture of the Amish�I mean, Mennonites. Maybe it was Karma getting back at me. As it was, I got some great pictures, but they're all on my cell phone. The crowd was forbidden from taking the nice dry dock back to the street. Instead, we all had to trudg through a wet and sloppy field. In some places, we sunk into mud well past our ankles. Dawn, fashionista that she is, wore white pants, and I, inspired by the horses or just trying to get Karma back on my side, gave her a ride on my back through the slop. Once through the bog, Dawn bought me a tee shirt that said, I earned this shirt at the 2009 Pony Swim. "Boy, did you ever," Dawn said. Behind the tables of tee shirts, a woman was catching a few winks on her moped, which was leaning against a fencepost. Dawn thought she was just leaning down to her moped's rear view mirror to check her make-up or something, but I said, "Nah, she's too slack for that. She's sleeping." Something about her limp pose struck me as funny, so I whipped out the cell phone, aimed, and snapped a picture. We had only moved along another fifty or so feet when the crowd parted to make way for an ambulance. A volunteer pointed in the direction from which we'd just come and said, "Some woman just passed out." Yikes! So much for my Karma. We decided to flee the scene�I mean, walk back to the car. Everyone else was taking buses to the nearby carnival grounds or back to the grassy field by the high school, where I'd parked my car. So, when we asked directions from a traffic cop, he tried to send us to the bus stop. "No, no," I explained. "We want to walk there." "Are you sure? It's an awful long way. Maybe 3 miles." "More like 4," his partner added. Dawn piped up, quite proudly I must say, "No problem. We walk 5 or 10 miles every day." A slight exaggeration, but in the right spirit. We wove through the streets, Dawn strolling along in her clean white pants while I squished in my muddly sneakers. She stopped a car about a mile into our walk to double-check that we were headed in the right direction, and their concerns echoed those of the police officers. "That's so far. You know you can take a bus, don't you?" A half-mile from the school, we stopped in a charming store so Dawn could buy a horsey pin for her hat. The shopkeeper refilled the half-gallon jug I'd been toting with ice cold water and asked where we were going. "Oh," she said when I told her, concern for us filling her voice. "That's still a long way away. Are you sure you want to walk?" A Walk on the Southside: Day Two Virginia Beach to Norfolk After my mid-week interlude in Chincoteague where I became Walks With Horses, it was back home to continue my walk through Hampton Roads. I'd forgotten that the last leg left off at the intersection of Mustang Trail. How appropos. Unfortunately, I would earn a new name on this next leg of my walk with a little less cachet: Walks Through Urban Sprawl With Hot Sun Beating On Back. Once you move in from the coast, Virginia Beach Blvd. is an ugly strip of utilitarian urban sprawl. Except for the strip of grass next to the sidewalk and the occasional tree planted in front of a store, there was nothing but concrete, boxy buildings, and storefront signs. I began my walk at a little before noon and the temp was already in the 90's. It would keep climbing through the day, and the heat was magnified by the concrete below. I'd packed extra water (5 quarts total) and a couple of beach towels so I wouldn't stain the front seat of my friend's car on the ride back from the finish line. My ruck bulged with the extra provisions and I'm sure passing drivers were wondering what the fat boy was doing with such a heavy load on his back on such a hot day.
A little farther down the boulevard, I stopped again when I saw something interesting. This time, it was a doggie day care & training facility. They had a van in the parking lot with "Beagle One" stenciled on the hood, a pool underneath a tree, and a five-foot cutout of a cartoon dog standing next to the road. I propped my camera up on a nearby post and posed for a picture with McGruff.
Shortly after I crossed the Norfolk border, I saw a store I'd frequented many times before: Casual Male XL. I'd been ecstatic to discover them when I couldn't find clothes to fit me in regular stores, and even happier still when I no longer needed them. My water supply was running low, so I stopped in to top off one of my bottles. When I stepped in the door, the employees pegged me as their demographic and when they noticed the large rucksack on my back must have figured they'd be pocketing a week's worth of commissions from this one visit. If they were disappointed when I asked to top off, they had the good grace not to show it. I didn't hike much more after that, stopping at a Friendly's less than a mile down the road. Had I known what I discovered upon returning home, I would have slogged on a little farther. What I discovered was that the distance I'd traveled for the day was 8 miles (though it felt like 15 in the heat), which put my mileage for the month at 99-�. That was a pretty good total for being boogered up for 2 weeks with a bad ankle. But I wasn't satisfied. I was this close to 100 miles, and close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so there was only one thing to do. The day's heat was long gone, giving way to a steady rain. I stepped out my front door and headed out into the dark to chase that last half-mile. That's what I do these days. |
