These Knees Were Made For Walking

Reality, meet Expectations

If you haven’t heard from me for a few days it is because things are going pretty well. Or, at the very least, as expected. I am now in my fourth week on the road and still developing a routine that will work for me and Jack.

In a little bit, I will let you know the stats on how far we have walked. Right now, our walking days are pretty long. It takes me over an hour to get to our starting point for the day. We start where we ended the last time we walked. This process is hard to explain but it actually working really well in implementation.

For review: I am camping and this I call “home”. We leave home around 9am, after coffee, etc. Drive to the place we left off last time. From there, we walk until we are ready to head home. Then, we get an Uber or Lyft to take us back to the car. From there we go home. The next time we walk we drive to the place where the Uber or Lyft picked us up and that is our starting point for the day. Rinse and repeat.

My goal, at what I call “full stream ahead”, is 12-15 miles a day, six days a week. The stats:

• Week one: 17+ miles
• Week two: 17+ miles
• Week three: 30+ miles
• Week four: 7ish miles so far. We have walked one day. Today is day 3. I start the weeks on Sunday.

So not so bad. I had not really looked at it and thought I was pretty far behind schedule.

But that is a complicated thing for me. While I have been getting ready for this walk a few things have occurred to me. One is that I would like to let go of having the goal be the purpose. What is we say? The journey is the goal. The journey is the purpose. Cliche, I know. But that might be what comes up here a lot. Cliches. I have some time to think.

So, as reality surfaces, I am realizing that I want to slow down. I want to actually see some of the places I am walking through. That takes time. And when I am faced with a choice of making progress or seeing the Great Falls on the Potomac, I struggle. I rationalize. I say to myself: I can come back. It will still be here. I have a goal and I am behind schedule. Then, I think about Reality. I may not come back. My body hurts after I have walked all day. My energy is finite. So, I stay and see the falls. They are spectacular. But I don’t go in the tavern and look at the history of the Tow Path. I can read about that in a book. For me, a compromise. We walked 8 miles that day.