PDY

Not a lot to say about yesterday’s walk, except it was perhaps the most physically demanding so far. Attribute this to those things on my feet and toes which were really hurting, and then you compensate your stride, and everything else starts hurting, and you find yourself opening the Uber and Lift apps just to see if by chance… and you Yelp Taxis, Current Location… the closest is 40 miles away… and you just hope someone stops to give you a ride, no one does, and you think about all the ride offers you turned down! Probably wouldn’t have taken a ride, but I sure wanted one, and ended up walking every last painful step of the 21.44627 miles from Huntingdon to Camden, TN. The upside was less heat, of course the views, and a great hour or so with my new friend Chet.

Was walking out of town yesterday morning early, on the phone with my old friend Bill, when I crossed in front of Chet’s Pizza. Waved at the gentleman tending to a couple of things outside, and he approached me, asked where I was headed. When I told him, he insisted I come inside his pizza place, he wanted to buy me a pop. so in I went. And we sat down, and we talked…

Chester Ballenger, now 83, has lived a long full life starting in Iowa, then eventually migrating to Tennessee. Chester is a boxer, and though today he limits himself to only teaching boxing, in 1957 he has world champion in his welterweight division. Old paper clippings and pictures attesting to his boxing are all over his pizza place, but his favorite photo is that of his wife, who he lost 11 years ago, married at 19, his only love, mother to their six children. Still thinks about her every day. And we talked about people, and kindness, and about what’s messed up in the world and how we would fix it, We pretty much agreed on everything, including politics, which I rarely waste time talking about. We talked about other people, and all he said was that he treated people the way he wanted to be treated… sounds like a rule I think I heard as a kid, something about golden. Chet shows no signs of slowing down. He runs his pizza place by day, coaches boxing to local kids, sings country western with local bands in the evening, and that’s what’s keeping him happy and healthy. And he smiles, he’s a happy guy, though he didn’t smile for the camera! Chet kept me going all day, after insisting I try a piece of smoked ham before I left. It was wonderful.

Click on image for larger pic.

Got to hotel, was exhausted, but a good kind of tired, tried to write this last night, failed in favor of sleep. Earlier in the day, I was talking to Jimmy and mentioned I had not seen any long distance travelers, in either direction… then today happened.

Got as late a start as I could, knowing I would be picked up along the way, by design. Left Camden still relatively cool. After the first couple of miles, feet settle and pain subsides, or just plain gives up.

Was a couple of hours into the walk, when I heard someone talking behind me, turned around and was surprised to see a nice lady on a bike… asked if I was the guy walking to New York. My immediate response was “how do you know?”, to which she said we’d been travelling the similar path and had stayed at some of the same places. She left Dallas a month after I left Austin, on her quest to cross all 50 states on her bike - she’s riding to Key West now. And we too talked about the kindness of the people, and out respective trust in our Universes. and the heat, and all the stuff we’ve seen along the way. In conversation, turns out we overlapped for three years at the University of California at Davis, so there’s a pretty good chance we’ve probably seen each other before, just didn’t know it, and will never know it, but such a nice encounter, happy all the way. We agreed there’s a little element of what some people call crazy in both of us.

Meet my friend from college Barb Aldredge (sp? - will confirm)

So off she rode and on I went… walked over the Tennessee River, very pretty, and the same thought came up as when I crossed the Mississippi a week ago. How did the pioneers and the settlers get across these very wide rivers to get to the ol’ West? Well, they figured it our didn’t they? And they managed, they did it. And I’m pretty sure that when their feet hurt, they couldn’t just go into a cute little country pharmacy full of pretty women to buy antibiotic cream and band-aids, among other things. And if they got a little hungry, they couldn’t just reach back and pull out a vanilla protein bar worth 350 calories, or drink a cold Gatorade to settle their electrolytes… nope, they were tough, as are we, we just don’t know it…

And over the river and on up the road, spotted a dude walking towards me, with a backpack, on his journey from Michigan to Arizona. Cool guy, on his mission… we talked for a few minutes, handshake goodbye and off in opposing directions. I am not alone…

Lastly, a big thank you to the stranger who ran out of Skyway Lanes and Pizza with cold water bottle, handed it to me and ran back. Dude… you’ll never know how good that water tasted! You da man.