I just made my last hotel reservations, and for the first time in three months, I actually know where I’m going to be three days from now. Most days were planned the night before, some reservations were made for the same day. I’ve always had a general idea of what direction I needed to take, but the day to day planning has not been but a day or two in advance. Some days have been a challenge, but everything has worked out, as it usually does.
I’ve been completely dependent on my phone, and the amazing technology has allowed me to have the flexibility and as-you-go approach to this, and I’m really glad I could do it this way. Needless to say, I’m not the world’s greatest advance planner; I can do if I must, but don’t particularly like to. There’s probably some dark underlying reason, but I really don’t need to know what it is. But thanks to my phone, I don’t need physical maps to plan routes, I can find hotels, I can find food, I can know where I am, my little dot in the Universe. There have only been about six hours (of 600+) that I haven’t had a signal. Most of the time it was fine for a conversation or follow an electronic route. This walk would have been very different without it. More on that later.
Today was nice, albeit starting to get different. I actually spent about 8 miles walking on a sidewalk today, between Stanhope and Rockaway. It felt a little strange, but nice to not have to worry about the narrow shoulders. Weather was perfect. And along one stretch, I finally found what I’ve been looking for since I left… A real Italian Deli.
Meet Louise and Nick, originally from Croatia and Italy, respectively. The couldn’t have been nicer, and I spent a few minutes listening. They’ve been in the US for many years, next week is their fifty first wedding anniversary. They told me the story of their 50th, last year, and how the baker had never made a cake for a golden anniversary before. Further, they’ve been working together for 40 years. It was really nice to see. And my sandwich was superb, prosciutto and mozzarella, what more d’you need?
This was another nice thing to see, another feather in New Jersey’s cap when it comes to accommodating trans-state walkers. This is a pedestrian bridge beside the very narrow road. I really appreciate these now, given that the hairiest moments on this walk have been on bridges. Some were uncomfortably narrow, and though I waited for traffic to subside, there were a handful of times I was too close for comfort. Thank you NJ for reducing my newfound narrow bridge-stress!
And now, it being a new day, I am wondering what it’ll be like to write without being borderline exhausted. Somewhere between the pedestrian bridge and the beginning of this paragraph I died. I just re-read what I wrote last night; it’s a little all over the place, and I’m not really sure how I was planning on finishing it all up. I was tired, lost some time on this thing we call planning, looking at routes and hotels and such, and now I am chompin’ at the bit to get going. It’s a beautiful New Jersey morning, low forties, bright clear sky, have a nice, relatively rural road on which to walk as I head towards the NE corner of NJ on my way to NY. Gotta go…
