Last day walking...kind of...sort of...

We talked about when our last walking day would be probably two weeks before it actually happened. And there was all kinds of speculation around it.

"I heard we were only walking 7 miles."
"No..it got changed to 23 - Jun-san wanted a harder day."
"Aren't we also walking into Washington? How is this our last walking day?"
"I heard we aren't walking at all anymore ever."

And so it went.

But we did pretty much have our last full walking day..it was originally scheduled for 14 miles, but Jun-san changed it to 21. In the end I don't think we did 21 according to the drivers, but whatever. I turned in monk miles on this day because it was really hot, I was really fatigued and I wanted to help drive the truck so Kathleen could walk since Jen was driving Ammon's truck.



But...the cool thing about it being the "last" day was that there was a sort of excitement in the air. We had a lot of walkers too...it seemed the closer we got to D.C. the more people became interested in actually walking. Sort of like, wow..guess I better get this in and enjoy it before it's all over.



I enjoy walking...it's a great way to get some private time for your head and the rhythm of the steps is really very meditative.

In the last weeks I gave up drumming..don't know if I told you that..but I wanted to just walk again, without the drumming. I also wanted to be able to walk next to my friends as we wrapped this all up. You can't really be anything other than with the drum when you are drumming, that's the point...and I drummed for about 3 months..so..I figured that was enough for me.



So on this day..for 3.5, maybe 4 miles..we actually had the whole little clan walking at the same time. Patrick, Jen, Ray and Kathleen were all out there for a stretch. It's rare enough that I recognized it...so did Jen...and we all sort of walked along together in those early hours...I found it very comforting. Here's one photo --- that's Wayne-O there in the red...super sweet young man, beautiful singer and dancer too. He popped in and out over the course of the walk, it was good to have him back for the end.



I couldn't even tell you where we walked to...where we walked from. This just happened last week and I can't remember anything. I know it was towards D.C. I know we were still in Virginia. I want to say we were somewhere near...but I can't even remember the town names.

I do remember that we walked through the city a lot and that it was very very hot. And that I was driving the truck at one point and missed one of the rest stops. But that's pretty much all I remember. And to take pictures. I took a lot of pictures.