I promised myself that I would make frequent updates on the progress to Hawaii….
I’ve created a Yahoo! group for the 5 other people taking on this challenge with me. My sister will probably get to Hawaii next year, at the pace she’s going (averages 15000 steps a day), and I bless her for giving me something to strive for (or stride for!) The rest of us will plod along and let her do laps around us!
Meanwhile, I have walked 122 miles since starting the journey on September 7. Got a lot in on Saturday, when I walked 13,406 steps at the zoo. Had a setback yesterday by falling and hurting myself. Hope today will be better, with speaking in front of a couple of classrooms (I always stand when I speak), and playing with the nieces and nephews tonight!
I am almost 80 miles towards Hawaii. That’s not bad, for under a month. I wonder if I can get another 20 miles done between now and Monday morning? If I do, I’ll have walked 100 miles in 30 days, which would make me feel pretty darn good about myself, for sure. And if I don’t…. well, 90 miles in a month is good, too. One needs room for improvement, after all.
It’s Baker’s Field, right? Where are the muffin farms?
We’re on our way to LA today. I’m speaking tonight at the STC San Gabriel chapter at 6. On writing a computer book. Should be exciting and fun. Meanwhile, we got the very last spot at the park last night– and when we pulled in, someone had parked his truck in our space! HA! (He moved, it was coo’).
I could really go for Starbucks and a muffin this morning. Now that we’re out of the mountains, I find myself longing for something that says “this food is identical to the food you ate before you got in this RV of insanity.” John was even craving McDonald’s yesterday! We’re listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink in the car right now, and we’re on the part about marketing and thin slicing for food purchasing decisions. I wish he’d talk about how the marketing obscures the presence of horrible things in your food, but this isn’t a book on food purity and politics.
In RV-news, our nearly-new (we bought it just over a month ago) sewer hose spouted a leak yesterday. Since I am Sewer Girl for the RV… well, it was not a pretty sight. We stopped in Fresno and bought our third sewer hose since buying the RV in March. Three hoses! The first one leaked due to damage, though, so we’ll forgive it. The one yesterday split at the seam– and it turns out the damn thing has a seam running all the way around it! If you don’t know, sewer hoses look like an accordion tube. There’s a device you can get that will convert your sewer waste into particles small enough to go down an ordinary garden hose, but they’re bulky and require installation– we would probably have one professionally installed, and that means stopping somewhere for more than a day. What I want to know is why they can’t make a 3″ wide sewer hose out of garden hose material. My garden hoses never spontaneously spring a leak!
The walk to Hawaii continues, though not as fast as I intended. I have trouble hitting more than 4000 steps a day– still much better than the <1000 I was doing before strapping the pedometer to my waist, but not as many as the 10000 steps I need to be doing if I want to get to Hawaii in 2009. I also haven't weighed myself this week-- I tend to do that mid-week, so it's between weekends, though since I walk more on weekends, maybe I should do it on Mondays. Ah, well. This note reminds me to check in with my Hawaii Walkers and see how the rest of us are doing, too.
A quick sketch in pen and watercolor of the Tuolumne River. We stopped here on the way down, after the windy road, so Alladin’s stomach could settle.
We now have four members signed up to walk to Hawaii over on America on the Move! This is awesome! If you’d like to sign up and join us, comment here or drop me an email and I’ll send you a registration code. AOM is free to use– create a full access account so you can sign up right proper. Once you do, sign up for the Pacific Crest challenge, because its goals are similar to the ones we’re aiming for. We’ll delve into more of the tools later. I’m thinking we should set September 30 as the close date for signing up. I’d like us all to get to Hawaii around the same time, after all.
Anyway, Click here to download the Excel spreadsheet I’m using! Feel free to tweak it to your own needs!
In the plans: Some way to talk to each other about our goals/progress. I’m going to send out a short poll to find out: do you want a LiveJournal community, an email/web group (Yahoo! group or Google?), a private listserve, or just swap everyone’s email addresses? Do you want a non-LJ group blog where we can post our progress, or something more private? If you’re in the challenge, think about this and watch your inbox.
I LOST FOUR POUNDS!!!!
Now, I’m sure some is water weight, time-of-day, time-of-month (not really), blah blah blah, but since starting the Walk to Hawaii plan, I’VE LOST FOUR POUNDS!!!
Now who wants to walk to Hawaii with me? Think about it– Hawaii, white sand beaches, and the scenery will be nice, because I won’t look like a whale in my swimming suit (and neither will you!)