According to my math, tomorrow will be day 99 of this awesome adventure. Ninety-nine eves ago I was fretting, nervous, couldn’t sleep. Ditto today, except for the sleeping part. But it’s a good nervous, anticipating my arrival to Strawberry Fields, Central Park, New York City, N.Y., United States of America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Andromeda Strain, at approximately fourteen hundred hours on Saturday the twenty third day of November of the year two thousand and nineteen A.D, so on and so forth. That’s a big roundabout way to announce the following…
I will be arriving in Central Park at about 2:00 PM next Saturday, November 23rd.
Wow. I knew I’d have to write that someday but didn’t think it would be this soon. Earlier today, I asked Siri “how far is Central Park from here?” Her answer “Central Park is about 79 miles away by car.” My reaction… gulp. That’s crazy. My route is actually a little further than that, for I am planning on staying as rural as possible for as long as possible. Don’t worry, I won’t be walking along the runway at Newark International. As I mentioned yesterday, I am carefully mapping out this route, which is quite unlike pointing East on my old friend Hwy 70 and walking a straight 20-mile line through rural Arkansas.
Around here, I do have to watch my maps. It’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in the beauty of the place and the moment, and I have missed several key turns. The good thing when you’re walking is you don’t go miles and miles before you figure out you’ve made a wrong turn; the bad part is you must walk back. I actually got a little lost today, but it all worked out for I stumbled onto another Rail Trail, this one the Saucon. Walked it for about two miles but then had to re-route the rest, which worked out as well, took me into some nice woods.
And speaking of stumbling. I report that I have tripped four (4) more times since I last reported, bringing the total to ten. I tripped twice in one day for no apparent reason about two weeks ago, then last Monday, the wind blew my walking stick into my foot, causing the trip, and yesterday, little trip on a branch. Not too bad, ten little trips. I’m looking forward to adding up all the Fitbit data, but I’m guessing I’m at around three million steps by now. If we use that number, my current tripping rate is 0.00033%.
And around here, things continue to be beautiful, albeit significantly more populated. I’m here in the Lehigh Valley, home to almost a million people, obviously a little more dense than to what I’ve become accustomed. Prior to today, I associated this area, Allentown and Bethlehem specifically, with steel manufacturing and not much else. But I learned today that it’s much more than that - doing quite well, having adopted to so much of its manufacturing base moving offshore. There’s a lot going on around here, it’s nice to see.
And now, with only a week to go, I know for sure that I haven’t written everything I wanted to write about. The good thing is I don’t have to turn in my laptop when I finish this particular walk to the park. Instead of Virginia or Tennessee, you might have to hear about a walk around Lady Bird Lake in Austin.
