And So Concludes One Orbit Around the Sun

One year.  Three hundred and sixty five days.  When I started walking regularly (i.e. every day) back on 04 October 2014, I really did not set out to walk or jog every day for a year.  I actually started daily walking to remove the idea of walking across the country from my thoughts.  I should probably tell the whole build-up to where we are today, but it's late, and I have some additional miles to put under my feet pretty early in the morning.

The short version of the story is that about four years ago, I came up with an escape fantasy that revolved around pulling a Johnny Paycheck and heading out across the country on foot.

I talked to Rory Conlan because I knew he was a level headed chap and would convince me that my wild scheme was actually quite crazy.  His initial reaction was promising, but about a week later he seemed to be coming around to the idea that the adventure of a transcontinental pilgrimage might actually be a reasonably good idea.

There was nothing really left to do but start walking and let the physical challenge and monotony of it all solve the problem for me and drive the idea out of my head.  That led me to 04 October 2014 when I walked 11.17 miles from the South Severn Pool in Annapolis, MD to just past College Parkway on the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail and back.

The intent was to walk every day for a month to see if I had the discipline to keep it up day after day.  I set a monthly average target of 10 miles per day to keep things challenging. When I started, I really had no idea if I could even keep things going for a month.  I had shin splints and blisters.  I was at times bored and cold and uncomfortable.  At the end of October of 2014, I had done what I set out to do.  Rory recommended that I rest for a day or two.  I'd been pushing pretty hard, and the physical adjustment was taking a toll.  I was still experiencing shin splints, but they were on the verge of disappearing.  At the time, I had no way of knowing this was the case.

On 01 November 2014, I decided that a month was good enough to keep on going and not upset the streak.  I have not missed a day for a year, and I intend to keep trudging along.  The shortest daily distance that I covered for exercise last year was a 1.5 mile run in mid-November associated with a physical test for work.

Tecumseh decorated for the Navy vs. Air Force football game

Now I find myself at the end of a year with 4050.73 miles and no desire to truncate this adventure at all.  I've seen and experienced things that I never imagined even existed.  I did slow down my life and force myself to experience the moment and the area around me out to about a meter of radius.  The boredom subsided.  I learned quite a bit about walking kit through experimentation.

Submarine Service Memorial Sculpture, USNA, Annapolis, MD

I've worn out nine pairs of shoes during this adventure so far, and I've walked in at least five states and the District of Columbia.  I started out with a pretty short term goal in mind, and now walking has become part and parcel to my daily practice.  I've had a great run of it, and as long as the universe conspires to help me, I plan on keeping this up for quite some time.

We shall see, of course, what the future holds as it unfolds before us, but as for tomorrow, I have no intention of stopping the meditative plodding that I've come to appreciate as a pace of seeing the world that I can comprehend and really do love to experience.

There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather

I am acquaintances with a British man who is overseeing shipbuilding in the deep south of the United States, and he articulated to me one day that, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing." Given his heritage from England and his current situation in Alabama, I was inclined to believe his observation.

Today, I must have had an abundance of inappropriate clothing because the eleven miles that I covered in a steady rain with a fifty three degree topping of the thermometer and a brisk north north westerly breeze.  I went out today unprepared.  What is doubly annoying about this situation is that I have about $300 worth of Under Armour Cold Gear hanging in my closet.  Be that as it may, since this was the first day of truly autumn-like weather this season things went pretty well under the circumstances.

Cannons or Bollards?

I ran across these interesting pieces of kit down along the Anacostia River Walk this morning in the vicinity of the Washington Navy Yard.  Clearly they've been placed along the waterfront to be used as bollards.  Given their shape, and the fact that each and every one of them have a large calibre hole coming up through the top, I'm beginning to wonder if they might not be cannons that have been repurposed at some point as bollards.

The Washington Navy Yard was a hub of industrial activity up through World War II.  There was a sizable forge, and the gun factory produced 16" naval rifles used on the battleships during the war.  It is not too hard to imagine that through the history of the yard that excess cannons were recycled into the bollards along the Anacostia.

Now that I have the pictures, I'll just have to make a trip over the museum on the post and inquire to the hereditary of there innocent posts for tying up ships in the river.

Change

The first trip I made to Southeast Washington, DC happened in the late summer of 1992.  It was a bit of tumultuous time in my life, so I'm not sure my impressions were entirely warranted, but the overall feel was one of rowdy desperation.  The storefronts seemed to be a repeating pattern of strip club, liquor store, gas station, pawn shop, liquor store, pawn shop, strip club, etc.

That is not the environment that is prevalent in the area today.  Southeast has changed.  It has been a bit of a hard slog, but the grittiness and crime in the area has been replaced with high end office buildings, a town center like atmosphere, some wonderful parks, and the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail.  The Nationals have built a new stadium, and trendy restaurants abound.  There's even a wading pool and an ice rink during the winter.

Department of Transportation Ocean and Air Transportation sculpture

Several major government activities moved into the area including the Department of Transportation and an increase in presence of the United States Navy at the Washington Navy Yard.

Closer view of the Ocean and Air Transportation Sculpture

The transformation this area of the city has undergone over the last twenty years of so is truly amazing.  That change involved vision and tenacity and hard work.  It also involved investment, planning, and hard headed dedication.

Seeing the results of all that effort is a great reminder that although change is hard, it is often worth the work required to see it through.  Change is also inevitable, so more often than not it's just better to get on with it.

Reflecting on Baseball

There I am...the guy on the street in a neon yellow shirt...reflected in the surface of an oversized baseball decorating Nationals Park, Southeast Washington, DC.

Bill the Goat

The first appearance of a live goat at a Naval Academy Football game occurred in 1893 at the Army Navy game of that year.  The midshipmen prevailed over the cadets with a 6-3 victory.  A goat began being seen more frequently as the Navy mascot from that point forward.  Since 1904, the goat has been the only mascot for the midshipmen.

Bronze Bill the Goat statue just inside Gate 1 at the
United States Naval Academy

Prior to the goat, the midshipmen had a gorilla (the favorite animal of the founder of the school, George Bancroft) as a mascot.  A cat and carrier pigeon have also served as mascots.

A tradition among midshipmen associated with the bronze goat pictured above is a "Bill's Balls Run."  During this event, a midshipmen will run from the dorm wearing nothing but underwear and hastily apply Brasso to Bill's testicles.  Due to this tradition, the statue's marbles are generally found in a polished brass condition.

Chapter 1

Today was a bit of a rough walking day although I did manage a little over six miles keeping both my daily streak as well as my progression to my yearly and monthly targets largely on track.  As rough as it was for walking, I had an even more challenging experience with picture taking, and as a result, I do not have a contemporary photo to show.  It has been my practice to date to use only contemporary photos (i.e. taken on the same day as the post), so I'll not break with that tradition now.

What I will do is launch off on a very rough draft of Chapter 1 of a novel that has been informed, to a degree, by my walking experiences and observations.

CHAPTER 1

The next step in the evolution of humankind did not unfold in the precise way that many prophesies had envisioned.  Let's not kid ourselves, we call it a step in the evolution, but the future is very far from certain, and it's entirely possible that this story will end up being the tale of our destruction.  From a standpoint of human habitation, the earth has already been destroyed.

I am writing this account of the events that I witnessed over those terrible hours and days from Ark Naamah. This is the story of how I came to be in this ship that is currently orbiting Sol in an elliptical path that at it's perigee is slightly closer than earth's orbit and at it's perigee slightly farther than earth's orbit.  It's been and adjustment, and our years, though similar are 400 earth days long.

As I said earlier, the events that unfolded were similar enough to the predictions leading up to them to allow our Ark to survive the destruction of our habitat.  The predictions were also far enough wrong that the events facilitated my own personal survival.

Toward the middle of the 21st century, there began to be enough evidence that to provide for the survival of humanity, some far looking individuals and governments began to make preparations to escape earth when the time came.  There were predictions of an extinction event meteorite strike based on some relatively close passes of intergalactic objects passing through our orbit.  The threat of nuclear destruction at our own hands had not substantially subsided although over one hundred years had passed since the first, and to date last, use of nuclear weapons in warfare.  A number of plagues had been narrowly contained, and our interaction with the environment appeared to be leading to an inevitable medical disaster.  The population had stabilized at approximately 12 billion individuals, and signs pointed to a lessening of pressure as attrition caught up with the birth rate, but the narrow extractable energy margins threatened to upset this delicate balance and unleash regional famine with devastating results.  In short, there were enough signs that a timely and orderly escape from the planet might prove to be a last ditch necessity.

From this backdrop, nation states began researching larger scale manned space travel within the constraints that national resources and a need for secrecy could accommodate.  Mars had been visited, but three of those seven missions had ended in complete loss of life for the nine individuals involved.  We had certainly made progress from the Apollo and International Space Stations days, but large scale evacuation of a survivable number of individuals was still quite a ways off when distributed efforts began, first slowly, and then with renewed interest as spin off technologies led to economic growth and the ability to provide additional resources to put toward the effort.

I know just the barest of facts from these early days since they occurred about one hundred and twenty years before I was born.  Within Ark Naamah, these stories exist as legend and mythology more than anything else.  Before leaving the earth, there was simply not enough time to execute the planned population of digital records that had been anticipated to occur over the course of a several month preparation period prior to the final launch.  There are people aboard that had a working knowledge of this history, but since the efforts had been shrouded in secrecy, I'm not even sure we can put together a reasonable accounting of those efforts based on the first and second hand accounts that are at our disposal.  We have the technical documentation of the results of those efforts, but I'm afraid much of the history and earth centric anthropological studies have been lost.

The evacuation occurred quickly and haphazardly, and the cause for the departure from earth was not accurately anticipated by anyone.  It happened fast, and it happened dirty.    

Running on the top half of your gas tank and the bottom half of your bladder.

Rory Conlan gives quite a bit of advice.  Now he'll never tell you he's giving advice.  He characterizes his speeches as sharing insight or imparting wisdom.  Some of it's good, some of it a bit dodgy.  He calls it insight because as he likes to say, "He can't make you do what he wants."  The part he leaves out from time to time is that he sure can make you wish that you had done it his way.

All that said, one of my favorite little pieces of wisdom that he did pass along to me related to driving.  He suggested that I always try to run on the top half of the gas in my tank, and the bottom half of the pee in my bladder.  Now, it may take a minute to visualize this suggestion, but I promise that once you do, you'll see it as a solid piece of advice.  You'll also never be able to forget it.  We may get back to this little piece of wisdom in a bit, but right now I'd like to show you some of the monuments that I saw on my walks today.

Ad Astra by Richard Lippold at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
(Latin for To the Stars)

There are a number of different genres of monuments in Washington, DC.  There are aspirational monuments meant to hearken back to the heroic deeds of those that have come before us and inspire us to achieve greatness.  One of my favorites of this type is Ad Astra by Richard Lippold located at the Jefferson Drive entrance to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  The star topped monument towers over the building beckoning the viewer to (at the very least) imagine the trip into space like the heros of the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle Programs that have gone there before.

Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress

Some monuments are embodied in buildings, both practical and impractical.  The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress is a monument to knowledge and learning.  The Library of Congress was established with $5000 of appropriated funding in 1800.  The collection was burned, along with a great deal of the District of Columbia by the British in 1814.  Thomas Jefferson donated his library to replace destroyed collection.  At the time, Mr. Jefferson's personal library was considered to be one of the best if not the best library in the country.  Today, this building is a monument to knowledge and learning and the value placed on it by the United States.  On an interesting side note, for visitors to Washington, DC who are 16 years of age and older, it is possible to receive a "library card" from the Library of Congress.  The official name for the card is a Reader Identification Card, and it provides access to electronic card catalog, the Office of Copyright public service areas, and are a minimum registration to access the Library of Congress Reading Rooms.  

Capitol Building, Washington, DC

The Capitol Building is a monument to the people of this country and the power entrusted to their representatives and senators.  It is an imposing edifice to the power wielded within the walls, and should also serve to remind the current occupants that the power flows from the people, and their tenure, however long it may be, will likely be shorter lived than the institution itself.

I passed all of those examples of monuments today while putting in some of my miles around the Washington, DC Mall.  They are imposing, exquisite, creative, and inspirational, but today, I came across a different type of monument.  This was a monument to the provision of things at exactly the time they are needed most.  It was a monument to the universe conspiring to make me successful; an organizing force looking out for me when I could not manage it alone.  Today, in a place that I least expected it, but had a very great need for it at the time, I came across this monument to luck and fate.

Porta Potty at the intersection of Jefferson Drive and 7th Street, SW

It turns out that Rory's advice, at least half of it applies to both walking and driving.  I was sorely in need of a facility to relieve myself when this monument to good fortune materialized out of the gloom in the early hours before dawn this morning.  No statue to the greatness of achievements, the artistic endeavors of human kind, or the inherent power that was manifest around me had held my attention and awe as this humble injection molded piece of heaven sent goodness held.  It appeared for me in my time of greatest need today, and I have no doubt that it will one day very soon be moved on to serve the same function for countless other individuals.  

When you're walking, it will always pay to know where the next drink of water is going to come from, and where you can get rid of the remainder of the last drink that you took.

"Super" Moon Full Lunar Eclipse 2015

Today, with a great deal of media fanfare, the moon experienced a total lunar eclipse that was visible across much of North and South America at a point in its orbit where it was relatively close to the earth (perigee). The media called this event a number of titles, but Supermoon Lunar Eclipse is representative.  NASA took a slightly more balanced and scientific approach and has covered the event in a way that I find both refreshing and exciting.  NASA's description of the celestial phenomenon that we witnessed this evening (if the weather cooperated for you) can be found here.

Images of the "Super" Moon Total Lunar Eclipse that I took this evening with my cell phone camera

The weather was a little dodgy, but we were able to get the family out and about, and at 2243, the height of the total lunar eclipse when the moon was fully within the earth's umbra or shadow, I was able to image it with my cell phone camera.  The collage above is a selection of the photos.  

Once again, I'm forced to admit that the photos did not completely capture the grandiosity of the event that we were able to witness as the clouds parted for brief windows at just the right times.  I'm told by the astronomers that follow these things that the coincidence of a full moon, full lunar eclipse, with the moon very close to its orbital perigee (hence the term supermoon because the size of the moon is a few percentage points larger than usual) is a relatively rare event.  The last time this coincidence of events occurred was in 1982 and the next time it will happen again will be in 2033.

It's difficult to imagine that the next time we'll be able to see this that my oldest child will be 29 years old, and my youngest will be 26.  I'll be pushing 60.

While hopefully not a once in a generation event as is being touted in the press, I find the ability to experience this a remarkable gift.  I still remember when my dad took me out to view Halley's Comet in 1986 when I was 12 years old.  The next opportunity to view that will be in 2061, and if I make it, I'll be 87 years old.

While this lunar event is not as rare as Halley's, it serves to remind me of my smallness in the vastness of the universe.  Hope to see you again in 2033.