Acknowledging Some Upsides to the "Rat Race"

View of the Atlantic Watershed 0400 (EST)

View of the Pacific 1500 (PST)

Benjamin's Hand in the Atlantic Watershed

Benjamin's Hand in the Pacific Ocean

The series of photos at the top of this post is an attempt to acknowledge that there are some very real advantages associated with participating in the "rat race" that the N2N-TCP is meant as a mechanism to enable me some level of escape.

Almost two weeks ago, I found myself hanging out on a small beach just about two days of walking (so really not that far) from the Atlantic Ocean.  I was contemplating the lights of a bridge crossing a river feeding one of the main salt water bays that form the Atlantic Watershed.  It was 4 am, Eastern Standard Time.  

I hopped in my car for a relatively short commute to the local international airport, and thanks to the magic of Southwest Airlines and Budget Car Rental I found myself on the beautiful beaches of Coronado, CA a scant 14 hours later looking out across the Pacific Ocean toward Point Loma.

We live in a fantastic period of history where I could have very reasonably found myself in just about any part of the world in a timeframe that was not much different than it took me to transit most of the breadth of North America.  It truly is an amazing gift that the technology associated with this never-ending marathon of Rodentia Muridae Rattus.

The trip wasn't without its challenges.  I had to "endure" the loving ministrations of the Transportation Security Administration, though in all fairness to them, they have greatly improved the efficiency and lessened the annoyance in terms of them doing their job over the last several years.  I had to wait on my baggage for approximately ten minutes, and my shampoo was a little chilly from riding in the cargo compartment of the aircraft.  Finally, "suffering" the indignity of an off-terminal rental car lot was almost too much to bear, although, having the handy shuttle waiting and ready to pick me up almost made up for my hurt feelings.

One of the reasons that I find the N2N-TCP so compelling is that it represents a radical change of perspective.  I hope you can tell that the "endurance", "suffering", and "indignity" mentioned above is intended to communicate inconveniences in a very tongue-in-cheek fashion.  The freedom to travel from the Atlantic Watershed to the Pacific Ocean in a little less than fourteen hours, is a demonstration of technology and a leap forward for humanity that was essentially unimaginable 100 years ago.  The slights now (for me anyway) are indeed slight, but I find it easy to get caught up in the minutiae and forget about the big picture advances that make life so much easier and have turned real dangers into mere frustrations.

I hope that the N2N-TCP will facilitate a return to sanity.  After all, with looking down the barrel of 100+ thirty mile walking days has already put my one hour thirty-four mile commute in some manner of perspective.  The 5K that I ran with my kids did not seem nearly as long an arduous as it may have in the past.  In fact, the 10 min/mile pace seemed blistering compared to the 3.5 mile/hour crawl that I have turned over in my mind recently as a brisk move toward the goals of the N2N-TCP.  Perspective is what I'm seeking, and if I'm lucky, I'll manage to get some...good and hard.

Today, I'm off to make the 12 hour transcontinental hop once again.  During the N2N-TCP, Rory and I will have done pretty well in a three week period to have covered 650 miles.  That's truly an amazing juxtaposition.  Till next time...

The First Practice

Google Maps tells me that a walking from Newport, RI to Newport, OR will cover a distance of 3,111 miles and take approximately 1,014 hours to complete.

My initial back of the envelope calculations indicate that to complete the N2N-TCP in 130-150 days assuming a ten-hour walking day, my partner in crime (more on this person later) and I will have to cover about 30 miles per day on average with some float built in for unanticipated outcomes along the way.

After talking this project up for the last several months, it finally occurred to me that I did not have the foggiest idea what walking thirty miles in a day actually felt like.  Forget about the fact that on average we are likely to have to cover that distance for multiple days in a row.  I had no idea what one of those days was going to feel like.

I am not completely inexperienced when it comes to physical experiences.  I have five marathons under my belt including finishing the Marine Corps Marathon four times and finishing the Pensacola Marathon.  Both of these events are great fun (if covering 26.2 miles can accurately be described as fun) and I highly recommend them for anyone contemplating the challenge of covering the marathon distance as a relative novice.  I have also completed two half-marathon distance "races" and participated in a number of shorter distance events.

My partner and crime and I also completed the trek up Longs Peak just outside of Estes Park, CO via the Keyhole Route twice (in much younger days for both of us) and Mount Elbert just outside of Leadville, CO.

All that being said, not that any of it matters anyway, I had no real idea what it felt like to conduct a road hike of any distance.  I decided it might be a good idea here in the early stages of planning for the N2N-TCP, so I set off last Saturday to complete what I described to my family was going to be a fifteen to thirty mile walk in the morning, and that's just (about) what I did.

I suppose you could call the experience a success.  I covered 17.2 miles in just under five hours, and here is what I learned:

The Good

I told my roommates that I intended to complete a fifteen to thirty mile walk on Saturday morning, invited them to participate (no takers), and managed to meet the low end of that milestone within the target time lines.

I now know what it feels like to walk about half the daily average distance that my partner and crime and I are going to have to cover from between 120 and 150 days in a row to capture a title of Transcontinental Pilgrim.  Based on some decisions I made, some mistakes I repeated (that should have been obvious in retrospect), and some poor planning, I'm happy to report that there remains quite a bit of work and progress to achieve over then next 700 days or so.  Put another way...it felt pretty rotten right near the end of the trek, but I'm grateful I made it, didn't have to call my roommates for outside support during the event, and motivated to give it another shot soon.

One of the underlying reasons that the N2N-TCP has been such a compelling idea to me is that I have this desire to shrink my world...to really force myself to live in the moment...to be able to answer (truthfully) the question, "Where are you?" with the answer, "I am here."  To be able to answer the question (again truthfully) the question, "What time is it?" with, "It is now."  This short little jaunt, this practice did achieve that.  At one point on that trail, my whole existence had managed to shrink down to a quarter sized spot on the ball of my right foot...every other step.

That is the good.

The Bad

I had a plan to carry water in my 70 oz CamelBak Urban Assault pack.  It was a good plan that I did not follow.  I figured that I could pick up some water somewhere along the trail.  While theoretically I probably could have executed this back-up plan, I didn't.  That was a mistake.  Five hours of walking on even terrain with very little significant elevation change led to a slight bit of dehydration.  Due to the nature of my environment, this didn't turn into a truly dangerous oversight, but it did lead to a two hour nap after I returned from the trip.  That nap felt fantastic, but I will go to great lengths to avoid the dehydration that turned it from a wonderful diversion to a necessity.

I also forgot some lessons from my marathon days about the discomfort of chaffing and friction.  There are a great many products out there to avoid these discomforts.  I've heard that Body Glide, Mueller Lube Stick, and DZNuts Bliss (for our fairer readers) work quite well.  For me, I going to stick with the old stand-by, Vaseline, due to its ubiquity and low cost.  I suspect that on a 3,111 mile journey ubiquity is going to be a non-trivial positive trait for consumables.  A word of warning, Vaseline does have a tendency to stain clothing, so this may be a consideration if you decide to go this route.

The Ugly

These are my right and left feet.  The blisters are the result of my failure to take into account friction, and an indication that I have some foot toughening as well as footwear selection experimentation to conduct.  That right foot is where I was able to shrink my perspective, so it wasn't all bad.

My partner in crime has a saying..."Physical discomfort is only important when your attitude is wrong."  That's a great perspective that's sometime hard to live up to, but I found myself thinking along these lines during the last three or four miles of The First Practice.

All in all it was a great five hours...I'm glad I did it...and I'm looking forward to Practice #2.