I’m tired, reader. And for good reason: As of yesterday, Adama and I have walked 500 miles. We weren’t supposed to reach that particular milestone until today, but yesterday, we did something very silly: We walked 30 miles. 30, reader. This is a feat that, as of only two days ago, I would have thought impossible.  We had yet to even make a 20-mile day, after all.  But 30 miles!  My head still spins (and my feet still throb) whenever I think about it.  The original plan was to walk from our camping position just north of Darien, GA and make it into a little town called Riceboro. Then, from Riceboro, we would stroll into Richmond Hill for our latest Zero Day. Seemed like a reasonable plan. 15 miles on the first day and 12 miles on the second. Perfect. 

But then Google Maps screwed us over for the fourth consecutive day. Hey, Google, it might be time to send those “accidental” big brother vans back down to Southeast Georgia, because you could not possibly have the addresses of local businesses more wrong.  The Riceboro destination turned out to be 4.5 miles farther north than I had been led to believe. And since that destination was where I had planned to get food for both lunch and dinner, not to mention water to last us the night (it ain’t exactly an urban wonderland anymore now that we’re out of Florida), we had little choice but to keep walking. So by the time 3pm rolled around and the temperature dial had reached 87 degrees, we finally found our destination. 

We sat in the shade and I ate some free food provided by the purveyor of a gas station called Sparker’s. She was a nice Indian-American lady, absolutely enamored with the idea that we intended to walk from a place she had never heard of to another place she had never heard of. The afternoon proved restful and peaceful. We sat at a lone picnic table set up beneath one of those mossy live oak trees that seem to line all the streets and swamps down here.   I listened to the first two hours of Ender’s Game on audiobook (which, like, even if you don’t care for science fiction, is an extraordinary novel that I highly recommend).  I felt healthy and strong and not at all tired.  And I knew that I’d have no trouble finding a place nearby to sleep. Given that I’d been forced by circumstance to walk 19.5 miles instead of 15, I’d hit my 500-mile mark a day earlier than planned — and I would have only 7.5 miles to walk today (Friday). Things were looking up. 

But then something weird and undeniably deep-south happened: A collection of six middle-aged men pulled up in four separate pickup trucks. Each man ambled into Sparker’s, and then each returned to his truck holding a single tallboy beer wrapped in a paper bag. If that little snippet of narrative didn’t tip you off, reader, let me just spell it out: these were rednecks of the highest regard. They all climbed back into their trucks and then – much to my dismay – wheeled themselves, tailgate-first, into my corner of the parking lot. Then they all got out, strolled around to their tailgates, and started cracking beers and lighting cigarettes. In broad daylight. In the middle of town. At 4:30 in the afternoon. On a Thursday. 

No problem, I thought. They’re just here for a beer. They’ll move on soon enough. 

5 o’clock rolled around. Then 5:30. One after another, the rednecks would head back in to Parker’s and return with fresh tallboys. To that point, I’d done a decent job of ignoring them. Ender’s Game helped. So did my remarkable ability to avoid eye-contact whenever the situation calls for such things. But then, round about 5:30, they finally started in about Adama. 

“Pretty dog,” the nearest redneck said. 

I smiled without feeling and thanked him. 

“He a boy or a girl?” This question always gets me. “He a boy or a girl?” Think about what you just said, meathead. This is the question I probably get most often about Adama. Invariably, the men phrase it just like above and the women phrase it to the feminine side. “She a boy or a girl?” 

In any case, you can probably predict where things went from here.  The rednecks kept asking questions and I kept deflecting with terse answers. They weren’t getting the point. In retrospect, I think they might’ve been more interested in annoying me than talking to me. I got the impression that there’s was a daily ritual, after all, and given that there was only one picnic table in the Sparker’s parking lot, I was probably occupying their usual seat. Eventually, I got so annoyed by their lame attempts at befriending me that I started to pack up and leave. So maybe I’m a jerk. Maybe I missed a golden opportunity to learn some things that I might use in WWG, but man, I was just in no mood.  So we left. 

The heat dropped considerably between 2 and 6 yesterday. By the time we were elbowed out of our tranquil little space, the temperature read a mere 80 degrees. Totally doable. So I figured, hell, let’s put another couple miles in before it gets too dark to set up camp. With only 7.5 miles, the possibility stood that I could even make Richmond Hill and the Travelodge that awaited us before sundown. My feet felt good, after all, and Adama strutted around like he was into it. We’d rested for three hours. Why not try to make it all the way? Sure, 27 miles in one day seemed like an improbable feat, but it didn’t seem impossible.   

So we walked. By 7pm, we were looking at 5.5 miles and probably 90 more minutes of workable daylight. By 8, twilight began to creep in, but the dial read 3 miles. I now had a decision to make: we could pitch camp before sundown and just make Friday a short 3-miler or we could press on in darknes. The former would be an entirely reasonable thing to do. And who in their right mind wouldn’t be satisfied with a 24-mile day? 

Not this guy. I wanted to see if we could do it – if we could cover two days of walking in one lonely day. So we pressed on.  By 9pm, the sky had gone proper dark. US-17 had split into a sidewalk-less four-lane highway, which made walking beside it dangerous enough in the daylight. But we only had 0.5 miles to go! To Jeanette and my families, I’m sorry to say this (and I promise we’ll never do it again), but we kept walking, the oncoming headlights both blinding us and lighting our way. At ten minutes after 9, we had reached the destination. At least, we had reached the address where Google Maps suggested we would find the Travelodge. No Travelodge. In its place was a small cul-de-sac packed to capacity with cookie cutter ranch-style homes. 

Google Maps, I hope you’re reading this, because that marked five consecutive occasions where you screwed us over. Now we stood at 27 miles under our belts for the day. We also stood smack in the middle of residential no tent’s land and the drama-hour of primetime TV, the absolute worst place and time in the American south to try to guerilla camp. And maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the fact that I could feel my pulse in my feet. Maybe I was drunk with hunger. But at that moment, I was determined to make the Travelodge, even if it meant walking another ten miles in the dark. 

Fortunately, it was only another three miles. But by the time we arrived, I was so cranky and sore from walking thirty full miles that I probably seemed like quite an ass to the poor girl at the counter who wouldn’t stop asking questions about Adama’s adorable backpack and shoes.  If you’re reading this, Amy from Travelodge, I’m sorry if I seemed like quite an ass. It was a long, long day.   

Anyway, that’s our story. On a Thursday in mid-May, we broke one milestone and shattered another. I can now sing that wonderful Proclaimers song with a little more authority. And I can also say I’ve walked 30 miles in one 16-hour period.  These are life skills, reader.  Things to put on one’s résumé. 

Happy weekend, reader. Hopefully, after I’ve had some rest, I’ll be a little less cranky when I get back to you on Monday.  I’m excited about all the things I’ll have to share with you next week – including a trip into Savannah (which I’ve always heard is a lovely city, but is also a place that one of the rednecks at Sparker’s referred to as “the murder capital of the world”), Jeanette’s usually hilarious column (which I’m sure will be influenced by her business trip to New York this weekend), and what promises to be an uproariously funny Guest Post Thursday (I’ve already got the goods, and reader, I can guarantee a smooth one). Alright, that’s it for me.

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