Before I get into the meat of today’s post, I’ve got a trio of things I’d like to share with you, reader. First, a promotion: Through a timely Facebook referral, I’ve discovered an interesting project sponsored by Universal Pictures in promotion of their upcoming Robin Hood movie. In the spirit of the Robin Hood myth, Universal is searching for people who take on tasks of great courage for the betterment of good causes. The jury’s still out on whether my particular task requires great courage, but nevertheless, I’m happy to say that I’m now in the running for one of Universal’s Lionheart awards. What this means is that, if enough people vote for me in support of this walk, Universal will, in the words of Cubs legend Ron Santo, “make a big, big donation” to the Children’s Defense Fund. If you click on just one link today, please make it this one: Lionheart! And if you take the time to click on that link, please click the “I Support This Lionheart” button in the left sidebar. Thanks, reader. 

Second, a Circle of Life rumination: I saw my first alligator today. Don’t worry; it was a baby. And it was dead. How do I know it was dead? Its carcass had been picked almost clean to the bone (most likely by a handful of Florida’s half-billion carrion foul). Still, that dead thing served as harrowing reminder that I have to keep my ninja senses about me at all times, lest I want to head back to the earth from wence I came. You never know when some hungry maw might fire at you from the weeds. And I’d hate to wind up like this guy. 

Third, a confession: for all my ruminations on hats, I wound up abandoning the user-selected floppy back in Fort Pierce. The thing was too…well…floppy. Wind kept blowing it back and making me look like a certain gas jockey from the 1960’s. Now I might be willing to subject my body to the unforgiving concrete and the relentless sun, but I’m not about to do it looking like some kind of simp. So I left the floppy at the condo, switched back to my trusty Cubs hat, and went on my way. Anyway, it took him two-plus weeks, but Adama finally managed to deliver the great hat-related karmic screw-job I’ve been waiting for. Dude absolutely annihilated my trusty Cubs hat while I disassembled the tent yesterday morning. I only had my attention off him for maybe three minutes before he’d gnawed a two-inch hole around the button at the top and shredded the bill almost to the hilt. He’s efficient with his teeth, that Adama. I can’t really blame him, though. He didn’t do anything to my Cubs hat that the Cubs baseball team hasn’t already done to their season. So everything’s in its right place, I guess. Except that Adama’s got the trotskies now as a result. 

Alright, now on to the reason I’ve called this post “To Drive a Car.”

On Friday, I had the opportunity to drive a car for the first time in over three weeks. Let me explain. Jeanette flew in to Jacksonville for her visit, but I had booked a hotel in Saint Augustine (which is 30 miles south of Jacksonville). Due to the timing of her flight, it made more sense for me to rent the car and drive north to pick her up, rather than the other way around. Anyway, owed to this special arrangement of circumstance, I found myself behind the wheel of a car.

Now, when your feet are your only means of transportation for three consecutive weeks, you get used to a certain pace. To border on cliché, life moves slower. You cover fifteen miles, sure – a greater distance than something like 90% of people travel on any given day – but you do it slowly. Landscapes become more visceral, signs more visible, every mile more like an achievement than a nuisance. Quicker than I ever thought possible, you get accustomed to being a strictly bipedal animal. So try this sometime: do nothing but walk for a few days. No cars, no buses, no trains or planes. Just walk. Get yourself into this accepted rhythm of walking. Embrace the pace. Let it become a part of you. Then, once you’ve changed your perspective on how quickly things move, slide yourself in behind the wheel of a car.

Good gravy, reader. When I first cranked that Budget heap onto the interstate and put the hammer down, I felt like I was going about 900 miles per hour. Everything melted into that liquid blur of fast movies. My mind reeled. My stomach tied itself into knots. I fell into deep fits of awe over the power of the internal combustion engine. At first, I had trouble going the prescribed 65mph. But it took me a while to notice. It felt like I’d broken the sound barrier, and yet cars kept passing me on the left and right. When I looked down at the dial, I realized that I was only going 50.  50!  Only 50?

Think about that for a minute, reader. To an interstate driver, 50mph sounds ludicrously slow. But, man, let’s all stop taking our cars for granted for a moment and just consider what a remarkable achievement it is to cover 50 miles in one lonely hour. At that speed, I made it to Jacksonville (with traffic) in a mere 55 minutes. On foot, that’s a three-day’s journey. In a car, the same distance takes less time than most of us require to solve a single Sudoku puzzle.

When I consider that fact, it makes my journey seem far longer. And well, hell, reader, it is long. As my dad said at the conclusion of my first walking day way back in mid-April, I’m “walking farther than most people like to drive.” This is true. The trip from Florida City to Pittsburgh, even at 65mph, takes 19.5 hours. Who would want to do that? Covering such a distance is what they invented planes for.

Still, if we ignore the fact that man invented cars and planes and just hone in on the ground I manage to cover in a given three-day stretch, it’s almost difficult to believe. I average 45 miles every three days, reader. That’s the distance from the Steel Building in Pittsburgh to the West Virginia state line. It’s the distance between Wrigley Field and Elgin, IL. It’s Madison, WI to Oconomowoc (famous for having more “o’s” than a bowl of Cheerios). It’s the miles between the libraries of the University of Texas and Texas State University. It’s the distance between where I currently sit (south of Jacksonville) and Georgia. And I walk that in three short days.  If I really put my mind to it, I could do it in two. 

So that’s what I try to focus on whenever I think about the fact that I still have a walk ahead of me that would take most people 14 hours to drive. A day’s walk is still an achievement, even if it’s a pittance by car standards. It’s still something that shows up on the national map. I can track my progress online – and I now see a full state whenever I plot from my original Point A to my current Point B. I’m getting somewhere, reader, even without that fast car. 

Now that I truly appreciate the power of the automobile – in a way that I never could have appreciated before this walk – it will be difficult to pass by a rental car agency without stepping inside and inquiring about rates. From this day forward, that will be the single greatest struggle and the single greatest comfort for me: knowing that the technology exists for me to get home in less than a day, should I ever need to. But I won’t. More than ever before, I feel dedicated to this walk and to this cause. I’ll see Pittsburgh by mid-July. That should be soon enough.