Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

Our walking in the fall of 2008 ended on November 4th as we happily drove home to see our grandson on the day he was born. This year, I was spurred on to a quicker pace in order to be back in Reston, Virginia for his first birthday. One of the tougher parts of walking in 2009 was not seeing my grandson once or twice a week. Five weeks on the road without him.

Google video chat to the rescue.

Before departing, I setup the Google video chat service on my youngest son’s MacBook computer as well as on mine. We tested it a few times to ensure it would work. On the evening of the seventh day of the walk we used it for real. There he was, my grandson live on the computer screen. I talked to him, he looked at the screen and smiled. At least it seemed to me that he was listening to me, looking at me, and smiling. Perhaps he was smiling because his dad and uncle were letting him touch the buttons on the computer.

Regardless of the reason, the video chat was the highlight of the week. It was the highlight of the next week. And the next week after that. The last couple of weeks of walking I didn’t see him on video chat. I was in a place on those Sundays that didn’t have sufficient Internet access. But then I was home in a little while and playing in person.