Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips A common question concerned where I slept every night. No, I didn’t sleep in the woods. No, I didn’t carry a tent. No, I wasn’t walking on the Appalachian Trail (you might be surprised how many people asked me if I was on Route 11 on the Appalachian Trail). I slept in […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It was the ninth day of taking a walk in 2009. As a coincidence, it was the first day of October 2009. What was important was that it was the first day that I woke feeling good. The previous eight days I woke in pain. My legs hurt, my feet hurt, my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips “There were days when I didn’t want to eat anything.” That is a good way to lose weight: walk 18 miles, ride a bike 18 miles, do it all in 85+ degrees heat, and don’t eat. Yes, you can lose weight that way – I don’t advise it, but it works. The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips My son Adam was ten (now he is 22). He was on a new soccer team, and I took him to practice and watched. The coach was a tall man just a few years younger than me. The team looked pretty good, real good. Well, they were real good. They won every […]

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by Dwayne Phillips My wife is a dietitian. She once ran a school cafeteria and fed 700 kids a day. She pays attention to what we eat and always keeps us on a balanced diet. I like hamburgers and french fries. I have always liked hamburgers and french fries. And then there are hot dogs. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I am an engineer. I like the design of things; I like to see lots of different things so I can study their designs. That is a big reason I loved taking a walk. I could see all the roads, fences, houses, barns, tractors, cars, trucks, silos, and everything else in rural […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I wore one brand of shirt the entire 1,100-mile walk – Filson. Several years before taking a walk, I bought a Filson shirt. It was their model for people who liked to fish. It had funny pockets with zippers and compartments and all such things that, as a person who never goes […]

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by Dwayne Phillips You know them. They are the most dreaded signs you can see while on the road: CONSTRUCTION AHEAD The road will shrink from two lanes to one. Sometimes the one-lane road stretches for a mile or more. Men with flags stand on the ends of the one-lane road. One man stops traffic […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I walked 1,100 miles; that was about 65 days of walking. I hurt a lot during those days. About day 60 of walking I figured out what causes walking pain. I am not stupid; I can learn, maybe not fast, but I do learn. My wife and I started walking in mid-September […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I didn’t know how many parts of the body could hurt from walking. I wrote that statement in a blog post or a notebook early in the walk. It was true. I hurt all over. My shoulders hurt from walking. How does that happen? My hips hurt from walking. At least I […]

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