Taking A Walk

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 fishing, I never appreciated. I did appreciate two qualities of this long-sleeve shirt:

(1) It is made of what Filson calls “feather” cloth or handkerchief-weight cloth. This is lightweight, thin cotton. I wore this long-sleeve shirt on the beach in the summer in Alabama (100-degree days). It was just as cool as being shirtless. The cloth drinks water, then dries quickly.

(2) It is a long-sleeve shirt that blocks the sun. Filson advertises how much sun the shirt blocks – some sort of UV rating or something. I don’t understand UV ratings and I am not sure that there is any science in these UV things. What I do know is that I was never sunburned on the parts of my body covered by the shirt.

I loved this Filson shirt. I bought a second Filson shirt for the 2008 portion of taking a walk. I swapped shirts each day. Per the drying qualities, each evening I would wash my Filson shirt in the sink and then hang it soaking wet in the bathroom. It was dry in the morning. I could have survived with only one shirt.

I wore out my original Filson shirt. I bought a third one in 2009 for the second half of the walk. I had the same routine. Wear a shirt all day, have it soaked with perspiration, but never have any sunburn. Wash the shirt in the sink, let it hang overnight, and pack the dried shirt in the morning. Swap shirts each day.

Life is not perfect as there are stains and ignorant men who don’t know how to remove stains while they are still removable. I spilled mustard on one of my Filson shirts early in the 2009 portion of taking a walk. I didn’t notice it soon enough to remove it. Rats. My nice, light blue shirt has yellow and brown spots on it in obvious places.

by Dwayne Phillips

I like libraries. In 1980, I hated libraries. I walked past half a dozen libraries in 1,100 miles. Four stay in my mind.

I guess I never saw the library in Collinsville, Alabama. It hadn’t yet officially opened. It is in my mind as the town was having a “quilt walk” to raise money to buy books for it. They had wanted a library for years, but, well you know how things sort of get in the way. A “quilt walk” was basically a tour of some of the older and larger homes in this little town. I didn’t take the walk (I was walking enough each day), but I bought a fried pie and a coke to help support the cause.

The next library was the little one in Vance, Alabama. I walked past it early on a Saturday morning, so it wasn’t open. It was a building maybe 10 by 10 feet in size. Tiny, but a public library nonetheless. One of the noteworthy things was its location – in Vance. You see, Vance is the home of a large Mercedes Benz factory. Vance sits on Route 11, and the factory sits between Vance and Interstate 59. It seems to me that Mercedes would have built a library for Vance.

Early in the walk on the first big day that my wife and I walked together was the Handley Library in Winchester, Virginia. Handley is a large library with a dome on it. We walked through the library including the stair case that spirals around the open area under the dome. What puzzles me is how a small town in the middle of no where could build and maintain such a large library. Winchester, Virginia is not a small town any more. It is the western reach of the Washington, D.C. area now, but when the library was constructed, well Winchester was tiny and might as well have been in Iowa.

Finally, is the Linn-Henley Research Library in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This was built in 1927 as the main library for Birmingham. Beautiful inside and out. This, and the Handley, are how libraries are supposed to appear. Books everywhere on polished wooden shelves. Tables with small lamps, chairs, central desks with library employees at the ready.

The Birmingham library and the Handley library remind of the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I love to sit in places like that. I love to see the works of people who toil to pass along what they know and what they imagine.

I hated libraries in 1980. I since have written a few books and dozens of papers. Perhaps toiling to put words on paper has given me an appreciation of words on paper and buildings that house words on paper.

We live in the information age of the Internet. I find much good in this age. I treasure the past of the library. Taking a walk helped that appreciation of grow.

by Dwayne Phillips

A golf course has plenty of open areas. These areas are supposed to be green, a beautiful lush green. This golf course was instead a glistening silver. Glorious. It was a glorious sight.

There is a short period of time on a morning blessed with frost that the landscape glistens in the sun. Before the sun rises, the ground is hard, wet, and colorless. When the sun appears everything glow. It is a matter of time before the sun melts the tiny crystals of ice and the frost becomes a heavy, messy dew. But oh, those glistening moments.

Such a morning was on the south side of Knoxville, Tennessee in late October of 2008. It was 35 degrees. The temperatures are not supposed to be that low in that place at that time, but such is the weather. The average conditions are a melding of the warm days and those that have frost. Average days are out of the ordinary; this is the science of statistics.

We had probably half a dozen days in Tennessee in October of 2008 where the temperature was 35 degrees in the morning. Some, like the one above, were blessed with glorious sights of frost in the sun. Most, however, were just plain cold.

My wife and I went to a store to buy extra clothes. I wore a long sleeve undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, a sweat shirt, and my yellow rain jacket. I then added something to cover my ears, a hat, a bandanna around my neck, and heavy gloves. On some days, I would remove a little here and a little there as the walking heated my body and the sun heated the road. On other days I kept all these adornments all day.

I have read books and watched videos that show the proper form for walking. Stand tall, head high, arms swaying at your sides matching your steps. Swing the arms, not too much, but not too little. Forget that stuff on a 35-degree morning. I would do everything to keep my body heat close to my body. I pulled my head down and forward so that my chin would press against my chest. I bent forward and hunched my shoulders. Most noticeable was my arms. I folded them tightly across my chest with my hands tucked under the opposite arms.

I didn’t have any cold days in October of 2009 in Alabama and Mississippi. If anything, the days were on the high side of the elusive average. I perspired heavily, anxious to remove my wet clothes in the evening.

I treasure the memory of the glistening fairway on that morning in Tennessee. I treasure the memory of the hot sun in other places at other times. All gifts for the person taking a walk.

by Dwayne Phillips

There are a lot of Shoney’s in the south. They have a menu and a buffet area. The buffet area has all the salad, vegetables, side dishes, and desert anyone could want. We went to Shoney’s for the vegetables (see other great meals at Ryan’s). I needed vegetables now and then.

Shoney’s isn’t a great restaurant. They have pretty good food at pretty low prices. Pretty this, pretty that doesn’t make a fine restaurant, just one that is okay. Actually I am being kind. Lots of people make fun of Shoney’s. I used to make fun of Shoney’s until this meal there.

About the meal:

First, it was one of those rainy, dark days that gives you a feeling of being cold even when your shirt is soaked with perspiration. A meal of hot vegetables and such warms me on the inside when I feel cold on the outside. This meal went down well.

Second, they were having some special of the day like Tuesday or something (I forget now). For $6, you got a small steak and everything on the buffet bar. $6, I mean $6. How could you go wrong for $6?

Third, while eating we figured (pencil, paper, thought, discussion, figuring). Figuring is a sign that I am feeling good. The food combined with the weather of the day left me feeling good, so I figured. I figured the day that I would reach the end of Route 11 and finish taking a walk. We were far enough south and had seen enough mileage markers to estimate the distance to the Louisiana border. I knew that Louisiana only needed two days of walking. A plus B and we knew the end date.

I called my wife from the Shoney’s at just the right time. She was planning to fly down to New Orleans to meet me. She would have arrived three or four days too late. The planning saved us a plane ticket and such.

And the chocolate pudding for desert was just right.

by Dwayne Phillips

Right on Route 11, just north of where I-59 crosses Route 11 at interstate exit 90, is Charlie’s Catfish House. This is a little north of Ellisville, Mississippi (actually in the city limits, but you know how they stretch those city limits). The building is plain, sort of big for the area, but plain.

This place is famous in this area. It has won some awards or something. Several notes:

First, “Charlie’s” is a common name for catfish restaurants. I must have seen a dozen places with that name. Maybe it is a common name for entrepreneurs in the south. Maybe it just fits with the word “catfish.” It does have sort of a ring – Charlie’s Catfish, Charlie’s Catfish, Charlie’s Catfish.

Second, the menu in this place is painted on the wall. They don’t give you anything at the table; you read the wall.

Third, reading the wall isn’t hard as there are only two things on it: (1) fried catfish and (2) hamburger steak.

I went to Charlie’s with my brother and his wife. They come to Charlie’s often. She always has the hamburger steak, and he always has…well, you know. So my brother and I got catfish and she got, well the usual.

Charlie’s is an all-you-can-eat place. They put an empty plate in front of you and a platter with catfish on the table next to a basket of french fries and a basket of hush puppies. See the photo in this link. If you want more, you signal the waiter and he brings you more.

This is the only catfish place I have been that serves fish the way they do. Look at the photo in the above link. They cut off the head, gut it, and batter and fry they whole body. They bring it out whole fried.

I wasn’t sure what to do with an entire fried catfish. All I could imagine was a mouthful of tiny catfish bones, and I wasn’t looking forward to that. Peering around the restaurant in a way that wouldn’t label me as a tourist, I learned how to eat it. You pull the meat off the body; it comes right off with ease. You have several clumps of fried catfish on your plate. The rest I could handle, but I didn’t eat the tails.

I understand why Charlie’s has won some local awards and such. The fish is  good and not expensive ($10 a person).

And by the way, the hamburger steak that my sister-in-law ate looked good. It was cooked with onions in gravy. I was tempted to…

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 on his end while the vehicles from the other end drive on the one lane. When one man stops his traffic, he calls the man on the other end on a cell phone. Sometimes the crew uses an old walkie-talkie. If you are under 25, I will not take the time to explain what a walkie-talkie is. It sort of works like a cell phone for short distances.

The other lane of the road, the one that cars do not use, is under work. The worst type of work from the perspective of the driver, is new asphalt. Sticky petroleum. Not good as your tires pick up and throw every pebble on the planet.

Walking through a construction site is as bad as driving through one. First, construction workers rarely if never see anyone taking a walk. They don’t know what to make of you. I usually smiled and waved and tried to stay out of the way.

But where would I walk? Either side of the one-lane of traffic put me facing it. Well, that was true half of the time. The other half of the time traffic approached me from the rear. I tried to walk away from the construction work. Large machines garner large amounts of my respect.

And then there are the other characteristics of construction sites. They are L O U D. They are dusty. They are strewn with oil. They have a bad odor. Did I miss any of the senses?

I came to the conclusion that if possible, I would drive through construction sites and walk on the other side.

by Dwayne Phillips

Walking all day is tiring. That isn’t so surprising. Simply standing on your feet, having your legs support your weight, these muscles only take so much. After enough hours, I am tired.

There are other situations on the road that increase fatigue. Rain is one; cold is another, and another is the four-lane divided highway.

Four-lane highways are nice for cars. Slower traffic stays to the right, and faster traffic can pass on the left and keep moving faster. It really is a nice thing for people in cars trying to move from one place to another. Four-lane roads, however, are not nice for taking a walk.

There are several nice things about walking on the side of a four-lane highway. One is that they usually have wide shoulders. You can walk safely three or four feet outside the painted edge of the road and still be on smooth pavement. Another nice thing is that approaching cars can move over a bit into the left lane and give you a little extra space as they pass.

There are several bad things about the four-lane highways. The first is that the shoulders, while wider, have a steeper slope away from the road. You walk while leaning. Your left leg reaches down lower than your right. You walk with a limp. This means sore ankles after 15 miles and often blisters on your feet after just a couple of miles.

The worst thing about walking on the side of a four-lane highway is the speed of the cars. The cars go faster; we knew that from above. The trouble for the walker with all this speed is the noise, heat, and wind from the cars. 70 mile-per-hour cars push a lot of wind. One car after another after another for six hours is A  L O T  O F wind hitting you in the face. The wind brings noise – the loud, punishing, white noise of the the wind. A constant SHHHHHHHHHHH in your ears. You hear it hours into the night and wake at midnight with it still whistling. Finally, fast cars mean engines churning harder, and that means more heat from the engines. This was okay on cold mornings in Tennessee in the chilly fall of 2008. It was not pleasant during the hot fall of 2009 in Alabama.

Heat, wind, noise – fatigue. A day on a four-lane road is like three days on a two-lane road.

I am thankful that I didn’t walk on four-lane roads much. The longest stretch was in Tennessee. Route 11 split into 11E and 11W. We took 11E, and it was four-lane for several days. I only had about half a day of four-lane in Alabama. I recall it being a lot of up and down, hot and humid. Aside from these two stretches, we only hit four-lanes in a few big towns. Good.

by Dwayne Phillips

It was a Friday. I had walked (and ridden the bicycle) 18 miles in the heat. It was 80 degrees at 6 AM and 95 at 3 PM when I stopped a few miles outside of Meridian, Mississippi. I had gone through the last few miles of Western Alabama and entered Mississippi. Needless to say, I was soaked with perspiration all day. I wrote in the daily blog what I drank that day – a lot!

Despite the heat, the one thing I remember about the weather was the wind in the afternoon. A cool breeze would be nice, but that wasn’t what I had. It was a hot, stiff wind that didn’t dry my soaked shirt any. It only made walking and riding a bike more difficult.

I stopped walking about 3 PM and drove into Meridian. My motel was on Route 11 at the northern edge of the city. That was a welcome relief. I just wanted to take off my wet clothes, shower, dry, cool, and raise my feet.

During the first hour or so at the motel, a weather front moved through quickly. It brought a little thunder and lightning and much hard rain.

At 5 PM, I exited my motel room to find a place to eat dinner. The weather front had dropped the temperature 20 degrees. That felt soooooo good.

My motel was near the Interstate as it passes through the edge of Meridian. Every fast food chain in America has at least one franchise on this stretch of road. Most “sit down” restaurant chains are also represented here. I chose to eat at Ryan’s.

Ryan’s is an all-you-can-eat buffet place. The have a large salad bar, fried chicken and other relatively inexpensive meats, pasta, taco bar, lots of vegetables and potatoes, and of course a desert bar. Ryan’s is the classic southern buffet. Nothing is outstanding, but you can eat all you want for as long as you want for $6 or $8. I chose Ryan’s because they have vegetables and I was feeling a little guilty for not eating many vegetables lately. Hamburgers and fries can quietly dominate your diet when on the road. Every few days you have to intentionally go to a place with something else.

I loved my dinner that evening at Ryan’s. I think they had a few extras on the buffet because it was Friday. I recall eating steak on the buffet. That had to be unusual. The rest of the dinner was the usual Ryan’s. I skipped the potatoes, ate three or four vegetables, and of course a little desert (cake and ice cream).

This dinner was special not because of the food, but because of the people and the circumstances. This day had been difficult (see the weather above). The late afternoon change of weather was refreshing and helped me to feel much better – much more like eating and enjoying what I was eating.

Ryan’s gave me the opportunity to watch people – something I enjoy and one of the main reasons I loved taking a walk. This was a Friday, and that is a day that people eat out. For many Americans, the treat of the week is to eat at a restaurant once. Friday is a good day for that once-a-week treat. I saw young people, old people, families, bikers, truckers, farmers, mixed groups, people who hopped off the interstate for a meal, locals, and everyone in between.

My waitress was wonderful – keeping me supplied with hot rolls and fresh coffee. There is something great about a waitress who tells you, “I am brewing fresh coffee so it will take a minute.” She could have served burned coffee, but she wouldn’t do that.

I sat in Ryan’s for an hour. I ate slowly, wrote in my notebooks, watched the remnant of the weather front pass, and enjoyed the rest. A great meal.

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 of 2008. I hurt from the start. I hurt really bad. Blisters on both feet, joint pain, muscle pain, pain on top of pain. We stopped walking on November 4th of 2008 to rush home and see our newborn grandson.

I started walking again late in September of 2009. I had to walk while pushing a bicycle and then ride the bicycle (see this link for the full explanation). The surprising thing was that I didn’t hurt. My feet didn’t have blisters and my joints didn’t ache. I had plenty of sore muscles in my legs, but really, I was walking 18 miles and then riding a bike 18 miles. Of course I had sore leg muscles.

Then the situation changed for the last two weeks of the walk. My older brother joined me. He drove, I left my bicycle at his house, and all I had to do was walk 18 or 20 miles a day. Another surprise – my body ached and I had blisters on my feet. I hurt and I was disappointed.

I pondered the situation. When you are walking five and six hours through rural Mississippi, you have plenty of time to ponder the situation. I finally understood it:

It is the walking surface that determines the blisters and pain.

In 2008, I walked mainly outside the edge of the roadway. I either walked on a steeply sloped shoulder or off the pavement in gravel or grass. The gravel and grass were rough, uneven, up and down a dozen times with each step.

In 2009, I started with the bicycle. I walked mainly inside the edge of the roadway. Pushing the bicycle through dirt, gravel, and grass was too much trouble. The cars could go around me because I was walking on the road.

The situation changed in 2009 when my brother joined me for the final seven or ten days. I no longer had the bicycle. I no longer put myself out on the road for cars to go around. I returned to walking on the shoulder. The blisters and the other pains returned.

It is the walking surface; that is the source of walking pain.

People ask me now and then if I  will do another walk. I would love to do another walk. One thing for sure though, as much as I can, I will walk on the road, not on the shoulder.

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 could connect that pain to walking. There are 20-something bones in the human foot. They all ached at one time or another every day.

What I don’t know is how many surfaces of the foot touch the ground and the inside of a shoe. There are a lot of those surfaces. What that means is there are a lot of places on each foot that can develop a blister and then a callous. Why can’t the callous develop first and thereby prevent the blister? I guess that just isn’t the way it happens. Oh well.

Every day on the road something hurts more than everything else. That is the biggest pain. The biggest pain rarely lasts more than a day. There was the pain in my right shin that was the biggest pain for several days, but that was from a mysterious bite. Never mind that one. The biggest pain recedes after a day.

The biggest pain from yesterday is replaced by the biggest pain of today. One thing recedes; another thing comes forward to replace it. The next biggest pain always comes along.

There is some general principle here that you will find in all walks of life. I should have written “endeavors” instead of “all walks of life,” but this is a blog about walking, so… Anyways, this is some type of general principle. When the number one of anything goes away, it is replaced by the number two of anything. The number two becomes the new number one.

This general principle definitely applies to the pains found in walking.