7/24/05 - Steve is in Winona today.  Special thanks to his old schoolmate Dave Edel for coming all the way from Phoenix to say hi.  Next stop, Two Guns . . .

7/26/05 - The kids and I are departing today.  Give me a couple of days for another entry.  Steve is just making his way back down in elevation into the lower desert.    

Where is Steve?
7/31 - Winslow, AZ


7/28/05 - Steve is in Twin Arrows today.  He has very poor cell service where he is now, so I didn't get a lot of details, but he is headed toward the Meteor Crater National Landmark.  The temperatures are climbing as he descends again into the lower desert, so his time on the road is becoming more limited.  He finds his evening walking hours shortened due to the heat and the light.  Walking on the highway in the dark is not something I want him to be doing, so he may have to make some further adjustments to his waking schedule.

I wanted to mention also that I would love to answer all of the emails, but I don't think it is humanly possible.  I have 1900 unread now, and it seems every time I answer one, three more come in.  I will read them all, eventually, but apologize for not responding to all of them.

7/30/05 - Steve is doing well and in Winslow now. He has had some back trouble, but it is working itself out gradually and he plans to have it looked at while in Winslow. It's the big 40 for him tomorrow.

Something very important I need to say here to the limited number of people that need to hear it. Steve has enjoyed immensely meeting people from different parts of the country so far and is greatly encouraged by the kind comments people have on meeting him. That being said however, he has also come into contact with several people that want endorsements, sponsorship, multi-level-marketing involvement, and the occasional reporter or photographer digging for any little dirt that will sell a couple extra papers. If anyone with like intentions approaches Steve directly while he is trying to accomplish his goals, the answer to the request will be an unequivocal and resounding, "no". If you can't take "no" for an answer, you'll have to start.
Steve's privacy may have been compromised by the popularity of this journey, but nice guy that he is, he has taken up many hours out of his walk dealing with characters that have flown out or driven long distances to 'pitch' some 'deal'.


8/1/05 - So, Steve was on the Today Show this morning. They arrived again at zero-dark-thirty, so he took a nice long nap afterward.

He has been waiting a long time to go to the Meteor Crater, so he was finally able to do that today also. He walked right past it several days ago, but it is a good 6 miles off the highway, so he didn't walk it.

Steve wanted to send a special thanks to Fire Captain Ron Martinez for keeping him company a while walking through Winona and Tommy Haines for giving him a place to crash in Flagstaff.

Where's Steve now :
8/3 - Heading to Holbrook, AZ


8/3/05 - Steve is camped out on the side of some road, somewhere between Winslow and Holbrook. He has the usual aches and pains; back, feet, legs, cuts and srapes. Just for the record, there are always aches and pains. He doesn't keep track of how far he goes, he just goes . . . I can't get too detailed about his location, for safety reasons. So, I'm afraid I don't have a whole lot to say today.

8/4/05 - Steve has (roughly) 70 miles before he hits the border of Arizona/New Mexico. He is a little under the weather with a cold right now and his aches and pains are more achy and painful. Tomorrow he makes his way toward more desolation until he reaches Gallup, NM. I think his body is still having difficulty adjusting to the extreme disparity in weather. One minute it's 98 degrees, and two minutes later it's hailing golf balls.

AS of 8/10 -  Steve is approaching NM border


8/7/05 - Steve has been out of cell range, so I don't know how close he is getting to the New Mexico border. I expect he is probably within about 50 miles of it. I am not so worried about him this time. He is not on a desolate route 66. He knows he can get someone's attention if he needs help, but I expect he will be just fine. I will post as soon as I have some updated information. I know Steve had been working on some interesting tidbits for a journal entry, but I think he got out of service area before he was able to complete it for me.


8/8/05 - Steve has been dealing with some swollen feet and blurry vision today. He has an appointment to see a physician in New Mexico tomorrow, but as far as the walk is concerned, he is not quite there yet. After the appointment, he will resume tomorrow.

On a lighter note, Steve has signed a contract with HarperCollins - Regan Books, to publish the story of his journey once it is completed. I am happy to declare that I think we will be able to retain everything Steve thought he would lose to get his life back. I will be eternally grateful for all of the help we have received on the way. Every dollar that has been sent to help will be 'paid forward' to charitable causes through t-shirt proceeds. I don't have any details yet on the shirt or the causes, but I wanted to tell people that contributed that their generosity would be 'repaid' by helping others. Many people have expressed interest in buying a shirt, so as soon as I have the artwork (Steve has been working on that himself), I will post the picture. Once again, thank you so much!

8/12/05 - Sorry it took a couple days to post a follow-up to Steve's doctor appointment. I had to leave town on short notice and just wasn't able to get to it until I returned. At any rate, Steve had a pulled or strained ligament in his foot, (very minor) and his vision issues stem from the sun being in his eyes on a regular basis anymore. He also needs to get his prescription sunglasses ordered, so he is not straining to see far away either. Steve was also weighed at the doctor's office and his weight as of Wednesday was 346 pounds.

Where is Steve?
8/20 - Heading to Albuquerque

8/14/05 - It has rained torrentially almost every day that Steve has been in New Mexico now. He is feeling a little run down and has a few cold symptoms. It has been hard for him to feel like going every morning. His stuff keeps getting soaked and it has been cold at night. He is now working his way toward Grants and then, onto Albuquerque. Like many places Steve has been now, the people he has met have been extremely kind and helpful. Thank you.

8/16/05 - Steve is feeling much better today.  The rain has eased up, and he continues to progress toward the city of Grants.

8/17/05 - Grants, NM has come and gone. It was very cold last night, rained off and on. Steve is into some very beautiful North American territory right now. He has passed the Continental Divide and the area is scenic and hilly. It has been a nice change from the dry barren desert he has grown accustomed to traversing.

8/20/05 - Steve's cell service has been out of the area off-and-on. He is on his way to Albuquerque still, although he last reported some sort of pulled muscle in his back. Many people have mentioned going to look for him, but I would advise sending an email to me first. Sometimes he is on route 66 and sometimes he travels I-40. Also, he doesn't walk in the middle of the day very much due to the UV rays and heat. To those people who have expressed interest or would like to walk with Steve, please send and email with "Walk with Steve" in the subject line, so I can pick them out from among the others and respond promptly. I will post an update when I speak with Steve again.

Where is Steve?
As of 8/24 - In Albuquerque

8/25/05 - Steve is still planning to do a journal entry about coming into Albuquerque and what has been happening the last several days, however it seems he's not been in a place where he can transmit it yet. He should be able to get it to me sometime today, so please be patient and expect a nice, long, detailed description of events of New Mexico from Steve.

8/25/05 - Over the past few weeks I have been experiencing some hard times that, simply put, got the better of me.

After walking from Holbrook, AZ to Gallup, NM though some of the most barren landscape, I entered New Mexico only to be greeted by some Monsoonal rain and cold, cold nights.   While in Gallup I met some really nice folks and enjoyed my time there a great deal. But I was not feeling 100% and probably should have stayed there a while longer and rested but I pushed on to Grants.   However, I only made it as far as the Pilot truck stop about 20 miles or so from Gallup.  There I simply pooped out; I wound up staying there for four days because I just could not get myself to get back on the road.   The combination of the rain, my pack, the distance and isolation got the better of me.

I didn't feel like I was going to quit, I just wanted to sit in a comfortable chair, in a warm room, and relax.  So I indulged myself and that turned into four days quite easily.  Finally, I mustered the strength and broke out of my comfortable spot and got back onto the road. But feeling sick, having a sore back and being road weary combined with four days without walking I was traveling at a very slow pace.   I made it to Grants and cruised through there heading to Albuquerque which I thought was ~ 50 miles away.  Turns out it was 80.  I made it about 10 more miles down the road and was almost at a standstill.

Thankfully, my ever thoughtful and diligent wife saw that I was flailing and decided that I needed some help whether I wanted it or not.   She gave my location to an e-mailer that had been expressing interest in walking with me, thinking that they might help snap me out of my slump.  So a group of great ladies from Albuquerque who call themselves the Kat Walkers came out to walk with me.  If I knew what was in store for me I probably would have hidden from them!  They are great walkers and motivators and are sincerely dedicated to getting healthier through exercise, proper nutrition, and peer counseling. (They are a Dr. Phil weight loss group.)

Well, they came on like gang busters, snatching me up from my low point...and we hit the road. They eagerly listened to my complaints and excuses, agreed that they were valid, and then said "OK then! Let's get to the walking" and they have not let up yet. I would have hidden from them because facing the truth about my weakness and forcing myself to be responsible to myself, my family, and my journey is not what I was looking for.   Comfort, sympathy, and macaroni & cheese is was I was looking for...self indulgence in short.  What I needed though was some good support, motivation, and a swift kick in the shorts, which is exactly what they provided.

Now I am feeling better emotionally and physically, walking at a better pace and, most importantly, looking forward to the rest of my journey.   So thanks to Katherine, Kat, Julia and the rest of the groups for their support, friendship, encouragement and hospitality, without which I might still be sitting at that Stuckey's store.

Since we have been walking together we have covered a lot of ground and I have been assured of a lot more before I leave Albuquerque.   While we have walked in Albuquerque we have had several others meet up and walk with us on Central Ave. and will probably have more before I leave.  But I have had to be very discreet about my location to safeguard the anonymity of the great ladies, my Trail Angels, as they are not seeking publicity.

This has been especially hard on my April because she is sitting by waiting for me to give her the journal information but I have had to keep telling her to wait.   My wife has two or maybe three full-time jobs which she accomplishes everyday with grace and love. I am very proud of her and grateful for her support, without which I would not be able to accomplish this journey.   But as usual I am the wrench in the works, so she told me to write the journal entry this time and this has been my effort to do that.

So finally, while I am here in Albuquerque (a planned stop) I will get my glasses remade, see a couple of Doctors, have dinner with my good friend and Brother-in-law, and enjoy the company of some great new friends before I head back out into the desert. So for those of you to whom this applies, please respect that this is a soul searching journey and not a circuit race.

My goal is to walk to New York.  How or when I get there is the journey, however it unfolds.

Steve

Where is Steve?
9/5 - Tucumcari

9/01/05 - Lately, I have found myself trapped in a seemingly inescapable chaos.  I am being hounded by people from all directions.  Supporters, reporters, family, businessmen with endorsement, book deals, magic pills, boingy-boingy shoes and just about everything else.  Basically, everyone and his brother.  They all want it now, now, now!  I honestly can’t tell sometimes whether I am coming, going or already been there.  So, I decided to do the most responsible thing that I could think of.  Turn off the phone and go to the movies.  I went to see “The 40 Year Old Virgin”.  It was awesome, I have not had that good of a time in quite a while. It really went a long way to relieving some of the stress associated with being hounded to death and dodging the unscrupulous elements of the media.  Dealing with these things is sometimes more difficult that walking to Albuquerque.  If I had known this before I would have named the website “Thefatmancircus.com”.

But these things happen when you do something like this, that is part of being outside of the normal, unconventional.  Coming to terms with these things, it turns out is an important part of the journey not too dissimilar to having to avoid ice cream.  It takes a discipline and a sort of grace under fire that I have had quite some trouble with in the past.  There will be a time when I will not be the fat man walking anymore and the closest I will get to the media will be my paperboy.  But until then I am self-obligated to finish this thing for myself, my family and all of those people out the that find motivation and inspiration in my journey.  It still remains my personal journey and I have to try and remind myself of that everyday, but now it is much more than that. It's slowly becoming a national journey, an American journey.  This makes it much more important than my personal difficulties resulting from the exposure.  “Coming to terms with it”...this seems to be a recurring phrase lately, even my mantra, in fact.

There are some people who try and minimize the effect that my journey has on me, and on others, by saying terrible things and making hurtful statements. They have actually been successful . . . only in strengthening my resolve  to prove to myself that the walk is small potatoes to a bad-ass Marine like myself.  Don’t think that the poorly written, miss-quoted articles or even the anonymous web-maniacs are going to get the best of me. They cannot, they are only able to make me be more careful about my exact location and activities.  You know, they're cannon fodder.

I am still here and I am moving right along despite rumors of my demise, my wife is not running off with the money… and her girlfriend!?!, no one is dying or quitting and I have not lost my way.  I am simply doing my walk n the manner that I believe to be the right way. It is after all a journey for my life.  I am the originator of the idea, doer of the deed, and recipient of its success and failures.  I have had up days and I have had down. I have exceeded my own expectations from time to time and I have given into my weaknesses.  But I am still here.

Getting to New York is not a matter of success or failure to me, instead it is a certainty. I have no doubt at all about my ability to get there. What is in question is whether it is necessary. I feel that this journey has been a great success for me personally because I accepted the challenge, walked out of  my security, and faced down my insecurities to get to where I am today. Happy in my own skin.

I will make it to New York because it is important for more than just myself to do so. Unless I decide to stop at the New York state border, seven miles short  of Times Square, and then just go home having failed to reach my goal. Either way I still win because I will be a happier and healthier person because of the experience.  Incredibly, so will all of you, because everyone who encourages a person to face down their fears and freely walk into the firestorm of their own personal demons, has helped more than just that person. They have helped all of us, because there is one more happier person in the world.

What you do by building up instead of tearing down does more for our future generations than most people have ever imagined that they would do.

I have passed through Albuquerque with the help of some really incredible people. Special thanks to R&K for their incredible care and generosity, also the Kat Walkers for their zeal.  Now I have moved on and am looking forward to the next leg of the journey.  I am not going to give my location right now other than to say that I am east of Albuquerque, because I need a break as long as I am able to manage it.

I will however, say that within the next week or so you will see me again in a surprising place and it will be exciting.

Because of the time in Albuquerque and the efforts of friends I have a much greater pace now and will be moving right along.  Texas . . . Here I come.


9/5/05 - Tonight, I am resting here in Tucumcari trying to catch up on my overall journal, call friends and family that have been long neglected, and drawing some of the marvelous scenery offered by New Mexico.  (See the new photos.) This place was without a doubt the most glorious that I have ever been in my life.  In short, I have stopped walking and have started traveling my journey...and this part may go down in the books as the best.

Tomorrow I am back at it again, heading to Amarillo.  I am going to try and get through the Texas panhandle within 10 – 12 days and be done with the desert.  Oklahoma represents the beginning of the second half of my walk and from there I will rapidly start to close in on New York City and the end of this journey.

I really don’t know what will be waiting for me at the end or what I will be after all of this, and that has been on my mind all through New Mexico. Oddly enough I feel like I am graduating High School in few months and I have no idea how my life is going to change.  Scary!

Oh yeah, for the "A" types I wanted to say that I was weighed in Albuquerque last week and I am now 340 lbs.

Another interesting thing is that tonight I am resting at 1000.26 (Mapquest) miles. Cool!

From the road and from my life.
Steve

Steve seems to be chuggin along .
Where is Steve?
9/12 - Vega, TX


9/12/05 – Part I

Soon after embarking on this journey I came to realize that I had the whole thing all wrong.  I was looking at this problem the wrong way.

After being on the road for 5 weeks or so it started to occur to me that I was not heading to New York, but actually towards a sort of mental destruction or more accurately deconstruction. The problems that I wanted to deal with came into focus and then I realized that their numbers were few, in fact there was only one and I was it. The common element in all of the character malforming dilemmas was me.

Everyone has problems and as soon as you resolve one there is another there to take its place. In fact, everyone one of us will depart this life with unresolved problems.   The exquisiteness of this breakthrough is the understanding that to try and resolve a particular problem, issue or dilemma is ridiculous, futile even.   Because we cannot right the errors of past occurrences and ultimately, this is where they all dwell, unless you allow those demons the power to live with you today.  To try and fix them is to create additional avoidable problems.   A hole cannot be un-drilled.

I have been really concentrating on releasing all of the "problems" to which I have clung to so dearly, all these years.   I have really been focusing on the "Get over it" and enjoying the results of the "Moving on" and it has been great.  Like every great undertaking there is going to be failure, even momentous ones.   But ultimately success is about winning the by and large.

I think that I still have a ways to go and confidently I will get there but if not, that's ok too because in a lot of ways I am already there.

Part II

As far at the mechanics of my walk is concerned. I have been steadily picking up the pace after Albuquerque and am really very happy with the progress. My new longest day is 25 miles and I am still experimenting with ways to increase the distance so that I can get 25+ steadily. I have a new goal of reaching New York City by the end of 2005. I have dumped quite a few things from my pack because it is cooler here in the desert of Texas and I have had better access to resources. The best thing has been that I don’t need to carry a lot of water; in fact, the most that I have carried in the past four week has been three liters.

So my pack weight (with computer….yes a laptop) is just over 30 lbs. I know this because I went through the New Mexico Dept. of Public Safety truck scales east of Tucumcari and got weighed. It was hilarious waiting in line with the other big loads; the looks on those good old boys faces were great.

The guys there at the scales were really nice to allow me to take up their time and I wanted to give a special thanks to them, even though they wouldn’t let me shoot at any of the trucks.

I weighed in at between 335 and 340. It is a 100,000 lbs truck scale and not capable of real accurate measurements of such a small weight apparently. They made my day when they said “Small weight”, bless you boys. So after that we went to Denny’s for biscuits and gravy all around, yeah! Actually, I talked with the documentary guy for a bit and then went looking for a nice place to sleep.

So overall the last several weeks have been great. Only minor injuries, a handful of pushy reporters and the occasional hootin’ & hollerin’ from a passerby, relatively quiet. I have met several nice people and explored some incredible sights. I really like New Mexico but now I am trying to get myself across Texas as quickly as possible.

Nothing wrong with Texas mind you, very nice people here too, but I have seen enough desert already and getting into Oklahoma is symbolic for me because it is the halfway state.

In fact Oklahoma City is just about halfway.

Where is Steve?
9/25 - East of Amarillo, TX

9/18/05 - I have seen the Texas panhandle point of view and I have to tell you that Texans are great people. Gracious, kind and open people with a strong work ethic. They also are in complete amazement at how the rest of us take ourselves so seriously.

It has been nice to be here and these folks have been great. I am glad to have had this chance to meet them because it has been another learning experience for me, one where I have had to face my own judgments about people. I have found that I still possess some of the very judgments that I am always complaining about with regard to how society views overweight people.

I leave Amarillo today and will be headed out to Groom on my way to Oklahoma City. That is the halfway point on my trip and a great goal for me to attain. I will get there soon, no promises when.

I will make it a point to enjoy that city as I have all of the others on the Fatman Trail. I will give it my fullest attention and seek out those that want to enjoy it with me. I will endeavor to share it with you but honestly that is not my prime motivation. I am out here looking for my rehabilitation. If by doing that there is something in it for others then that is a bonus for me and them.  -  Steve

9/20/05 - Today's journal entry comes courtesy of Josie at thelosthawaiian.blogspot.com/because she put it so beautifully.  I just couldn't have said it better! - Steve
Read Josie's journal entry...


9/25/05 - For the past few days now I have been trying to write a journal entry.  I obviously have not been having much success.  

There are times during this trip when my spirits are not as high as I would like and during those times I really prefer not to talk much. I have found that the dynamics of this journey have changed and now I have a responsibility to entertain. Apparently, if I do not then I am doomed to fail. It is interesting that the lack of a journal entry seems to give cause to some people to say that I have given up or am cheating.

Well I am not going to give up because I want this for me and for my family and I won't let either down. However, I am not doing this for people's entertainment. Let me say that those people who try to bring me and this journey down are few and they really don't matter in the long run but it still does negatively affect one to see their name being besmirched. I know that the majority of people that come to this site both understand and appreciate the complexity of this thing for me and they appreciate that I am letting them in because it may help others to see that something can be done.

Having said that I just wanted to make something clear, I am walking across the US under my own terms and by my own methods. How and where I decide to go is my prerogative and is not up for review. I am my own person and I am trying to make a change in my life as best as I can. I will decide the method, the level of commitment and the manner in which I will carry the task out. It is my journey to succeed or fail at and I am solely responsible for its outcome. I appreciate all of the kind words and that have seen me through some dark times. I appreciate the mean words as well as they have helped me with my resolve.

I am telling you all of this because I want to remind people of something very important. I am only a man, an overweight man who is trying to reclaim his life. I am not here to entertain or to show up at a function for you when you decide that I should be there. I am walking across the US to save my life and I cannot allow myself to be distracted from that. Where possible I would love to stop and talk or to have others walk with me but I cannot do it all the time. I am not trying to be seen on the road so as to prove that I am here. There have been thousands of people that have seen me out here and about a hundred or so have stopped. Additionally, there is a documentary crew following me and they have the footage of me walking……a lot. But if I decide that for whatever reason I want to get a ride to somewhere that is my choice. If I decide that I don't want to carry my pack then that too is my choice. I am not cheating anyone because I am the one who has made the rules.  I said that I was walking across the US, not running an endurance course. This is a man's journey for rehabilitation and personal salvation, a man alone fighting demons and sometimes those demons win out. That doesn't mean that they win the war. We all have set backs and failures and from time to time we let ourselves down. But the true winner is the one who picks himself back up again and carries on.

I am not going to apologize because some people think that I am not doing this walk correctly, especially since I don't see them out here doing it themselves. There is much more to walking across the country than just walking. There is a world of problems to face out here and some that require a departure from the norm and these things are what make the difference. Things like, overcoming adversity and weakness, long term depravation and isolation, real world intrusions and then the self to name a few.

I would like to go home now because I have been out here for what seems like a couple of years but I know that I have a long road ahead and a lot of people counting on me. I will continue my walk and I will complete it but I will not allow it to be ruined because I was too weak to stand up to those who would try and devalue it for me.

In the end, when this is all over I will have a similar journey. I will have to look myself in a mirror and say, I am proud of what I have done. There is no greater scrutiny and not unlike this journey, I will face that moment alone.

As for the journal entry, well I have found my self torn lately between what is important to me now and what will be important later, namely the documentary. It is important to me now that I don't allow myself to be influenced by it and most of the time that is the way that it is. But lately I have been distracted because of that documentary.

You see the problem is that the crew just arrived to be on scene continually about a month ago. The first four months they were here every couple of weeks or so and unfortunately they have missed a lot of great things. This is my opinion of course. So in an effort to help them get more of the important stuff, namely the people that I meet, I have spent more time in the last four cities than I would normally. This has caused quite a bit of speculation but I assure you that hanging out is not as easy as it sounds. The crew is great, don't get me wrong, and they have not been remiss in the filming duties at all.

The problem is that until about 5-6 weeks ago no one was interested in the documentary. The filmmakers have been paying for everything on their own. So this has made it difficult for them to be here constantly. So while they are busy trying to secure funding for their project I am still walking on through great places and meeting great people and they get missed by the crew. This has been disheartening for me because I really think that the whole point of me being in the public is for everyone to see that people are great and that doing this type of thing is worth all of the hardship.

So, I a have been at odds with the documentary crew lately and trying to force them to see more of the cities and its people than I would normally. But this has cost me dearly in time and in miles. So, I have resolved myself to make the best of the situation and continue on, trusting in the crew to do their best to accurately portray the true value of this walk and its effects on me.

Now, I am now on the road steady again and moving right along. I stopped to rest for the night in a small town east of Amarillo and tomorrow I will be making my way on to the next one. I hope to be in Oklahoma in a few days as I am looking forward to the halfway point and the other half of the trip. This part of Texas is very flat and I can see all the way to the horizon, I can see the next city 15 miles before I get there and I can tell you that is hard on the brain. It really demonstrates how far I have to go. But at the same time it is evidence of how far I have come.

10/16 - Near Clinton, Oklahoma

10/03/05 - version four

I have been laboring for several days now to write a journal entry. I am in a situation that makes it hard to focus on something like the journal long enough to make it make any sense. So I have had a hell of a time. Whatever I write I hear about it from one side of the fence or the other. Too much detail not enough detail, wrong details. Well I have written three journal entries so far and they all leave me a bit dissatisfied. So this is the fourth version and hopefully the one to be posted. Maybe I should post them all to show how much is really going on.

Well the last couple of weeks have been rough to say the least. April and I are at odds because of some personal matters and barely speaking at the moment. I have managed to anger most of the people that are helping with this walk because of my stubbornness and refusal to cooperate until certain things are taken care of and finally, I have been slowly descending into madness over the whole thing. You see there is a great deal more to the story than you already know. I am dealing with more than my responsibility for the deaths of those people, weight gain and troubles as an adult. There is a whole lifetime before this period of my life that has brought me to where I am today. There are a lot of things to live through and I am having trouble now because it seems that some would have me do things a certain way without understanding why I am doing it in the first place.

I have lost my way and am trying to get back to the task at hand which is finishing this journey. I have allowed myself to be distracted by the periphery and not focusing on that which is truly important, the journey. So I have taken this weekend and really tried to make as much sense of all this that I can and I feel better for it. I have made the appropriate calls and changed things as necessary and feel that I can get back to it with some sense of order.

So here the journal begins.

I was really unhappy with the weigh in last week. I knew it was going to be bad but I still wasn’t prepared for it. I have gained eight pounds since my last weigh in. I know that most of that came because of the change in routine that really started back in Tumcumcari.

You see it is all about options. When you have too many it is almost natural to take the easiest one. Well that is what I did. I am still walking and of course there is the inevitable plateau and I am there presently. But the thing that has really changed is the availability of food and that has been devastating. I am a flawed human being just like everyone else and I will sometimes give into my weaknesses. This I have done over the past three to four weeks and I am paying the price for it now.

I have been slowly convincing myself that I am going to fail an that has lead directly into feeling sorry for myself. These two are deadly on their own but then factor in all of the outside influences, family, money, etc. and there is a reason to indulge. Or at least that is what one convinces himself of.

I have had a sort of breakdown which has caused me to lash out at those around me and I have to find a way to make it up to them because they are not the problem, I am. No one likes to face a failure and especially when they need to embrace it to be able to carry on. I transferred a lot of my problems onto others and looked for someone to point the finger towards. It is me that is to blame, no others. So, I am in recovery phase and I have some lost effort to reclaim.

I have been moving on as required but with a resentful mindset and I have not used my time or distance wisely. But I am not going to dwell on those thing, instead I am going to re-invent this walk and make the second half more productive or least more productive in a different direction. I have met some nice people in Texas and I have had the misfortune of meeting some not so nice people there, but now I am in Oklahoma and I am looking at this as the start of my second journey. I am putting the past miles behind me and am going to follow a whole new program. I am going to focus in the second half on both physical and mental rehabilitation.

I have lost a considerable amount of weight up to now but it has been almost entirely in the bottom half of my body. So I am now going to incorporate more exercise for the rest of my body. I am currently trying to develop an exercise and nutrition routine that will focus not only on weight loss but on upper and mid body development. Secondly, I am going to deal with a few lingering issues and learn to tolerate things more than I have ever been able to do before.

First, there is the criticism. I can take it from someone who can do better than I can but not from someone who has never even tried the thing. I grew up in a very tough environment in a rough part of a city once referred to as Murdertown USA and you simply did not tolerate a lot of nonsense from people. Then I joined the Marines where a man is judged by his abilities and is required to be faithful to his comrades whether they are at his level or not. You see Marines never leave a man behind so if one of your fellow Marines is having a tough time you step in and help him. This is a concept that is foreign to a lot of people who criticize just for the hell of it. There is no code of honor among the disenchanted and I am expecting them to rise to my level. This is an unreasonable expectation and the fact that I see them on a lower level is in itself and dishonor to me. I have a lot to learn and that is the first concept that I have to work on, acknowledging that I have a lot to learn.

So I am going to endeavor to be more humble and less judgmental of those that cackle from the sidelines. Oops there I go again.

Back to the walk, I really just shot right through Groom, Alanreed and McLean because I as in no mood to deal with very many people. I did however visit a museum and an antiques store in McLean, I bought a present there for my little girl but it was broken while I was boxing it in Shamrock. I accidentally picked up the box before it was secured and the thing fell on the ground and broke. I was so angry that I threw it away. “”If I wanted a broken present for my daughter I would have bought it from the broken present store!”” That is what I yelled to the documentary guy. Poor guy had a hard week. I even chewed him out because he likes Audi's. What kind of a nimrod likes Audi’s…..there I go again huh. Well I have to apologize to him because by the end of the week he was carrying a side arm in case I freaked out. (Only kidding).

There was a drunk driver on the freeway between Groom and Alanreed that was all over the road and scared the bejeebers out of me and the camera guy. Oh by the way their names are Dave, PJ and Pierre. I keep calling them camera guys and they deserve at least a name. We visited the cross monument. This is the largest cross in the western hemisphere. I was more interested in the old man at the door who was in charge of the guestbook. An old man with a decidedly Austrian looking hat on, Guten Tag I said and he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Sign the guestbook and say something nice”. Hey I am not the one with the nutso hat. Anyway he was a nice guy and seems to have lived a long and interesting life. After a few minutes I signed the booked but I didn’t say anything except “Traveling” he looked at it, smiled and said Guten Tag. I left happy. It sometimes is the small things in life that matter. Remembering that is the trick though.

10/03/05 - version one

There are a lot of people out there fooling themselves into believing that they have it all figured out. I am starting to recognize that the harder they try to convince you that they are right the more you can be assured that it is really them that they are trying to convince. If I were to have gone out and purchased every book that has been suggested I would need a bookmobile following me. I appreciate all of the suggestions and pick and choose from them. But the amazing ones are those that repeatedly email me saying that I obviously am not serious about this because I haven't mentioned having bought their suggested read. Some even go as far as suggesting that without their books help I am doomed to fail. The absolute nerve, the ego, the patheticness, the self-centeredness. I am amazed.

Some people are still thinking that losing weight is a simple matter of walking x miles and dropping x pounds. These are the same people that make the weightloss industry a 30 billion dollar a year industry. Looking for a cure or looking for a pill looking for some balanced equation. Well being over weight is anything but balanced. It is the epitome of being out of wack, it requires a lot of dedication to bad behaviors and time to make those behaviors habit. It requires a disregard of ones own health to allow for the self-destructiveness to take over. It is not as simple as x miles = x pounds. Anyone who thinks that it is just plain naive.

This is a hole that I have dug for myself. It was easy getting here but now I am the only one able to get myself out of this hole and that is not a good bet. If your car runs out of gas and you need to go to the gas station to get more you won't expect that car to take you there. It is the problem and a solution is required that is independent of it. But humans don't work that way. When we breakdown we have to be the ones to fix the problem. Smokers who have quit need to have extra resolve around their friends who still smoke. Drug addicts try to stay away from drugs and keep clean.

But what about someone who has had difficulties with emotional problems, what do they do? Where does one go for his respite? How do you avoid your addiction? You cannot, so you must attempt to fix the problem with the very tool that is broken. It is an arduous task under the best of circumstances but go ahead and throw the non-stop barrage of life into the mix, the ceaseless nonsensical input from the people in the background and the demands of those in the foreground. You own personal demands, demons, weaknesses and desires and you have the setting for one epic battle. It truly is a wonder that we ever accomplish anything considering the circumstances.

That is the beauty of this journey is that I am willing to sacrifice it all on small chance that I will be successful because that small chance is better than the odds given if I continue trying to grow in the very environment that brings me down. I have a saying, well I have several, but this is one of my favorites. "Repeating the same behavior, but expecting different results” That fit me perfectly. I have always tried to be a happier person, tried to let go of the past and trust people more but I seldom make any progress and that progress is usually given back when something goes wrong. I am repeating the same behavior, expecting different results. It is one of the definitions of insanity. I don't want to be insane, so I am taking time out of my life to get it straight. I have less nonsense in my life because I am just being me. But at the same time the usual suspects have been replaced by another motley crew of suspects.

My Mom is a great source of wisdom for me, sometimes by what she says and sometimes by what she does. I live in California and she in Ohio. I have been trying to get her to come and visit me in California for years but she always says the same thing for her reason to put the visit off. She says “When I get caught up on these bills then I will come to see you.” I don't think she understood how profound a thing she had said. It resonates in my head till this very day. When will there be a time when we are caught up on bills? How many things have we missed because of that mindset? How often do we forego a great life experience so that we can be responsible to a faceless somebody at the end of that postal exchange? Does that person appreciate the sacrifice that we have made? Is that person making the same sacrifices? In short, going by my Mom's words I will never see her again. If we wait until the bills are caught up before living our lives then we have forfeited the very thing for which work.

That is why it is easy for me to walk away from a good credit score, owning property like a house and a couple of cars because I looked at the question from a different angle.

Am I willing to die for these things? Am I willing to forfeit my life, my very short time on this planet, for them? Am I willing to sacrifice my children’s happiness, for those things? The answer is an unwavering no. Then why am I doing it. Well for me now, I am not.

I was willing to risk it all to get the time and space needed to focus on me. Focus on making me a better person. That is why this story appeals to people and that is why there is an offer of a book deal. Do you think for a minute that if there were no public interest in this story that I would have been offered a book deal? So am I really the one who is "Doing it"? Or am I the one who is the fortunate recipient of your graciousness and generosity.

Should I tell these folks no when they say that they want me to write a book. Or when they say that they want to tag along to make a documentary? Well the answer depends on how it affects me. If by writing my journal and having conversations with people a book is formed then great. If the documentary crew are here and they don't impede my progress then go right ahead. But when these thing start to alter the journey then they have to go. Because at the end of the day what good would I have accomplished for myself and my family if this time is wasted.

I am starting this trip over from here. I am approaching the second half of the trip from a different perspective. The survival part is done. I made it through the desert during the hottest time of the year, because I could. There was no support vehicle for that 1200 miles and I carried everything that I needed or I did without it. That cannot be taken away from me now. But the next part of the trip is going to be different; I am planning to make this part of the trip the physical and mental education part. I am speaking with a nutritionist and life coach. I am going to get a support vehicle for the last part and I am going to focus on the physical rehabilitation needed to be in the best possible shape I can be in.

Secondly, there is another difference in this half. This is going to be the no bullshit phase. All of the noise makers in the background will be eliminated. All of the jokers with their schemes and promises will be pushed aside. Only the ones who are here for me will be allowed to be a part of this journey. I don't care how powerful or how much they can "help me". If they are not actually in the game then what good are they? I need to have people with me that are here to help and not just to get their name associated with mine because of the notoriety. I need real people that are looking to be there for me and not trying to profit from me. So, to that end I have decided that I am taking charge of this last part of the trip in its entirety.


10/09/2005 - Is Elk City Oklahoma the cultural epicenter of America?

I am here in Elk City Oklahoma and because my lowly little cell phone had tragically reached the end of its life, prematurely, I am waiting for Fedex and will notmbe here till Monday morning.  I don’t mind though because this place has been one of those rare finds along my way and I am lucky to be taking a break here.  You might not realize but this us the start of the more densely populated region of the United States.  See the pictures that I have added.  But that is not the charm of this place, not by a long shot.



It has turned cold now and I am in the process of making the necessary preparations for the colder season.  It is not completely unfamiliar to me however. I did grow up in northeastern Ohio and I lived in England for a couple of years.  I don’t like the cold but I also don’t fear it.  I really don’t see the difference between 30 degrees in Pennsylvania and 123 degrees in Arizona. They both have their difficulties and both pose challenges but they can be overcome. The cold snap has been a nice change though.  The smell of wood burning and crisp Midwest air is nice and really it is right on cue.  I have never been happier to see the end of the desert in my life. I have driven that same route several times and hoped furiously not to have the misfortune of breaking down there.  Walking it is a whole different matter, like boot camp, I am glad that I did it but am not interested in doing it again anytime soon.



But now I am in the mid-west, the Bible belt, the start of a different sort of America.  The mid-west represents the majority of homegrown Americans and that honor is not missed on them.  They are happy to be here and rightfully so because they have something real, something that you cannot import and plant then get the same result. It is something about the land I think, a connection that only comes from really living here.  They are neither pretentious nor humble, they just are.  I went to several social places over the last couple of days and the thing that struck me most was the familiarity that they all had with one another. It is a history that doesn’t ring true with someone not from here but true all the same. A quality about it that again is only present here and cannot be exported.



I saw a great high school football game, kids hanging out, teens cruising, looking for fun and the adults looking on with a contented look that is as unfamiliar to me as speaking Greek. It is amazing to watch the interactions and think that this is a foreign place. This cannot be the same America that we see on TV.  Where is the crime, where is the terror, where is the sin and debauchery?  You can see the cultural exchange of ideas here and in fact it is so profoundly odd to me that I noticed it like I would notice an Amish buggy working its way through downtown San Diego.



There was a waitress who was obviously local and country through and through.  She was getting some guff from a regular who put a nickel on her table and said don’t spend it all in one place.  She quipped; oh I certainly won’t do that.  The cowboy tried to extend his moment by motioning that he would take the nickel back and the woman replied. You better back up off my nickel! I was thoroughly amused with this exchange.  That phrase was a decidedly urban phrase and here I am hearing it in a country diner in Elk City Oklahoma.  How did it get here? Was she hip-hop in disguise?  Later I went to a local dance hall to see what was doin’ there and I was again amazed to see cowboys and cowgirls dancing to hip-hop music and then country & western on the very next song, without skipping a beat. Also, the two step dance actually has more than two steps, who knew!?!



There was a large crowd and they all seemed to be experienced in this phenomena of dancing simply for dancing’s sake. Me however, I was amazed because it was not at all what I thought it would be.  They were all there enjoying the time and not concerning themselves with societal imposed boundaries, instead they did what felt good and feeling good is the component that I was missing, I finally realized. That is what makes this place different, they feel good; they are content with what they have and are not busy ruining it with misguided attempts to improve or alter it.  The fruit is the right color, the grass is green enough and they have not imported a single tree to remind them of some other place.  They live here and here is where they live. It is amazing in its simplicity.



Most of the people that I deal with in my life today are like me in that they are always looking to make things better.  We miss the beauty in the things that we have because we are waiting for the newer version, the improved version the next thing that will surely make our lives………….livable, Life 2.0.



Well as for me, I have been very reactionary lately in my dealing with people and I have been receiving a lot of………….We will call it input.  This input has not been easy for me to accept and I have reacted negatively to it.  But only a complete fool would hang on to a sinking boat.  Sometimes we are forced to abandon it because we know that its future is limited and this is what I have had to do this week. I have had to admit my flaws, swallow my pride and say OK I was wrong.



This is where I think that we go wrong sometimes.  We let our pride or our ego get in the way of doing the right thing and then spend too much valuable time trying to validate that thing and sooner or later the lines become blurred.  I am trying to not let this happen to me and that is no small task I assure you.  I have been accused of being very stubborn and rightfully so. I have even gone down with the boat a few times because of my refusal to humble myself.



I am on this journey to find out who and what I am and then when I get some enlightenment I am standing there arguing with it.  What sort of madness is that?  Am I becoming the guy who wanders around the country side arguing with rocks and Buicks looking for redemption that I wouldn’t be capable of recognizing if I did actually find it?  Are you ready for another Stevism here?  Sometimes I am so clueless that you could sneak a big yellow school bus past me.



Well there it is.  I am in the heartland of America amongst some of the most progressive and culturally advanced people that the country has to offer and I was ready to walk right past them because I thought that I knew who these people were before I even got here.



How many times in a lifetime does a person do that?  How many times have we passed up good enough on the road to perfect not knowing that perfect is not at the end of that road at all? Are we always waiting for the better thing, the better us and losing the good enough us in the process.  Well I am not sure what the answer is but I am starting to think that the question may be the problem and not the lack of its answer.  What are we fighting against here anyway? Obesity? Addiction? Bad behaviors? These are all different definition of concepts born of man and we give them incredible power to rob us of our lives because we have to find the solution.  Well it seems to me that if we stopped trying so hard to be something other that what we are we would be much happier. Being happier would certainly cause a lot of our pain, our fears and anxieties to dissolve away and at the end of the day aren’t those the things that are keeping us tied down to our problems? Is it a diet that we need or a comedy club? Do we really need to learn to count carbs and run screaming from fats or do we need to learn to let go and try to live a happy life. In the process defeating the demons and taking away the things that hold us down.  I don’t know the answer, I am looking just like everyone else but what I do know is that the answers that we have so far are not working all that well and maybe it is time for some new ones.  Happiness seems like a good place to start.  Now go and call someone that you haven’t talked to in a while and let them know that you were thinking about them.  Then sit back and consider the ripple effect of so simple a gesture.

10/16/05 - On the road . . .again

As you know, I've had some issues for the past few weeks and have been walking less and less.  Like I said before, the break was necessary to resolve some issues and I don't regret the lost time, because ultimately it will prove to be more valuable to me because it gave the respite needed to get some things right.  This will ultimately help me to focus more on the task at hand.

This being said though, there is a price to be paid for this slow time.  The main cost to me is the loss of routine and flow.  I walked 10 miles today, and I feel like I just had the hell beat out of me.  I have a pulled muscle in my back, my legs and neck are stiff, and I am absolutely worn out.

The second big problem is that I have lost my focus and momentum.  It takes a lot out of you to be outside everyday walking, dealing with the monotony.  During the first part of the walk, this took me some time to adjust to, and there were plenty of " What the hell am I doing here" sessions.  But after doing this for a while, a calm comes over you, your attention turns inward, and time seems to accelerate.  This, I think is how people cope with some very trying times and get through them.  It is a very good tool to have.

When I say tool, that actually implies a sense of control over it, and as such, I have no control over it.  Or  at least not consciously anyway.  It seems to arrive right before you quit, right before the thing becomes maddening.  It cannot be summoned by me as a useful tool; instead it arrives as a shield from breakdown.

Unfortunately I am not there yet, and won't be until the time is right.  And the time won't be right until I have walked through the many other mental and physical obstacles that exist between here - me just wanting to sit and relax - and there - the point where I reach my inner strength to do what is necessary.

It occurred to me that this is the thin line between success and failure that you always hear people talk about.  I always considered this line to be something you had to cross once and never revisit, but it's clear to me now that this is no line at all, instead it is a decision-making process that we all have to go through every day.  In fact, we go through it many times per day.  Each time we have what seems to be the simplest decision to make we find ourselves dealing with that division between success and failure.  When we choose soda over water, TV show over walk, chocolate over granola, whatever the choice is, it places us securely somewhere between success and failure.

That is where I am at now.  And even worse, I am revisiting old territory, having already learned how to be on my own in the outdoors.  Now I am going through it again, because of my decision to stop and spend time dealing with peripheral issues that were causing me too much distraction. The difference this time is that I have the success of having walked through the desert during the hottest time of the year on my side. Now I know that I can do it whereas, before I only thought that I could do it.  So I am on the road again, trying to do better this time.  I still have the same goal as before of reaching New York City before the end of the year, but now I am feeling the time crunch and know that I have to do more now to be able to achieve that same goal.



10/17/05



Well the last few days have been very event filled to say the least. The highlights are that I met some really interesting people this week and was reinvigorated by that.  Then I pulled a muscle in my back by lifting the pack incorrectly and I could hardly sleep that night. Not so invigorated by that.  The next day was tough going but I managed 10 miles and was happy with it. I did an interview with Oprah and I talked with a class of High school kids in Elk City.  The weather has been great and I am feeling strong.



I was really pushing to get to Clinton by last night because of the Oprah Show interview this morning. (Pictures to come in a few days, I hope) I told them to look for me in the Clinton area and I didn’t want to fail to be here, so I had to walk even though my back was not 100%. I stretched and warmed up that morning more than usual and that seemed to help a bit.  I did have to stop and take two naps on the way though, I was really beat from the lack of sleep the night before.



Over all it was a long day but a nice one. The weather was great and I met several people along the way. I even signed a signature door at Billy and Iris’s house. (See picture page).  I was also found by Chuck Gibson who was out cruising on his motor cycle, looking for me. I felt bad because he had to push the motorcycle while we walked but he is another Marine and of course, he never complained.



The producer from the Oprah show even met up with us out there. A very busy day all in all but I still managed to keep moving. This is my new tactic for not losing too much time visiting with people. Keep moving!



So this morning was an interesting one because I talked with Oprah and that is not something that happens everyday. It was a big deal with a satellite truck, cameras, Highway Patrolmen, and a lot of waiting. It was an interesting experience and then talking with Oprah was a bit unreal to be honest. But she and here crew were remarkable and made the whole thing easy.



But I am not letting it all go to my head; I have people to do that for me.  



Oprah’s interview was fun but the best part of the day came later. I didn’t know this but the documentary crew had an appointment back in Elk City with a high school psychology class and I was invited.  So I went there and spoke with the kids for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  I told them that I wasn’t nervous about talking with Oprah but that they scared the hell out of me.  They were a great group and had some of the best questions that I have been asked so far this trip.



I have to say thanks to the Principal Rick McNeil and the psychology teacher Sheryl Kimball, for being able to bring all of that together in such a short period of time.  They really went out of their way to be a part of this thing. It was a great experience and I don’t think that I will forget any of them anytime soon.



Well the rest of the story is that I am changing my routine a bit and I am already seeing results.  I am incorporating more exercise in my day and really focusing on better eating habits, whenever possible. I am feeling better physically and mentally as a result and really seem to be getting back on track after my little slow period. The weather is changing and with it my excitement.  I am getting into the mid-west during a challenging period and I like the challenge. I grew up in this part of the country but that gives little solace when you are cold, stranded and have had to eat the documentary crew to survive. So I am making the necessary changes in equipment and route planning to hopefully avoid that.



I have been trying to decide whether to go through my hometown or to by-pass it to save on the additional mileage and also as a result, to take the flatter southern Pennsylvania route instead of the northern mountainous one.  This makes the documentary guys happier because they don’t want to be eaten.  I am not decided yet but I will let you know.  Oh that reminds me; please don’t email me to tell me that it is cold in the mid-west in the winter time. I know this now if I didn’t already. Geez.  I didn’t take the easy route, I took the route that posed the most challenges, desert in the summer and east coast in the winter.  Taking the easy route is what brought me to this place in my life in the first place.



And finally, as for the question of my weight I am now 337 lbs.  I have seen a decrease but I think that it is due to water weight loss. But the good indicator is that I have had to adjust another two inches from my backpack belt. I will keep you posted on the weight but if it isn’t clear by now let me say again that I am not measuring the success of this journey by a number on a scale, I am measuring it by the feeling that I have inside.  There is no magical correlation between reaching New York City and being trim.  In fact I have recently come to realize that New York actually represents the beginning of the lifelong trip that I have embarked on not the end.

Quoted: happy to hear of your progress Steve, keep it up, you're doing great. We're all waiting for you!

You do know I'm not Steve right ?  I just thought it would be nice to post his progress in this thread I started at the begaining of his journey. I will continue to post Steve's progress through out his trip.

Quoted: Call me an asshole but I could lose weight without abandoning my wife and kids for 6 months.

I think you have missed something . It's not about loosing the weight . Try reading the entire journal when you get some time.

Where is Steve?
10/28 - El Reno, Oklahoma


10/24/05 - Cold, Cold, Cold, damn it was cold last night. I was in the unfortunate area between Clinton and Weatherford near the Oklahoma Wind Farm. This area is unfortunate because of that wind farm; you see a requirement of such a farm is wind and lots of it. (http://www.ompa.com/windfarm.htm)

It happened to be my luck that I was running out of daylight right in this area and had to find a place to camp. It was nice all day and I had no reason to think that was going to change but around 10 pm it did.

I had set up camp in a nicely wooded area and that helped with the breaking the wind some but I needed to change my sleeping bag to a cold weather one and to add another layer to the tent. If I didn’t do this then by morning I would be frozen.

I decided to set a campfire to warm me up a bit so I gathered up the needed materials, purposefully cleared away an area of about 7 feet around the fire spot and dug a small containment area. I then looked for my trusty $8.00 camping lighter and guess what. I must have left it with the other gear that I purged back in Elk City. So here I was faced with another dilemma. I went to a lot of trouble to prepare the area suspending comfort temporarily for the future benefit of a fire and then there was no fire. Over a stupid lighter, what kind of a camper am I to forget such an essential thing. Well I was left with only one option and that was to go Boy Scout on the damned thing.

So I looked around for an appropriately split piece of dry wood and a rubbing stick and got started creating some friction. It has been quite some time since I had utilized this particular skill but it was amazing how easy it was to get it going. About 10 minutes and I had the beginnings of a nice camp fire. Also I wasn’t so cold any more because of all of the work getting the damned thing started. Well I must say that I was quite proud of myself and looked around for someone to show my handiwork…..Oh yeah I’m alone.

Well after enjoying the fire for a while and gathering more fuel, which I set within arms reach of the tent so that I could keep the flames going, I settled in for the night. It was a great feeling I must admit and probably one of the best nights that I have had out here yet. Between the seclusion and now warmth of this campsite I slept very nicely indeed.

Then the cold, cold morning came and I was prepared for it. I had assembled all of the things that I would need in the morning and placed them inside my sleeping bag with me to get them warm. It didn’t take long to get the smoldering campfire back up and I had a rather pleasant morning, a little preparation goes a long way. I started on my way to the city of Weatherford but it was bitterly cold now and the wind was going strong. As I passed the actual wind turbines it was so cold that I thought that I might freeze in place while walking but I didn’t and I just kept on walking.

By the time that I made it to Weatherford I had developed a good blister and was very tired. I stopped at this little Mexican restaurant (Called Little Mexico appropriately enough), where I warmed up and relaxed for a while. Then I made my way the last two miles to a hotel where I am now. I checked on the weather and in the area where I was last night the temperature dipped down to 30 degrees. This isn’t as easy as it seems folks. In fact walking sometimes is the easiest part.

This is what I found on Weather.com

“”A FREEZE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 AM CDT MONDAY.  

CLEARING SKIES AND DIMINISHING WINDS WILL ALLOW TEMPERATURES TO FALL TO NEAR OR BELOW FREEZING OVERNIGHT...WITH LOWS BETWEEN 25 AND 30 DEGREES. SUBFREEZING CONDITIONS IN THESE AREAS MAY LAST FOR 4 TO 8 HOURS.

IF YOU HAVE TENDER OUTDOOR PLANTS THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DAMAGED BY THE FREEZING TEMPERATURES. YOU SHOULD PLAN HOW TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE COLDEST AIR SO FAR THIS SEASON.””

What about me? I’m tender! Well not really, some might even say that I am a little too hardboiled.

In either event it is just something that I need to adapt to and that is what I am doing; today I am going to buy a camp heater.

Oh yeah, and a stinkin’ lighter! I wonder if they sell Sherpa’s at Wal-mart?



An additional post today.

“”A little something that I posted on the Yahoo group.””

Only 3 to 5 percent are successful and why I think that is the case.

The 3 or 5 percent that are successful in losing and keeping the weight are not an anomaly they are the determined few. Some of you are talking as thought this number is a rigidly fixed thing and I don't think that it is at all. I think that our success is based on whether we want it enough and are ready to keep working at maintaining it. This is what I mean when I talk about doing something that is sustainable for the rest of you life.

I firmly believe that the radical methods are doomed to fail because, as humans, most are always looking for and are determined to exist in the path of least resistance. This is actually a natural state for people to exist in because if something it continually too hard, too rigid or requires too much effort we will eventually lose interest and return to the natural state. (The path of least resistance.).

So my point is that if you are going to try and completely reinvent yourself then you have to be prepared for one of two things. The first is that you exist in an artificially maintained state which requires constant vigilance and dedication or you have to accept that your new you is eventually going to lose its motivation and return to it former self, the real you.

Or the alternative which is to find a happy medium, a balance in which you can exist with a nominal amount of extra effort and distraction yet still strive to attain steady realizable goals.

We do not live in a perfect world and to try and create a perfect solution is not logical. We need to make ourselves fit into this world and not the other way around. So if we want to make that percentage of successful people a higher number then is seems to me that we might want to try a new approach.

Maybe not trying so hard might be the answer. Work smart not hard!



10/28/05

I have been having some trouble writing a journal entry again and have gone through a couple of drafts but none of them feel right. As you already know I am not one to write a journal entry just for the sake of it. I prefer to write about things that mean something and doing that takes a lot of soul searching and sometimes that is harder than the walking.

I have been concerned lately that I am not learning the things that I need and maybe even wasting my time out here. This causes me to slow down writing the journal because I don’t want to bring people down because I am down. I am doing OK emotionally don’t get me wrong. But I am really starting to see what my weaknesses are and that is not a fun place to be. I am addicted to food, especially sugar, and it is something that is really hard to avoid, especially when you are not trying very hard. I really thought that by this stage of the walk I would have lost more weight, I have lost 73 lbs and that is great but I fear that as soon as I stop walking I will gain it all back. This will definitely be the case if I fail to get the food issues resolved and that is one tall order.

There is a website that claims that food is worse than crack and I am starting to believe it. Food is more readily available and cheap to obtain. There is no fear of arrest for having it and no one will criticize you for indulging yourself, but if abused, then like any addiction it will surely kill you. (http://foodisworse.typepad.com)

There is a discussion going on right now on the Yahoo group about the pros and cons of bariatric surgery and I have stayed out of it while I thought about the subject. A lot of people have tried a lot of things and some have been successful in all of the different methods of weight loss. The surgery however scares me because if you are altering your body to cure an emotionally based problem then you are probably going to be one of those who gain it all back. There is report after report that a large number of people that have had the surgery have regained the weight. I am not surprised about this at all because of my own food addiction that I mentioned earlier. If how I am now is a result of my bad behavior and my apparent willingness to sacrifice my own health, how can I expect a stomach stapling operation to change that? I will find a way to abuse food or possibly abuse something else instead. It is the behavior that needs to be addressed and not the stomach because it is what we put into put bodies that needs controlling and reducing the size of the stomach will not achieve this if you are determined to hold onto the bad behavior. That is where I believe that I am now.

For all of the efforts over the past seven months I still routinely blow it by giving in to my weaknesses. If I can force myself to do this walk then why can’t I force myself to be more responsible with my food choices? If I had the answer to that question I think that I could save myself a few states worth of walking. But that is why I am out here, to discover the answer and hopefully this is part of the process. Free your mind and your ass will follow – George Clinton, I think that those lyrics are really more profound then I ever imagined them to be.

Where is Steve?   11/23 - Claremore, Oklahoma

Oklahoma

11/1/05

Well the last couple of days have been very educational for me.  Kevin Volz from GoLite.com came down from their headquarters in Boulder Colorado to help me switch to lighter, warmer gear.  They have been trying to convince me for months to do this but sometimes I am hard to convince. Case in point, I switched a lot of the gear in Elk City for their stuff and went from about 70lbs to 55lbs.

However, I was reluctant to change out everything mainly because I was thinking about my needs in the wrong way. I was thinking that being prepared meant to have everything that I MIGHT possibly need with me. You know, just in case, but at the last minute switched back to the original “trusty” gear  



They were preaching the exact opposite and I wasn’t biting.  So after several emails back and forth I think that they decided I was being a nimrod and that they needed to show me first hand, that is where Kevin comes into the picture, I guess that he is the nimrod fixer.



We sat and talked about some of the Fastpacking methods and then we starting tossing out gear. I really never thought about redundancies before but after really examining what I had versus what I needed it became apparent that I had way too much junk.



Several items were just replaced for lighter GoLite products, some were left out completely and a couple of things we added and when it was all over the pack went from 55lbs to 16lbs.  I can definitely deal with 16lbs!



So now I am off with a new attitude, new methods and about 40lbs of freedom and with this I hope to get into the stride that I need to complete this walk by the end of the year. I am really enthusiastic and GoLite seems to be committed to helping me to get to the level that I am trying to achieve.



I have to say here that they are not paying me a dime to say any of this and in fact they paid a premium sending Kevin here at the last minute to help me out and then of course the gear it self. I think that says a lot about their commitment to me and I wanted to show my appreciation by making sure to tell you guys about them.



Finally here are the five steps that they go by for lighter backpacking;



Step 1: Don’t bring things that you don’t need.

(Not as simple as you would think because the natural tendency is to think that you need everything.)

Step 2: Replace heavy and overbuilt items.

           (I was amazed at how much this really meant in terms of extra weight)

Step 3: Seek multi-function items and avoid redundancies.

Step 4: Modify you gear to make it lighter and more functional.

Step 5: Refine, Refine, Refine.



Read more at Golite.com



So tomorrow I am back at it again and I am going to take the next seven days to make some of the other changes that I have been working on and I will let you know in a week how it all went.  I am changing several areas of behavior and methodology so it will be interesting to see how it changes things for me.



You know how boring I think that it is to dwell on the mundane day to day details of walking. But for the next seven days I will keep very thorough records of thing like food intake, mileage and the effect or changes that come of the new methods and then post is in sort of a report form on the website.



That ought to keep the type A’s busy for a while!  



11/04/05

I have made it to Chandler, OK.  Yeah Chandler!  This is a good sized city along the turnpike but it seems totally out of place here. It looks like a lot of the small towns near where I was raised in Ohio. It looks very fall here with all of the trees changing color but it doesn’t feel like it, in fact today was easily in the mid 80’s. I have figured out that when I prepare for the cold the temperature goes up. When I shed the warm gear it goes cold.  So I have started buying warm stuff every where I go in an attempt to keep it in the eighties all the way to New York.  Will it work?



I was invited to meet up with some nice folks in Edmond on Wednesday and took them up on the offer. After they got off of work they met me at the local Starbucks, While I was waiting for them I made a few new friends there and of course got some pictures. Why are all of the girls at Starbucks so damned pretty?



Shawn and Karen turned out to be a real nice couple I really enjoyed meeting them.  Karen made a spaghetti dinner which she assured me would not be like prison food and luckily it wasn’t. In fact it was a nice change from the things that I have been eating lately and as it turns out it was also the last real meal before my “seven day experiment”. Oh but I have said too much already, you will have to wait until I am finished before I give the details.



I met quite a few interesting people on the way to Luther, Ok. But the man who runs the round barn in Arcadia was by far the most interesting. He was just waiting for someone to show up so that he could lay his “round barn” jokes on them. Did you know that you can’t have a square dance in a round barn?  Me either!



Along this stretch of Route 66 there is quite a bit of historical sites to check out. I got some good photos and will post them in a day or two when I retrieve the patch cord for my camera.  But there was an especially freaky old gas station where they once made counterfeit ten dollar bills in a hidden back room.  The counterfeiters were eventually caught, the station closed and the building fell until ruins and then mostly forgotten about. That is until they found a dead body in it. I usually avoid dead bodies or their spots for obvious reasons but the sign didn’t mention it until the very end. Thanks!



I made it to Luther at dusk and finally found a spot near a football field that was hosting a peewee football game. Lodgings and entertainment in the same spot is a bonus.  It was warm but very windy and I had some trouble adjusting to sleeping in a bivy instead of a tent but finally managed after an hour or so. It is really dark in rural Oklahoma at night by the way.  Then comes the really weird thing, I woke up at around 11pm and noticed a black spot in the grass about 5 feet away from me.  Being certain that there was no spot there earlier I was a little freaked. I looked at it for a minute trying to figure out whether is was a bag that had blown this way or a portal to the netherworld awaiting me.  Then the damned thing jumped up on all fours and came loping over to me. After un-swallowing my tongue, I had to quickly get back under the bivy cover to avoid being licked to death by an over-sized Labrador with really, really bad breath. It just would not leave me alone so I finally gave it the rest of my beef jerky thinking that it might keep him busy for a minute and maybe put a dent in that breath *Note to self – Invent industrial sized dog tic-tac, make tons, retire to Fiji.



Well the jerky gave me the needed break to readjust the bivy cover and get hidden but the residual dog breath was a bit much so I got out the Speed-stick that I normally used for my feet and rubbed it all over my face. It was the better choice of the two (only kidding, I fear getting athlete’s face!).  Well the mangy dog finally got the idea and just lay down next to me and stayed there for the rest of the night. I know this because every time I rolled over he thought that it meant that it was time to play.  In the morning he was still there and decided that we belonged together so he kept following me.



I must have been a sight standing there on route 66 arguing with this dog trying to get him to stay put.  He followed me for about three miles, almost getting himself run over two or three times.  One person yelled for me to control my animal and I yelled back “He is not my dog!” but it didn’t seem to make an impression on the animal at all. Finally I got desperate; he had a collar on, but no tag. However, he did have the remnants of a rope that he had chewed though in his obvious earlier escape.  So I got out a piece of my rope (again thanks to Kevin from GoLite) and tied his silly-ass to a fence.



I figured it was better than him getting run over and he would eventually chew through it and get free by which time I would be long gone. Oh boy was he was working the room after that, with the sad eyes and the occasional plaintive wail (<Plagiarized from my friend Pablo). But I was strong and also soon out of sight.  Anyone who is traveling route 66 near Luther who happens to see a black dog tied to a fence go ahead and cut him loose please. He is totally harmless, well except for the breath. (11/17 - I have to add here that the animal is fine, I called the cops about an hour later and the went to check on him. All is well and now you don't have to email me with your "dogs are people too" stuff.)



I continued the walking and eventually made it to Chandler and am here nursing a couple of blisters and possibly another black toe.  I have come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with this new pair of shoes because they have been giving me nothing but trouble since I switched into them. I am going to switch to boots as soon as I get to Tulsa but until then I am going to go back to my last pair that I left in the documentary crew vehicle back in Clinton. They will be here tomorrow so I don’t have too long to wait.



Final notes; First of all the birthday that has been referenced a few times on the guestbook and the yahoo group is the Marine Corps birthday on Nov 10th. Secondly, I will be flying back to San Diego on the 12th for my son’s birthday on the 14th he is going to be the big 4.  We are having his party that Sunday and I will be back on the evening of the 15th. Finally, my segment for the Oprah show has been delayed because they are trying to find a more appropriate show theme to fit it in.  They assured me that as soon as they know they will let me know. In turn I will let you know, you know?

11/06/05                    

Like all good deeds there is the person upon whom the credit is bestowed and then there are those who, by virtue of their support, are actually responsible for his success.  I have not mentioned my family lately and there is good reason for that.  But I assure you that they are doing well and very much behind me in this effort. I decided tonight though that maybe while I am protecting them from the nonsense associated with something like this I have inadvertently seemed ungrateful for their sacrifices and continued support. This is not true at all and I would like to say here that without them I would not be doing this and certainly would not have made it through the hardest parts.



It is the thought of them wanting me to succeed and return home that keeps me going. They are my inspiration without whom there is little point in any of this.



REHAB FOR THE FAT-GUY!



I have been doing great for the last few days with the exception of a nasty case of poison “something” that has spread all over my legs. Itches like mad and now I am free-basing Calamine lotion. It should not last much longer so I will just have to deal with it until it subsides.



The other irritant is the nuttiness surrounding the last journal entry, specifically the dog story. I want to make it clear to those who need to be told. I would not leave that dog in a situation where he was in any real danger. I just didn’t want him to get run over trying to follow me as this represented the more immediate threat to the animal and me.  



After I was down the road a while I called the authorities and asked for them to go by and check on him and he was already gone. Apparently he chewed through the rope, imagine that!



So I am completely within my right to say



“NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS OR ANY OTHER JOURNAL ENTRY”



A couple of nuts were cracked though but no one called PETA about that.



Oh yeah! Did I mention that the Luther Police department was inundated with calls by concerned people from all of the country including a representative from PETA? Does this mean that all of the homeless people have been taken care of? Why don’t we have a group called PETP as well? People for the ethical treatment of people!



Now that I have had my rant let me tell you about the other dog story!



The very next day I was walking in Davenport, OK when I was rushed by a big ugly, angry, orange, pit-bullish looking dog. His disposition was remarkably different than the fence dog.  I was considering ropin’ him for a whole different reason.



He was dragging a 20 ft. half inch thick chain behind him. Apparently the animal had broken away from another “animal owner” and made his getaway heading for the highway.  He made a beeline for me and almost got run over doing it, then narrowly missed being snatched back into the street by an SUV driving over the chain he was dragging across the street. (I would like to point out here that at least a dozen people drove by while I was there and not one stopped to help).

Well after a lot of discussion, I convinced the dog with my superior diplomatic skills…..Hold on I need a moment here.    Hehehehehehehehehe. Ok, Well I spoke Dog-speak to him and let him know that I had no dog gravy on me so he was therefore in no immediate danger.



After a brief, but memorable sniffing exchange, I pulled out my unreasonably BIG-ASS KNIFE (Did I mention the knife before?) and I started cutting. No, No, No damn it all, the canvas strap!  Geez people, lighten up.



I cut the maniac dog loose and he ran off without even a growl.  (This is a real story people; I cannot make this stuff up). See the pictures here!



And also…



Documentary Dave is here this week and I actually tricked him into posing for a picture with me and a guy that runs a Route 66 museum here. I have added it in the Route 66 section here!



I also have added content to the Oklahoma pictures page and told no one, smart move, well I am telling you now.



I also visited the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and posted them here.



And finally yes, it is true I am going home to San Diego for my son’s birthday. Marc is going to be four and I have never missed any of his or Melanie’s birthdays and I don’t intend to start now.



Don’t tell him but I am thinking remote control dinosaur!



I am leaving this Saturday and will return the following Monday evening.







11/10/05



Middle way is a Buddhist concept of not living to excess either by over indulgence or by estheticism. But instead finding the middle road, ground, method or way and for our purposes here following a slow and steady development towards change. This is very appropriate to obesity and weightloss. Slow steady development is better than repaid weight loss.  Rapid weight loss is not true weight loss and one side of the Yo-yo effect of dieting.



In this day and age humans are on an instant gratification kick and cannot seem to get their minds around gradual change.  We want things fast and then to double that. There seems to be no end to our desire for instant gratification and it is killing us as much as a famine, a plague or war would do. It is a curse on society and will eventually result in a lot of grief and hardship before we decide as a people to make a change. Like any change in society it starts with a single person and grows from there.



We need to learn the middle way and practice patience with all things if we have any hope of escaping from the negative cyclic nature of our present day crisis.  I was talking with a friend today about socio-political issues and told him about what I think this era of American life really should be labeled.  We spoke about the virtues and evils of both Communism and Capitalism and I told him that we now have transitioned far, far away from both.  We now live in a society of Consumerism.



What I mean by this is that we have created a system in this country that requires us to live beyond our means. To be a consumer is required to support our infrastructure and to try and get away from this behavior is inherently dangerous to our very way of life.  If we all decided to get rid of our credit card debt or to not buy a new (Insert item here) every time the newest version comes out the system would crumble and our way of life with it.



An important thing to realize here is that this is a system of built upon and fueled by dissatisfaction.  We simply cannot be happy with what we have because there is always something better around the corner.  We cannot be happy with who we are because we can easily have it altered, enhanced or installed. We cannot be content with the people that we have become because there is always a better lifestyle, body, husband/wife or whatever right around the corner.  We are divorcing at a disturbing rate and there seems to be no end in sight to the rise in those numbers.  In our self-centeredness we cannot see that this is eating us away from the inside out.



We need then to medicate ourselves against the hollowness and pain with alcohol, drugs, TV, video games, food, work or whatever.  Curing the symptoms becomes all important to us and then that mindset becomes part of the problem, and all these are necessary aspects of consumerism.  We think that we can buy happiness, buy a cure or relief of our problems.



This is something that has lately become crystal clear to me, the solitude of this walk is responsible for that and I am eternally indebted to this journey for that one simple understanding. I have always said that if you want a good indication of how your mental health really is spend an hour in an isolated place with no distractions, just be alone with your thoughts, and be alone with you. Then you we see whether you really like who you are.  Having to face your own inner thoughts is much more difficult than it seems.



I said early on in this trip that after a few days of isolation I really started to realize that I am a pretty boring guy.  I said this in jest but I really did mean it.  I soon learned that without external input to keep me busy I was alone with myself and we had nothing to talk about. I was a stranger in my own head. Luckily on this trip I spent a lot of time there and then started to see that I really wasn’t as boring as I had originally suspected. Instead I found a lot of old me’s that had been long disregarded and were just waiting around to be dealt with.  I found that there really is a lot more to me than I had ever given myself credit for in the past and most importantly I discovered that I am a fully self contained unit capable of dealing with any of the things that required my attention.  I discovered that I came equipped with my very own medicine cabinet full of cures that I had not visited it in a long, long time.



Someone said to me the other day that we are the only animal born without the inherent ability to take care of ourselves, cats, dogs, and rabbits, whatever, are born with an innate sense of what is needed.  Watch a sleeping cat as he wakes up, what is the first thing that he will always do before going anywhere? He will yawn and stretch his legs. Everytime!  Why then do we as the higher species think that we need to buy a book or video to learn this? It seems like the guy was right doesn’t it?  Well he isn’t right. We are born with the same senses but we were cursed with the ability of abstract thought.  We wake up and immediately start thinking about everything else except looking out for ourselves.  We think about schedules, work, TV shows or whatever else.  We are too consumed with life to actually do what is necessary to live that life effectively.  Cats, now they don’t have that curse. Wake up…stretch…where is that rubber ball anyway...I’m hungry….


We on the other had hit the ground running in the morning, this after an insufficient nights sleep usually and then we start the gratification ritual, like clockwork. I need a cigarette! I can’t get started without my coffee! What is for breakfast? Where is my day-planner?  Do I know you!?!



But we forget to watch the sunrise, take a peek at the kids sleeping or stretch out and wake up.  No, we hit the ground running. We need to get to the job to get the money to get the stuff to get happy.  When you really consider this is it is a very sick and unhealthy dynamic. This is why we are unhealthy. We are what we live.



Well I quit! I only have a limited time in this life and I am not going to waste another minute artificially propping up a machine whose very nature requires my absolute devotion and ultimate sacrifice.  I am not going freely give my children as sacrifice at its altar neither.  I am going to live each day as if it were my last because sooner or later it will be. I do not want to look back at my life regretting having freely given it away.



Enough ranting about that! Now for a completely different rant! Sort of.

No food is bad food in appropriate portions.  You can eat what ever you want but is has to be the amount of calories that your body requires and not more. If you add good nutritious food then you are doing even better. But it is not the food that makes you overweight, instead it in the excess food that does it.



Eating the right amounts will give you body what it needs and it will process effectively through your body.  Eating more than you need offsets the natural balance and causes the body to react.  Excess food storage and poor health are side effects that result from overeating and eventually they lead to obesity and a big list of other health problems.



Do not try and modify your lifestyle and diet beyond what you are capable of sustaining. Setting unattainable, unrealistic goals is ridiculous and you are setting yourself up for failure.  You gained the weight with years of slow and steady behavior and you are going to lose the weight by changing those behaviors in the same slow method.

To think that you can make these rapid, drastic changes effective and permanent is to buy into the wealth of bad information about the condition.  Anything to excess is bad! Eating, smoking and drinking are all examples of hazardous excesses and each is requires loss of control. They all have their hold on people and we give them even more of that power when we try these fast, instant gratification cures and continually fail. We then start to believe that we will never succeed and when that happens it becomes guaranteed.

There is no pill or surgery that will take away character weakness, emotional pain, low-self esteem or any of the hundreds of other possible contributing factors to our addictions. We have to realize that these things are what keep us from overcoming them and looking for a fast fix may become just another one to be dealt with.  Our addictions give us pleasure and comfort in the short term. As long as we are determined to have instant gratification the very notion of a long, drawn out, uncomfortable struggle to overcome something is simply out of the question.

Once in a while we might get a running start at something or take a shortcut and see results but unless there is an overall attitude change we are going to slip back into the old behaviors and regain the weight.  We see this all the time but refuse to think that this rule applies to us.  We want to believe that we are the exception and that the shortcut will actually work for us.  We say things like “When I have lost 100 lbs. then I will go to the gym everyday. Then it will be easy.” But we don’t see that if we have not earned the weight-loss then we cannot appreciate its value. If we don’t change the mentality but change the body the mentality will put us right where it put us before. You see we have only addressed the symptom and not its cause.

I am losing weight the proper, permanent way, slow and steady just like if gained it.  Along the way I am learning self control and discipline.  These will help make to weight-loss permanent.  It is easy to lose the weight but difficult to keep it off.  As of 11/08/05 I weigh 332 lbs.

This journey is not a gimmick, it is my life and long after the webpage and all of the interest is gone I still have to live with myself, my accomplishments and my failures.

Late addition:



I have been dealing with Poison Oak or Ivy or Sumac all this week. I finally got to a Doctor and got a shot and some topical medicine and now it is getting better. I only lost the days walking that I actually took to go to the Doctor but this week’s numbers have not been as good as the prior weeks due to the spreading of the Poison whatever. I will make it to Tulsa for the flight home which is all that matters to me this week anyway.

11/11/05



Comment: Does ANYBODY read Steve's journal and say "huh"? What the heck is he talking about? It is like cotton candy.. it takes up space, but has no substance. AND what about the purpose of the walk.. to lose weight. Oops... did he forget to mention that?

I certainly hope that every person who reads the journal says “”"huh"? What the heck is he talking about? “”. I am only a human being and I admittedly have flaws. I am not telling anyone that I have their answers because no one person does. And besides, only the individual knows the truth about themselves and therefore capable of knowing what is needed to bring about happiness in their lives.



I am allowing you to see my life and what my thoughts are.  If from that you get something then great. If you think that “”It is like cotton candy.. it takes up space, but has no substance. “” Then I would strongly suggest that you do not waste anymore of your valuable time pouring over it like an addict on some dope remnants.

Take it or leave it are the only two options and only you control which one you select.  To live by every word I say or to be under the uncontrollable urge of wanting to tear every word apart is the very definition of a mindless follower.  If it is not obvious yet, I will say it here again. I think that too many people are guilty of living their lives looking for others to give them the answers. Some do that with a positive or neutral attitude and some do it trough negative reinforcement.  Either way you still decide for yourself whether you grow from the experience.  I personally think that when something that I write affects someone so deeply, I must have hit close to home.  Maybe that is where the value in my nonsense is for you.



The first paragraph is a comment from one of four regular guestbook cynics. I liked the content so I decided to use it in my journal entry.

I don’t want to reward this person for being an internet troll but I would like to address the content of the message so repeating it is a necessary evil. This particular internet troll has sent hundreds of deprecating emails to people who have visited the website, guestbook and Yahoo group. It seems that he has made it his duty to try and hurt me. I think that a person like him needs a person like me more than I need myself.  Where would he be if he didn’t have a hated protagonist to focus on? He would only have himself and I suspect that he hates himself far more that he hates me.



I decided to make this journal entry to try and give some insight into what it is like to try and do something like this in full public view. Right now I have four people who have set out to annoy and harangue as many site visitors as possible. They do this in a misguided attempt to try and derail me and my efforts. It is important to show this because it is a part of the process for me.  I have always let myself be consumed by what others think or might think and it has crippled me at times. I have learned that regardless of what others think I am the only person in my head. No matter what they impose on me they cannot affect me unless I allow it.



I continue to allow them to take their shots because each one deflected make me stronger and reinforces my resolve to grow from it as much as from the good input.  I cannot control how people think about me but I can control how I feel about it.  I am not trying to make them understand me. Instead I am being true to myself and honest about what I think and letting you decide what that means for you, if anything.



Whether a person likes it or hates it makes no difference to me because it is my perspective regardless.

To be swayed by a desire to be liked by all is the epitome of foolishness and the single biggest soul leaching activity I can think of. It is to be a slave to something that you will never be able to please. Regardless of what I say or do there will always be those that don’t like it and by extension, me.



This is my journey but everyone who peeks in will get something from it whether they try on not.  What they do with it is part of their journey.

Slow down long enough long enough to see the world around you and always consider that when we have our heads buried in our own nonsense it takes an apocalypse to get our attention. When we let it all go, just a smile can have a greater effect.



The singer India Arie said it best:  

   Don’t be offended - this is all my opinion - ain't nothing that I’m saying law.
   This is a true confession - of a life-learned lesson - I was sent here to share with y'all.
   So get in, where you fit in - go on and shine.
   Clear your mind - now's the time
   Put your salt on the shelf
   Go on and love yourself
   'Cause everything is gonna be alright.

11/12/05



This last week has been really hectic.  First off I got a bit of poison oak last week but it stayed contained to a small area on my legs.  Then over the weekend it spread like wild fire and got to a point where it covered more that half of my body.  The itching got so bad that I finally was persuaded by my wife to go to the Doctor’s. Of course when I say persuaded I mean “told to go”.  She said that I wouldn’t be allowed in the house if I didn’t.  That would be sort of funny actually, go home to San Diego and then sleep in the yard.  Well it is a nice yard so it would be a step up for me at this point.



The Doctor gave me a shot of Cortisone and it seemed to help quite a bit. Now it is drying out and itching because it is drying out. But apparently this is better.  Also there is a large patch of it on the back of my left knee and walking caused it to open up a bit, which really hurts. But the upside of that pain is that it makes me forget about the itching. That has to be worth something right?



I have walked as much as I could considering the malady but did not get as far as I wanted, only 60 miles.  But it all worked out well enough and now I am going to go home for the weekend and have a goodtime with my wife and kids. I will back Monday afternoon and back to the walk Tuesday morning, much to the chagrin of a few.



Everything else is going along great and my seven day experiment  has taught me much more than I expected and I am putting that information together tonight and will post it tomorrow. There will not be a post after that until Tuesday night.



I wanted to make sure to mention Chandler, Oklahoma again because they were very kind there and I had a great time meeting a lot of the local. The waitress’ at B’s Café even gave me a card.  That really caught me off guard.  I don’t know why though because they are like that here in Oklahoma.

Finally I have discovered a new way to gauge my emotional development and I would like to share that with my friends. It is the number of times people complain to hotel management that I am singing too loud. I have been asked to shut up twice this week. The last one just about five minutes ago.  Side note: I asked whether I could videotape him giving me “what for” but he refused. Maybe he needs to go on a long walk too!



I really am not trying to be rude in fact I didn’t even realize that I was singing. I am a zealous music fan and have a ton of things that I listen to. I usually wear my iPod head phones because it is quieter. Then I guess that sometimes I get into it too much and start singing or drumming on the table. I am the first one to admit that my singing is terrible. However, with head phones on I don’t have to listen to it. Anyway, the manager says that he knocked on my door but I didn’t answer so he went back to the front desk and called. How embarrassing it that? Especially a big ole white boy singing Parliament’s “One nation under a groove” in a hotel room in rural Oklahoma. No! That’s not weird at all, Steve. It happens here all the time. I just realized that I am singing loudly again. Oops. Oh no! Ohio Players are up next. I better go.

11/16/05

There is only one word that can adequately describe me today.
Discom’doggone’bobulated.

I can't even get this stupid font right!

I have been feeling ill since my return from San Diego and it has only started to subside tonight. Because of it I have really been scatterbrained. Yes more than usual! I apologize for not being able to do a journal entry like promised. I will get it done though don’t you worry.

I had a great time in San Diego, it was really nice to see the family and we did the best to fit the most into our time as we could. Marc’s party was nice and he scored some good booty. He really dug the dinosaur but of course I knew he would because he is my son and I know my boy, if it roars it scores.

Melanie is doing great and going on thirty-five it seems. She is the thinker of the family always working on some issue or theory or something. One time she explained to me quite convincingly that her lungs were too small, then another time she assured me that human free flight (flight without aid of machine or magic) is possible and according to her, she is almost to the point that she can prove it.

Tonight she called me and wanted to know about the limits of space and the time paradox. She is 8 years old people! And she does this on her own. Well it was an interesting conversation and I told her what I knew about the subject. Then like I always do I told her that she has to do the research herself or she will not fully understand it. My biggest goal with Melanie is to guide her to self-reliance and if I achieve nothing else I will be happy to see her able to think for herself. Something that it seems is not as important to people these days.

April was fine and we final had a chance to spend some alone time and we had a lot of things to catch up on. Remember she is still “Not Happy” with me since Groom, Texas. So all in all it was a good weekend for family time and I am glad that I went.

But now back to the walk and the cold weather approaching. I have been preparing for it for several weeks now and feel confident that I am ready. It is going to be back and forth for a week or two between cold and mild but then my luck will give way to winter. Consider how lucky I am that my mere presence in Oklahoma has staved off the winter weather well into November. They should be paying me for that. But alas even my power has its limits.

This is just a howdy-do type of journal entry just to let you know that I made it back, late but I did make it. I will post another journal entry tomorrow that will tell about the specifics of the last few days and should prove interesting. Precaution here: If you are one of those that hate it when I get all philosophical maybe you should go for a smoke or beer or whatever you do to calm down because then journal entry coming up is “all up in your grill with the philosoficating”

11/17/05 (Disclaimer: Disjointed pseudo-philosophical yammering straight ahead)

The last three days have been slow and I am grateful for that. Since I have been back I have been a little homesick and it has been hard to focus, then you throw in more poison oak, the usual distractions and now the cold weather, which arrived while I was in San Diego. Last night the temperature dipped down to the mid-twenties for the first time this season. I was OK because I am in Tulsa now and in cities I don’t camp out much. But in two days I will be out of the city and back to camping. I am better prepared now thanks to GoLite so I am not worrying about too much. Get bundled up before the sun sets, break the wind flow and you can stay warm all night. Also, I have re-introduced my cooking stove into my gear load and it is a pretty good heater in a pinch. So I have been easing back into the walk and have a singular goal now of getting as many miles as possible into each day, get this walk over with and get back to my family.

The last two weeks have been very enlightening for me on several levels; some good, some bad. I did a seven day experiment where I tested my discipline with food and allowed myself to just do what came naturally instead of constantly thinking about what not to eat. I thought that after a while making better food choices would just become a habit but I found that this is not true. During the seven day experiment I allowed myself to do what came naturally and it took only three days to fall back into old habits. I am still working on trying to understand what I need to do to make food a non-issue in my life but I am not there yet.

With regard to the things that I have been dealing with these last two weeks the first thing that is on my mind is stress and how I deal with it. While on the road I have not had to deal with a lot of the things that I would normally. I originally thought that this was an advantage because I have always maintained that it’s the difficulties in everyday live that wear me down. This in turn breaks my resolve and that usually results in binge eating. But I have realized that doing something like this walk has its own unique difficulties and I am finding that regardless of the source, stress is stress.

I have been battling my food addictions all along this journey and some days are better than others, but it is stress that can turn a successful couple of days into lost time with as little as a day of indulgence. Oddly, I do not particularly enjoy food and don’t overeat to treat myself. I subconsciously want to eat to relieve stress and sometimes that desire can lead to almost epic internal conflict that demoralizes me even more than the overeating does.

This loss of control and my inability to force myself to do the right thing is hard to face and again leads to more stress. The whole cyclic dynamic of binge eating is a self perpetuating mechanism that can only be stopped through introspection and understanding of the root causes. But introspection and loss of control are two things that mix like gas and fire in the soul of a troubled person, and this seems to be a paradox of human frailty and the desire for instant gratification.

Of course I am looking for some answers in my own life but I cannot avoid the philosophical implications of my discoveries along the way. This is true for me in every aspect of my life. It is not well enough to know that a thing exists I feel a powerful urge to understand why it exists. Unfortunately, I think that this makes it harder to feel that you have achieved any success because you know that for every bit of growth there is an infinite amount left. In fact the more I learn about myself the more I realize that I have been living in an illusion posing as reality. This may seem grandiose to you but if you really think about what we have to accept to get through our days you will so see that this self-delusion is not that difficult.

We accept things as such even though intellectually we know that those things are not what they appear to be. Overeating is a good example of this. We think of eating as a series of different events during the course of the day. A burger here some chips there, individually they do not amount to much and their impact on the body is minor. We do this day after day and then week after week and eventually we come to the realization that we eat too much, and worse we are now overweight. But why not come to such a simple conclusion in the time that we are doing the overeating. Well I think that the reason is simple. It is because we delude ourselves into segmenting all of the things that go on in our day into individual occurrences. We never get the burger meal because all that food would be too much. Instead we just get the burger and a diet coke because that means that we are watching what we eat and not eating too much; then we do this three or four times a day. We deal with each meal individually but not the entire days food intake.

This is a simple trick that our mind uses to keep us from having to deal with things that are too difficult or cause us debilitating anxiety. So the mind wants to compartmentalize each difficult thing and this individuality makes them seem minor, divide and conquer. This is done in an effort to avoid having to deal with the whole problem at once and too frequently. If we dealt with the serious issues that face us in life whenever they appear we would simply be unable to function.

Bear in mind that none of this is aberrant behavior at all; in fact our whole understanding of our world is based on it. We are the end result of the empirical data that we have processed in our lifetime. But it is the nature and value of that data that forces us to live in an illusion. The five senses that we possess informs us of what is around us, gives us our understanding of the environment in which we exist. This information is vast and overwhelming and every second of everyday the mind is busy prioritizing it all for us to be able to effectively process it.

Let’s think about what is going on in the ten minutes that it takes you to read this journal entry for an example of what we have gone through over that time period. Stop for a minute and examine your environment, think about what you now see, hear, smell, taste and feel. How many of these things were just background things to you 30 seconds ago? How is it that we can read the journal while there are kids in the other room raising hell? Think about all of the sounds that have gone on around you while you are sitting there. There might be thousands of different things going on, individual birds chirping, the clock ticking, cars passing by, music, mouse clicks, it is endless. If you really concentrate on this you will see that the amount of input is astounding. But while you are reading the journal you filter out probably 95 to 99% of the “white noise”. Well that white noise is the world. It continues oblivious to whether you are paying attention to it or not.

If you were to try and process all of the noise that it is your world you would lose your mind. And this is just one sense. What about the others? How many different smells, tastes, sights or touches were processed while you were sitting there, and you were not aware of the majority of them? Your brain examined, processed, prioritized and decided whether to let you know about them or not. “She’s not paying any attention so I will just tuck it away over here.” “Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!” Says little Bociferous (Sorry Jimmy doesn’t amuse me like Bociferous does) “I have been calling you for like an hour or something, you were just ignoring me!”

But you didn’t hear him. That is silly of course you heard him he just was filtered out while you were focused on something else. Does the fact that his words were not “heard” by you mean that for that time he did not exist? This too is silly of course he existed……Well logically anyway. But you chose not to deal with him at that moment because it was simply overwhelming to do so. You selected to ignore him; you compartmentalized that nonsense so that it did not overwhelm you. Is it still to difficult to believe that we create our own self-delusion?

While you were reading this journal and then considering my test you focused on what was important and then ignored the rest. Later on if you were to try and quantify where the afternoon went you will not be able to do it. Even though you were there for every second of your day you will only remember a fraction of it. This is the very definition of delusion (Delude: to mislead the mind or judgment of: DECEIVE, TRICK) and we do it all day long. This is all necessary and usually harmless until we start to think that we are not deluded and then believe that we are in complete control of our mind and subsequently body and soul. This is what I mean when I said early, way earlier, that I have been living in an illusion posing as reality. I have been looking at life incorrectly for forty years now it seems. I have been battling with things all these years in an attempt to get control over my life when all along I have been fighting myself at every turn because intellectually I have not been ready to face the truth of who and what I am. My mind has been feeding me exactly what I needed to get by and no more, now I’m beginning to see that the default mode has been secretly steering this boat from below deck, and of course all along I was thinking that I was in charge, delusion at its best!

Again I am sure that this sounds preposterous and a bit florid in style and a lot of it is that by design but that doesn’t detract from its value. For me its lesson is to realize that everything is transitional and temporary. Nothing about us is permanent this applies especially to personality and emotion and in a backwards sort of way this has given me a better understanding of the Buddhist concept of “interconnectedness” For that one you are going to have to do your own reading.

In closing I want to emphasize that this understanding obviously applies to any behavior that you wish to consider; Smoking, drinking or what ever other compulsion we have that think that we cannot handle well.

Finally something for those of you thinking about emailing me to tell me what knot-head I am because of this journal entry or any other. First remember two very important facts. One is that this writings are solely my opinion and in no way to be misconstrued as universal and second you paid nothing for them, in fact you willing came to the site to read my rants. So as unfortunate as it is, there are a couple of people whose only ambition in life it seems is to sit back and wait for me to write something so they can try and tear it apart.

They jump on it like a Hobo on a hot pocket.

Zen Koan –

One day Chuang-tzu and a friend were walking along a riverbank. "How delightfully the fishes are enjoying themselves in the water!" Chuang-tzu exclaimed.

"You are not a fish," his friend said. "How do you know whether or not the fishes are enjoying themselves?"


"You are not me," Chuang-tzu said. "How do you know that I do not know that the fishes are enjoying themselves?"

11/21/05



The Challenge of Patience



A popular story which Tibetan (Buddhist) teachers are fond of telling their students narrates an encounter between a hermit and a herdsman. The hermit was living alone in the mountains. One day a herdsman happened to pass by his cave. Intrigued the herdsman shouted at the hermit and asked, “What are you doing alone in the middle of nowhere?”

The hermit replied, “I am meditating.”

“What are you meditating on?” asked the herdsman.

“On patience,” said the hermit.

There was a moment of silence. After a while, the herdsman decided to leave. Just as he turned to go, he looked back at the hermit and shouted, “By the way, you go to hell!”

           “What do you mean? You go to hell!" came flying back.

           The herdsman laughed and reminded the hermit that he was supposed to be practicing patience!



This simple story wonderfully illustrates the key challenge for someone who wishes to practice patience: in a situation which would normally give rise to an outburst of anger, how can we maintain spontaneity and yet remain calm in our response? The challenge is not restricted to religious practitioners alone. It is a challenge each of us faces as we try to live our lives with a degree of human dignity and decency. At nearly every turn we are confronted with situations that test the limits of our patience and tolerance….often our prejudices are revealed, our beliefs challenged, and or self image threatened. It is these moments that our inner resources are most called upon. All this…tests our character, revealing how far we have developed our capacity for patience and tolerance.

(From introduction to Healing anger – The Dalai Lama by Geshe Thupten Jinpa)



I just started a new book and right off the bat it had a really great story that I thought parallels my current story.  That story is the one that you have just read.  Along the walk I have encountered really great people, more than I had ever suspected, and while surrounded by these people my attitude about things changed of course, as I thought that it would.  Through these experiences I believed that I became more patient and tolerant. I was able to allow things be as they were, in the absence of strife. This I misunderstood to be clarity but instead it seems that it was just common to being around nice people.



But we cannot always be around nice people in life and this journey has actually attracted some of those challenging people into my world. When through the guestbook or email they attacked, ridiculed or just ranted at me, I reacted.  I admit that I have never suffered fools well and they do bring out the worst in me. I am quick to “put people in their place”.



This has been a problem out here because I allowed it to negatively affect me and in turn my ability to focus on that task at hand.  I resented that I had to deal with them and at first tried to make them go away through website moderating.  However, it then occurred to me that by trying to squelch the offending people I was actually depriving myself of a great opportunity to grow. Through their hatred and spite they were giving me a chance to learn patience.  At first, I could not see that because of my own hostility and failed to grasp the importance of these hurtful people. Like in nature, our bodies learn how to defend against a virus not by putting all of its resources into shutting it out but instead by allowing it to be a part of the system and learning how to protect against it.



The mind needs hurtful angry people to help it learn to deal with them.  The experience of dealing with the negatives of life leads us to understand both the negativity and more importantly what we need to learn to be able to grow from the experience. A fact of life is that no matter how we evolve as a species there will always be a percentage that lags behind and becomes society’s thorn. It seems to me that this is actually by design because without negative people we would not appreciate the positive people.



So I was the struck by the coincidence of finding a book that, practically from the first page turn, told me exactly what I needed to know at that moment. Is there some design behind this? You might have guessed but I generally reject design on principal and prefer to think that we are in the middle of a big scramble of possibilities that we are too insignificant to comprehend other than in the remotest way.  “When the student is ready the teacher will arrive”, or maybe divine providence, can it be one of these? Or can it possibly be as simple as a self generated guidance to things already known; sometime we have heard the answers but reject the source.  Most of the mistakes in my life would not have happened had I listened to the advice of my mother.  But like most of us I had to learn for myself and in doing so pay the price of a lot of wasted time.  But this is part of the learning process, we need to understand why and not just be told why.



Discovering this seems to have lifted and enormous weight off of my shoulders and improved the walk for me exponentially. I feel as though I have turned an important corner that I previously was unaware existed. This corner was preventing me from seeing what was important and that blindness allowed me to convince myself that I was a victim instead of the perpetrator.  I now see that any true change happens through understanding, and understanding happens through a desire to learn and that desire starts with facing the truth about whom or what you are and accepting your responsibility for it.  Now I see clearly that the idea of being told by parents what the right decisions are. It is just the planting of the seed; begetting guidance for a future day that will only come through chance if left to happen on it own or strife when sought out purposefully.



I am a fool and I admit it freely. I have made many mistakes in my life thus far and a few of those repeatedly. But now I see that to think that I am now not a fool would be the biggest mistake yet. I mean to say that I will never have it all figured out and to try and pursue such a fruitless endeavor would waste even more precious time. Instead I will proceed with the understanding that I am just one step in a long and ever expanding series of steps; each of which contributes its portion to the collective human understanding.



I will try and be the best man and father that I can be. I will learn what my path presents and try to affect those around me positively thus creating a positive instead of negative ripple in our collective existence. Having done this I will ensure that I have not wasted a single minute of my life.



Through good and bad experiences I am who I am today and what I choose to do from here will dictate the value of my life. Therefore, I am in fact in control of my destiny as my destiny is the value of my life to those that are affected by it, even if I never know what that affect is.