ANOTHER DAY

updated January 8th, 2008   This page will morph a bit with time as I add, update and modify various of the useless facts that follow…so take a look now and again to be thoroughly underwhelmed by my world!

so, in about nine months, I walked from La Paz bolivia, up through all of Peru, Ecuador, and all but about 150 miles of Colombia…all told, about 5000 km or 3200 miles, which is like walking across the U.S. and back again into Vermont…and that was with 1 month’s rest in Cusco, and another month in Lima, plus several weeklong rests in other places…all in all I’m pretty pleased with my progress in that time.

When I get back down to the walk, I’m hoping to average over 8000 km a year so that I can reach northern alaska in 2 years or so.

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May 25th, 2006, 8,285 km or 5,148 miles

August 4th, 2006, ]9,200km or 5,700 miles.

August 30th, 2006, 9600km or 5,900 miles

September 24th, 2006 10,025km or 6,200 miles

October 20th, 2006 10,800km or 6,700 miles.

November 5th, 2006 11,200km or 7,000 miles

December 14th, 2006 11,830km or 7,335 miles.

December 30th, 2006 12,427km or 7,775 miles

January 6th, 2008  13,087 or 8,183 miles
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The Distance-o-meter: An exciting layout of the estjmated distance that remains for me to walk. As I finish off each country, I’ll post the actual distances I had to cover.

• Perú: estimated before at: 2100km (1300 miles) Final distance: 3,200km (1984 miles)
• Ecuador: estimated before at: 1000km (620 miles) Final distance: 1,123km (697 miles)
• Colombia: 1400km (868 miles) final distance, 1,590km 985 miles
• Panama: 900km (558 miles)
• Costa Rica: 590km (365 miles)
• Nicaragua: 500km (320 miles)
• Honduras: 600km (372 miles)
• Guatemala: 520km (322 miles)
• Mexico: 3212km (1990 miles)
• United States: 3220km (2000 miles) (along the Pacific Crest Trail)
• Canada/Alaska: 4600km (2852 miles)
• Alternate Canada Finish: 4200km (2600 miles)

total: 16542km (10256 miles) (from Ecuador to Alaska)

at 35km (22 miles) per day it will take 475 days of walking to finish.

at 42km (26 miles) per day it will take 395 days of walking.

at about 1,200 steps per km, I’ve taken more or less 14,912,400 footsteps so far.

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I’ve walked in 6 countries so far:

• Chile
• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Perú
• Ecuador
• Colombia

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I’m on my 9th pair of shoes.

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The brands? Merrell (3 pair), Reebok (3 pair), Columbia, Adidas, Asics…

• the Merrell’s sucked (fell apart quickly and tended to give me heel blisters)
• the first Reeboks rocked, the second pair (different model) sucked.
• the Columbias were freebies from the company, which meant they were sample size… a 1/2 size too small…I’d use ‘em again if they’d give me a free pair.
• The adidas I just retired walked a whopping 2,300km or 1,426 miles, with me, finally dying in Huaraz, Peru
• The awful white reebok tennis shoes I picked up in huaraz peru ended up lasting for an amazing 2900km (1800 miles), all the way to medellin colombia.
• I’m now on a pair of Asics Gels I picked up for 5 bucks while working at REI…we’ll see how long they go…they’ve now got 400 walking miles and about 300 running miles on them.

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here are the people who’ve shared a bit in my walk so far:

1. Cesar: a peruvian artisan who walked a whopping 2km with me near El Chaltén, Argentina before coming to his senses and hopping in the first vehicle that came by.
2. hagai: an isreali dude who walked 6 days with me back in southern patagonian chile.
3. Laura: A wonderful Spanish woman who spent 2 weeks of on again off again walking with me in and around Bariloche, Argentina.
4. Manuela: An incredible Argentinean woman with whom I fell in love during our 2 weeks ambling through the Northern part of the Argentinean province of Neuquen.
5. Scott: My great friend who came down from the States to stroll a few days with me near Mendoza, Argentina.
6. Bryan: A friend who technically didn’t take a step with me, but came down from the states to live it up in Mendoza and Buenos Aires.
7. Catherine: The sweet Canadian who spent 6 days with me walking in Salta and Jujuy argentina.
8. Max: “the knee”, a great english geezer who spent 3 days walking with me to the border of Bolivia and Argentina.
9. Meshach: “the moisturizer”, another brit who spent 2 days suffering through Northern Argentina with me.
10. Nilesh: “Dr. Chafe”, yet another limey who did a 2 day stint slogging through the northern deserts of Argentina with me.
11. Alberto: A dear friend of mine from Barcelona (we did an 800km walk together in spain, once) joined me for about 4 days of walking from Potosí, Bolivia…the altitude was his worst enemy.
12. Marieke: My wonderful Dutch friend recently walked 31 days and 835km with me in the central Andes of Peru.
13. Daniel Garcia: my great colombian friend who came up to walk with me for a couple weeks and film a documentary about my walk and this neck of the woods. He did 265km in 10 days, lost his big toenail, had huge blisters, and even some nagging tendonitis…needless to say he had a great time.
14. Kristin Anson: My friend who’s living in quito working at an international school. She hosted me for 2 weeks and went from a stranger to a great friend in that short time, and I’ll always be thankful for her generosity. She turned a good-bye-let’s-get-a-bagel stroll into a 37km march out of quito and to the town of guallyabamba. And her dog Percy also walked a good 30km of that (the rest of the time he rode in my cart.
15. Lily: This wonderful volunteer with the peace corps walked parts of two days with me in the chota valley in northern peru, tallying up 32km in the process.
16. Kendra Goffredo: A friend of mine from back in my days teaching at LO, kendra is a volunteer with the peace corps. And beyond walking with me for parts of three days in the Chota Valley, she let me crash at her house and also gave me contacts of friends of hers who, without knowing me, offered me lodging and companionship. She’s awesome! She ended up doing about 63km with me.
17. Monica: Yet another member of the peace corps, monica was kind enough to let me crash at her house in Ibarra, peru, and then walked a whopping 42km with me the next day. She is very sweet and was great company.
18. Jordan: And, yes, another peace corps volunteer. Jordan joined me for about 32km from ibarra to very near his work site in the chota valley. His enthusiasm, great questions, and generally positive vibe helped make the long day seem a lot shorter.
19. WHO’S NEXT? WILL IT BE YOU??

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Every day I eat: (in no particular order)

• 1 can of tuna
• 8 pieces of bread
• 250 grams of pasta
• 2 hard-boiled eggs
• 1 liter of “drinkable” yogurt
• 3-6 small packs of cookies
• 1 pack of salted crackers
• a bunch of honey, if available
• brown sugar
• local cheese (as long as it’s not too watery)
• 1 banana, apple, or orange
• about 100 grams of raisins
• 2-7 liters of water
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• 1 potato
• 1 soup, tomato sauce, or other “taste enhancer”
• 1 coca cola or fanta
• sometimes I also throw in rice, lentils, beer, and “normal” food into the regime (especially in towns)

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My favorite song of the moment is ruido by Joaquin Sabina (the live version)

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I’m on an unlucky streak with books right now, I’ve lost the last two I was reading. the first, women in love by D.H. Lawrence I didn’t miss too much, I wasn’t getting into it, but the second, foucalt’s pendulum, by umberto eco, was amazing, and I lost it when I was half way through it. it’s what the davinci code should have been: intellectual, blazing, witty, and tense.

Books read: (starting in august 06)

late august 06: da vinci code. yeah, I finally broke down and read the book…entertaining schlock…but schlock nonetheless…too bad that writing like this ends up on the bestseller lists…

september 06: Don Quixote. (miguel de cervantes) a great read, one of the first true novels, but in 18th century english prose, a bit of a slow go. It’s laugh out loud funny at times. The second part (written years after the first) reads much more quickly and is more action-packed, in my opinion.

October 06: the hanging garden (ian rankin). A great cop thriller read. set in scotland, the obsessed, kind-of-loser hero is like a brainy james bond with a belly.

October 06: the negotiator (fredrick forsythe). From the guy who wrote day of the jackal…this is one of those thrill-a-minute spy jobbies that makes for a great read until the end, which goes from improbable to way, way improbable. all in all, not bad…I wonder if they’ve already made this into a movie, it felt like a hollywood action film.

October 06: pleading guilty (scott turow). A good courtroom/detective thriller…the hero is actually a loser with questionable morals, and I like how turow didn’t settle for your typical milk and honey ending…keeping his character consistent to the end.

November 06: hocus pocus (kurt vonnegut). awesome satire of a world-gone-loco. the hero is just a great, thoughtful, funny, melancholy character, and the absurdity of some of the situations mocks the absurdity of our current government and multinational businesses.

November 06: the great santini (pat conroy). I’d read a few of his other books before and liked his ability to flesh out a landscape and the feel of a region. This book, after checking out pat’s past, is pretty damned autobiographical, and he succeeds in making you feel like the kid in the book, loving and hating the father without being able to help either feeling from surging forth.

November 06: plainsong (kent haruf) his book pours slow like molasses. a few passages are out of this world and the book in general is great, with a nice message toward our human need to connect with others and how that, in the end, is the best road toward happiness.

November 06: a million little pieces (james frey). when I started out this book, every time I put it down I felt like I was a drug addict or going through recovery…it was intense. But then my friend, kristin casually mentioned that some of the book’s veracity was being called into question. I kept reading, but now looking for stuff that was too farfetched for even a fucked up druggie’s world…and lo and behold the book is full of far-fetchedness. I went online to smokinggun.com and yep, tons and tons of the book are either wildly exaggerated or totally false…that little rat bastard passing this off as a memoir…do what kerouac did and make it into a fictionalized autobiography, it’ll still be a good read and I won’t feel duped.

November 06: the world according to garp (john irving). What a great imagination irving has. And his characters are always somehow so real despite the usually absurd circumstances in which they become involved. I’ve read a bunch of his stuff, but hadn’t yet red Garp…it was great.

January 07: Harry Potter (II, III, IV, V, and VI) (j.k. rowling) I read them to keep up with my nieces who are listening to the stories every night before bed. They’re entertaining in a bubble gum sort of way, and honestly, they’re like the homeless man’s version of Lord of the Rings, and can’t even begin to compare from a literary and mythological perspective with those great books by tolkien, but what the hell, they’re getting people to read.

January 07: Buffalo for the Broken Heart This is a book about how a cattle rancher in South Dakota almost accidently began to run Buffalo instead and how that process made him realize how much better it is to do so, ecologically, financially, and spiritually…actually a pretty moving read.

February 07: A Tale of Love and Darkness (Amos Oz) the memoirs of one of Israel’s best known authors. The dude has an encyclopedic recall of even the most mundane minutiae of his childhood and while growing up he seemed to be near the center of the literati and also many of the political bigwigs of the country. It was an interesting look at those first couple decades of the state of Israel, but a bit too thick with detail, as if the guy were drawing a blueprint of his past.

March 07: What is What (Eggers) this is an autobiographical account of a sudanese man, one of the “lost boys” generation who has made it to the States, but still faces a shitty present, and the demons of a shittier past. Eggers tries to capture the rhythm and structure of the man’s speaking style, but I wasn’t convinced, or perhaps just didn’t like it, although the anecdotes about what the guy went and continues to go through makes me wonder how we’ve even friggin’ made it this far as a species without a total implosion.

March 07: A Year of Magical Thinking (joan didion) a pretty fascinating account of how joan deals with the sudden (but let’s face it, not all that unexpected, death of her husband) and the illness of her daughter. What really struck me during the book, almost more than her ponderings of the human mechanism of grieving, was how strange her world seems to me…a world of constant quoting of famous books and people, of name dropping, of privilaged access to powerful people, and of the obsessive quality that drives so many writers…that was almost the most fascinating part of the book.

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BOOKS/AUTHORS I WOULD LIKE TO READ: (feel free to fire off to me any book titles or authors that you think I couldn’t live without)

• ghost soldiers
• killer angels
• the yearling
• into the heart of borneo
• cormac mcarthy
• tim winton

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My cart is now organized into 3 containers:

• in the transformed igloo cooler: sleeping bag, thermarest, pants, and hat, “civilian clothes”, cds, clean socks.
• in the upper container: tent, groundcloth, book, “food bag”., pots, stove, coffee cup, camera, map, and other “necessities”.
• little backpack: repair kit, extra tubes, fleece top, poncho, snacks, etc.

stay tuned for other useless facts…

later