WALKING ROUTE 66

Take the Long Way Home

How being stubborn cost me more time.

I didn’t expect that.

Day two came with a couple of unexpected surprises. Well, one was unexpected, to call the other unexpected would be like pulling a 45.

No, not the Colt, the President.

Ignore the intelligence, deny that the problem exists, and go ahead with what you want to do, anyway. BTW, on the day that I completed my walk, he took the oath to F**K the nation; but I am getting ahead of myself.

I woke up with a blister on my right pinky toe. The shoes I had received as a gift were not wide enough. My feet are very wide. I need shoes that come in 4E width. That is four Extras on the width scale.

My cousin Nadir, with whom I was staying, gave me some moleskin patches that comforted a little as I walked.

The second “unexpected” problem turned out to be a pain in the rear.

Some people never learn.

David Freeze had told me that of the eight states that were home to Route 66, Illinois was the only one that absolutely did not permit anything that wasn’t motorized.

Nadir had unsuccessfully tried to convince me to skip the first forty miles or so to avoid both the so-called rough neighborhoods and the Interstate and begin my walk on the west end of town. I am, if nothing else, mule-headed. One of my themes/intentions for the walk was #TrustingGod.

I totally ignored the sage advice, “but tether your camel.”

As I reflect back on it four years later, I realize that I am barely beginning to learn the lesson. I also had an ah-ha! moment about trusting God a couple of months later, but I digress.

I knew there were five and a half miles I had to cover on day 2 that were on Interstate 55 because they literally built the highway on top of the old Route 66.

In my stubbornness, I said I will walk along the service road.

I needed an excuse

When I reached the Township of Lyons, where the old Route 66 disappears on to the Interstate, I went into the Town Hall to confirm that my intelligence reports were in fact true.

They weren’t much help on the issue. However, they were kind enough to use my warm-by-now water to quench the thirst of their office plants and filled up my bottles with icy-cold water from their refrigerator.

When I asked if there was a local newspaper that might be interested in doing a story about my walk, they locked up the Town Hall for a few minutes to come outside and take pictures with me in front of the marquee so it can be included in their weekly Town Bulletin.

Walking along the service road turned out to be impractical. For the most part, it didn’t exist, and where it did, it would add another two hours of walk time to my day.

I ended up taking an alternate route to get back to where the old Route 66 re-emerges on its own and had to listen to “didn’t I tell ya?” in the evening when he picked me up.

Original blog post Day 2

I invite you to tag along if you’re up to it. I am tagging a few friends who I think will be interested. If you are tagged but don’t want to read my stories daily, just let me know in the comments, and I will not tag you moving forward. If you are reading this and aren’t tagged but would like to come along, let me know, so I can tag you.

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As always, thank you for reading and responding.

Here are a couple of stories from earlier days:

Rasheed Hooda is a published author, and a regular contributor and editor for ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium, where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

More about me:

An interview by Dr. M Yildiz for ILLUMINATION

Testimonial by other writers.