TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE
This is What Happens When You Trust Yourself and Others
A tale of self-love and life lessons from when I walked from Chicago to L.A. on a whim.
It was just a crazy idea.
I’d always wanted to travel the Historic Route 66, take pictures, and write about it.
When my youngest went off to college, I converted my van into what I call a Mobile Domicile and moved into it. I traveled around the country, visiting all forty-eight contiguous states. I was living a Freedom Lifestyle.
The thought of going up and down Route 66 kept coming back.
When an idea doesn’t leave you alone, trust it. Know that it is your destiny, and there is no way to avoid it.
I started researching Route 66 to gather more information. I wanted to do something unusual.
A crazy idea was born.
I decided I was going to walk from one end to the other.
When an idea doesn’t leave you alone, trust it. Know that it is your destiny and there is no way to avoid it.
I was used to walking two to three hours a day for exercise. I estimated that I was walking 5 to 7 miles every day. If I doubled that, I could cover the distance in about six months.
A few years ago, I had walked for 17 miles in one day, unplanned. I was traveling via Greyhound and had a few hours in between connections. A series of misinformation and my hard-headed nature led to that adventure. But, that is another story in itself.
So, I knew, it was not out of the realm of possibility for me to walk 12 to 15 miles in a day. But, could I do it every day for six months? There was only one way to find out.
How will I pay for it?
As I mentioned, I was already living a nomadic Freedom Lifestyle, which meant that I was able to find work wherever I went.
However, I was traveling by van, and I could move around whichever city I was in to find work. I am a balloon twister, and I can find a restaurant in most cities where I can work a few hours in the evening and make a few bucks. I was living a minimalist lifestyle, so I didn’t have many expenses.
I knew I wouldn’t be traveling to many major cities while walking route 66. Also, unless a restaurant happens to be on my path, and I get a chance to freshen up, I couldn’t rely on that stream of income. It was time to get creative.
Lessons learned along the way.
When I decided to walk Route 66, I knew I was taking chances. I had to learn to trust my higher self to see me through.
My success took me the exact amount of time it took for me to trust myself, to trust my essence, to trust this Presence, this other realm and momentum of ease and goodness you never see on the evening news. ~ Tama Kieves
I said, “God, I am putting my trust in you to help me through this. Surprise me.” And just to be safe, I added, “and make it a delight, please.”
As I traveled from Chicago to Santa Monica on foot, #SurprisedAndDelighted became my theme. Over and over, I found myself in situations that blew me away.
Xenophobia is nothing more than ignorance.
My family and friends warned me against walking down Ogden Avenue on the infamous Southside of Chicago. Ogden Avenue is Historic Route 66. How can I put my trust in my Higher Self and then avoid going down that road?
My first surprise and delight came when an older black lady came up to me, stuck her fingers in beard, and squealed, “Oooh, you’re so cute. You’re like a Summer Santa Claus,” and carried on as if nothing unusual had happened.
Over the next six months, I met more than 2,000 people; only two were less than helpful. When I undertook this journey, several friends expressed concern that I would be walking through areas that are not known for being hospitable to people with brown skin.
When you walk in trust, you exude an energy that shatters the ignorance of xenophobia.
Your Age is a state of mind.
I was 62 years old when I started this journey. Two weeks into it, I met a man who called me just a baby. Bill Gossett was 92 and didn’t show it. He told me he didn’t act it either. While he was still chasing girls, he couldn’t remember why.
He surprised me when he asked me for my email address. A few days later, he emailed to ask me if I’d be interested in being a weekly guest on his Radio Talk Show. At 96, he is still going strong.
Here is a link to the show for August 12, 2020.
I also met Dena Ander in Miami, OK, who was 101 at that time and working at the shoe store her daddy owned, for 85 years. She was a couple of months shy of 105 when she passed away in Feb 2020.
Beauty is everywhere you look.
Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. You can be the beholder if you learn to slow down and look. I saw beauty everywhere and took about 3,000 photos during my epic trip.
There were beautiful people like Bill Gosset and Dena Ander, gorgeous sunrise and sunsets, and flora and fauna all around. I even found beauty in old rundown things.
One particular day in Texas, when I left in the morning, a gentleman in the coffee shop said, “Good luck, there is nothing to see around here.” I remember posting pictures on Facebook that evening with a note that said, Grateful I found some of that nothing.
“Where there is a will, there is a way,” was a lesson I learned from my awesome dad.
Strangers are friends you haven’t met yet.
I can write an entire book about people I met on my journey who have become life long friends, some of whom I only met online; others who saw my posts online and reached out as I passed through their towns, and yet others who saw me walking and reached out to offer a night’s stay or a meal.
I met Cat and Zella in Oklahoma. Cat saw me walking as he came out of Wal-Mart parking lot, and as I stopped to take pictures of a windmill, he rushed home and got his wife, Zella, to meet me at the roadside as I passed by.
I spent the night at their place. I don’t know which was better, the steak dinner or the conversation under the stars. College sweethearts they were. He was 72, she was 71.
A week later, they came to Oklahoma City to pick up my stroller for safekeeping while I went to Houston for my son’s birthday. Then they came back with it when I returned a few days later.
They have moved to Conway, AR, since then, but we are still friends and in touch with each other.
Guardian Angels come as real people.
I am not superstitious, but on Day 13, I was ready to quit. My guardian angel showed up to save the day; and the trip.
I call Dawn Hedgee the Guardian Angel and Godmother of Route 66. She encouraged me to rest for a day and pampered me back to mental and physical health. Taking a day off made all the difference in the world.
Guardian angels were everywhere. Like Lisa Carey, who learned about my walk from a couple of biking friends of hers whom I met in a cafe, and put out a request to all her friends to help me out along the way. I have yet to meet Lisa in person, but we have become close friends.
Then there was John and Kim Ulmann. They were following my journey on Facebook. I had already used up the spare innertube I was carrying when I had another flat in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I posted it on Facebook, as I did about the events of my walk. They reached out, via FB Messenger, to ask the size of the innertube I needed, bought it from Wal-Mart, and drove all the way from Las Vegas to deliver it.
The list is too long.
Your desires are worth pursuing.
I learned a useful meaning of the word desire from Marilyn Jenett. She said desire is de-sire — of the Father.
Your desire is a divine gift. It is a gift to you, and through you to the rest of the world.
“Doing what you want to do is life. And there is no real satisfaction in living if we are compelled to be forever doing something which we do not like to do and can never do what we want to do. And it is certain that you can do what you want to do. The desire to do it is proof that you have within you the power which can do it.” ~ Wallace D. Wattles
I met all sorts of people from 23 to 101, doing what they wanted and finding joy in it. I mentioned a couple of older ones above.
On day 18, I met Jack and Minh, two youngsters from Korea, ages 23 and 24, who had been riding from California and were on the last leg of their trip. When they learned about my silly notion of walking all of Route 66, Minh said, “Our family and friends thought we were crazy for doing this, but, you, sir, are crazy.”
The desire to do it is proof that you have within you the power which can do it.
What is your burning desire that will not leave you alone? Surrender to it, or it will consume you to death.
Conclusion.
Life is meant to be lived fully. When you trust yourself, you are trusting the infinite intelligence of the Universe in creating and endowing you with the power and ability to fulfill your purpose.
We are all unique individuals. As such, there are things that only we can do that no one else can. I know others have walked Route 66, and they did it in a way that only they could.
Whenever we listen to our hearts and choose to trust our inner voice, we are empowering others to do the same. When more people feel empowered to follow their heart’s desire, we will be closer to creating a peaceful world.
An empowered populace is happy, and when people are content, there is less greed and grief.
Imagine That!
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
Here are a couple of similar stories of life lessons:
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)
