WALKING ROUTE 66
When You Are Happy Sleeping Under The stars
Sometimes you just get lucky.
Remember Bill Gossett? The 92-year-old gentleman who called me a baby?
Well, he had emailed me, and we were in communication with each other for a while, and today was the D-day.
Bill Gossett and Judy Bugsby have a weekly show called Viewpoint on WLCN-FM 96.3, a radio station in Lincoln, Illinois. Bill had asked me to be his weekly guest for 15 minutes to talk about my trip. I don’t recall much of the conversation from that day, but it was an introduction to his audience about my journey.
We did that every week for the rest of my journey. The producer would call me around 8:15, and then we would talk. They were following me on my blog, so Bill would ask questions based on what was happening that he felt would interest his audience.
I had breakfast at Burger King and waited for the call. Afterward, I headed west. It was an overcast day, which meant I wasn’t sweating much. All the coffee I drank while waiting for the call from the radio station, and the water I had been drinking while walking meant I’d have to find another way to rid of all the liquid.
Not seeing any buildings nearby, I went off on a side road up to a “no trespassing” sign to answer Nature’s call. When I got back to the highway, a car was waiting to turn on to the side road. The older man rolled down his window and said he only charges one dollar for it and drove away.
When I got to Doolittle, I had to decide between walking four miles on the Interstate where the old Route 66 was, or take a 13 miles detour to pick it up on the other side. The Interstate was a no-brainer.
I planned on spending the night in Jerome, but it looked like there was not much there, based on GoogleMaps, and I would have to walk the extra mile to check it out. I opted to walk further up to Powellville.
Powellville is no more. All I found was some abandoned concrete that used to be roads. Well, nothing like sleeping under the open skies. I got as far away from the Interstate as I could and spread out my sleeping bag next to the stroller.
As I think back and ponder.
Life will challenge you to see what you’re made of, and then reward you for your courage to face it with innovation and fearless abandon. Like when I had to pee on the side of the road, I was rewarded with laughter.
And when I found a ghost town while avoiding wanting to walk into a town that was not very promising, I was rewarded with a canopy of stars to sleep under. It’s all in perspective.
The whole idea of walking 2,500+ miles was to challenge the societal perspective of how you should live, and the reward were so many rich experiences that, to paraphrase John Denver, I’d be a poor man if I’d never walked the Mother Road.
Day 36: A New Adventure (Original blog post)
Just for fun.
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 included in the list below, but you’d like to come along, let me know so that I can tag you.
Michele Amy Trista Henery Timothy Tim P.G. Sherry Saloni Indra B. A. Linda Sharon Tree Linda Britni Desiree Elisabeth Simona Kristin Helen Julia Chris Rosennab Tom Truenorth Agnes Aurora LauraRaduenz Catherine Joe Stuart Gurpreet BFoundAPen Margie Bob NaNa’sworld Wolfie
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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. (Buy him a coffee)