As of this week, it’s a year since our fateful meeting with our doctor, the one who set us on the road to doing some serious walking.  Going public about what we were attempting was my way of being accountable.  Our grandson, Colt, calls it playing the “step game.”  It’s a game for him.  After all, he routinely does 17,000 steps a day without giving it a second thought.

That’s not true for me.  It takes time and energy and determination.  When I’m going full out, I walk at a rate of 1,000 steps per 10 minutes.  In other words, it’s an hour of walking for sure.  In the beginning, a thousand steps took a lot longer than that, primarily because I had to sit down and rest between laps.   Now I can do an hour and be done.

My yearly step average is 10,343.  My weekly average took a sharp dip last week due to four days of driving back to Seattle from Tucson.  One of those days was a 2,000 step day and another a 5,000.  I walked extra steps over the weekend, but didn’t quite hit the 10,000 average for the week.   My daily mileage for the year is 5.2 miles.  That’s 5.2 miles a day for a year!  That comes to a total of 1898.  That means I could have walked from Seattle, Washington to Bisbee, Arizona.  For the first time in my life, I can feel actual muscles in my legs.

Bill is walking a little less than I do.  He averages about 6,000 steps a day, but his stride is vastly improved from the little old guy cane-assisted shuffle from last year at this time to what it is currently—a real step; a man-sized step.  He still has some back pain, but he walks in spite of the pain, and the pain is much reduced from what it used to be.

We have both dropped sixty pounds and kept it off despite being on a six week book tour.  When we’re home Bill does most of the cooking.  He watches the carbs and calories.  We have banished bread and potatoes from our household.  We no longer have pancakes or waffles.  (Well, maybe, once in a while as a special treat.)  We have learned to eat less.  And when we’re on the road, we’ve learned to make better menu choices.  Last week, on the road, I was really tempted by that “fully loaded baked potato,” but Bill saved me by ordering extra asparagus for both of us.

We are both wearing clothing that hasn’t fit us in more than a decade.  That in itself is pretty amazing.

Three years ago, when we went on our first Silverseas cruise there was an airline delay that kept us standing in line at the airport for the better part of four hours.  While we were on the cruise itself, Bill’s back was so bad that we never left the ship.  We came away from that believing that our cruising days were over.

Not so.  The past year has changed all that.  At the end of May, we’re rewarding ourselves with another Silverseas two-week long adventure.  This time we expect to be walking both on and OFF the ship.

For those of you who have written to say that you’ve been following my lead?  Thank you.  And please, keep me posted on your progress.   It’s wonderful to learn that what we’re doing is helping others.

One of my favorite TV programs is the Red Green Show.  As he says at the end of each show, “Keep your stick on the ice.  We’re all in this together.”