As I was out walking this morning on what\u2019s purportedly the last dry day before the fall rains descend, I crossed the 28 million-step mark. In the last 7+ years of getting my steps on a daily basis, I\u2019ve walked a total of 13,300 miles or 53.4% of the earth\u2019s circumference. Believe me, no one is more surprised about that than I am. After all, as far as I was concerned, there was nothing at school I dreaded more than PE, and I\u2019m not strong on keeping New Years\u2019 resolutions, either.<\/p>\n
But my determination to \u201cget my steps\u201d is something that stuck, and one of the reasons that happened is due to inspiration given to me by someone I never met and whose name I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
Early on, when I was still struggling to reach 10,000 each day, I\u2019d find myself at 11:30 at night, marching around the kitchen island desperately trying to get the magic number before the clock struck midnight, and I turned into the proverbial pumpkin.<\/p>\n
But it seems as though, whenever I drove through the neighborhood, I\u2019d see a guy out walking. He was tall and thin, and usually wore a bright yellow reflective rain suit. There was no way you could miss seeing him. He walked along with the stiff-legged gait of someone who had maybe dealt with some kind of physical impairment. I called him Stick Man.<\/p>\n
The Bridle Trails area is made up of glacial ridges. They don\u2019t seem like much when you\u2019re driving through them, but walking up and down those steep hills is quite another matter. Yet here was Stick Man, marching on those hilly streets without breaking a sweat or his stride.<\/p>\n
I have no idea how old he was at the time\u2014probably about the same age I am right now, but seeing him out there faithfully walking got to me. If he could do it on up-and-down sidewalks, I sure as hell ought to be able to do it on the flat surfaces of our driveway or pool deck! And seeing him out there walking day after day in all kinds of weather really spoke to me. <\/p>\n
That, of course, was before Covid. I haven\u2019t seen him for several years now. If he\u2019s still walking, he\u2019s no longer doing it out in public, but if someone reading this happens to recognize him or knows Stick Man’s family, I hope they\u2019ll pass along my thanks. He made a huge difference in my life.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t be sitting here with 28,000,000 steps if it weren\u2019t for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was out walking this morning on what\u2019s purportedly the last dry day before the fall rains descend, I crossed the 28 million-step mark. In the last 7+ years of getting my steps on a daily basis, I\u2019ve walked a total of 13,300 miles or 53.4% of the earth\u2019s circumference. Believe me, no one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-P2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3165,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions\/3165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}