1.5 Million Steps

Ted Kaczynski

At the beginning of the month, I figured that my goal for the month was to get to Helmville, Montana, although it is actually a few miles off of my path, but I walked a little farther than that and am now near Lincoln, Montana, ten miles down the road. When I looked for a picture of Lincoln, Montana for this post, I found out the most famous thing about the place is that the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski lived in a cabin nearby.
 

I used to say that when I retired, I wanted to grow my hair out and try the Unabomber look. Now that I see what he looked like...that's not a good idea.

Lincoln, Montana, like Ovando before it, is not really a town but rather a census-designated place, though with more than a thousand residents. This area is all mountain ranges, and not many people live here. The next actual town I will walk through is still 40 miles away.

Today is day 150 of my trek to Miami, and that means I should have walked 1.5 million steps by now, or 750 miles, and, in fact, I have. I made up 44,000 steps in February, and Thursday I finally caught up to 10,000 per day average since I started. Now I'm a couple of thousand steps ahead.

I want to build up a cushion of about 30.000 steps because there will almost certainly be days when I cannot walk far due to illness, injury, weather, or other activities like vacation. Beyond that, I would not mind if I arrived in Miami a few days early. After all, my goal is to walk across the United States, not necessarily to walk for 700 days, so I may continue to walk a little extra most days. I will let the weather decide: when Arlo and I are comfortable, we'll walk a little more; when it's too cold or windy and rainy, we'll stay closer to 10,000 steps.

If I make it tomorrow, February will be the first month that I walk at least 10,000 steps every day.