Friday, October 26

Today I was up early and off to the airport. I was traveling to Dallas, TX for work. During my travel, it was on my mind on how was I going to walk 10 miles on Saturday. When I spoke to individuals at home about finding a route to walk, they would look at me and say, "You are not walking in Dallas, the hotel must have a treadmill." My goal was to find some place to walk outside, treadmill, boring....

When I arrived in Dallas, I caught a super shuttle to the Hyatt. After dropping off the other two riders, I asked the driver if he knew of a safe route and one about 5 miles long that I could walk. After explaining to him that I needed to walk the 10 miles in training for a marathon, he was more than willing to show me a route on a map and drive part of the route to get mileage.

After arriving at the Hyatt, checking in and getting settled, I decided to check out the area and find a place to have lunch. I took my map and another map that I received from desk services and proceeded to find my way from the hotel and through a tunnel to get to the main street (Houston) in Dallas. In the tunnel, I asked two men, who looked like they knew where they were going, how to get up to the street level. They did not know, but a local woman overheard and said she knew where I wanted to go and she would show me. I decided to ask her if she knew of a good route and showed her the map from the shuttle driver. Her comments to me were, "You are going to walk, take the train." I said, "I did not want to take the train, I needed to walk and find where things were." She kept on insisting on the train, but finally pointed me in the right direction to Houston Street.

I found a restaurant which was tex-mex after a few wrong turns. What a way to get to learn the city. I talked to the waiter and asked his opinion on the route mapped. He said it was a good route and it would be safe as long as it was done in the daylight. Now, I think I am ready for Saturday. I start to plan out the time schedule, since I needed to be ready by noon, when the conference started.