Saturday, October 27

It is Saturday morning in Dallas. I wake up and it is still dark at 7:30 a.m. I think to myself, great, I guess I have to start walking on the treadmill. I am not walking in the dark in Dallas by myself. I grab the MP3 player, find a radio station and head to the fitness room. I have checked out the fitness room the day before to see what type of treadmills they have. There are just a few others that are in the fitness room. I claim one of the treadmills, hook up the MP3 player and watch one of the TV screens in front of me at the same time. I have to walk 10 miles today, this is going to be a long time on the treadmill. The treadmill I am on is by a window, so I am able to watch the sun come up. I walk 5 miles on the treadmill and then decide that I am going to try to walk the route that was mapped out for me the day before by the shuttle driver.

I head back to my room, grab my fuel belt, fill the water bottle with Powerade, grab some gum, identification and my cell phone. I was just talking to one of the students at work on Thursday before I left, how I always walk at home with no identification and no cell phone. I always talk to students about not carrying identification on them, but then what do I do the same thing. I decided that being in another state, I better not do that.

The walk outside was great, it was warm,(not as warm as the fitness room). As I am trying to follow the route, I pass the place where JFK was shot, (but did not know it until later) and the "AA" building (sports arena). This is where the route was looking right, I stopped an officer and asked where a street was, his reply was,"They changed the name of that street." You will have to go back to the corner and turn left. I follow his directions, but Dallas is not on a grid, so it is hard to decipher where I was going, not being familiar with the area. The good thing about where the hotel was, it had a rotating restaurant attached, so you could see the ball (restaurant) from a distance. I ended up cutting off part of the route, but found my way to another part of it. At the end, I was a little short of the mileage, so I walked around an area that I was familiar with a few times and was able to get the rest of the mileage in. During the walk, the locals would watch and they could tell I was not from Dallas. ( I just don't know what gave me away, map in my hand and being dressed in shorts and a sleeveless shirt). While I was walking a few of the locals would cheer me on saying, "You are doing good." It was amusing. After this, I decided that the next day I had to walk which was Monday, that it was going to be on the treadmill.