My latest host in New Orleans, since Monday afternoon, is Phil Goddard, the British man who walked across America five years ago, and whose on-line “how to” was so helpful to me before I began. Richard Noble, who also happens to be walking across America at the moment (for greater equality and human rights)also recently showed up to town. I don’t what it is about Louisiana that seems to be bringing all of these cross-country walkers together, but if I meet any more before the Mississippi border, I’ll have to see about organizing a convention.
I’d asked Phil if he wanted to team up with me and walk some miles together upon my departure from NOLA, and he quickly agreed. He only had two days easily available to him to do so: the first Tuesday and Wednesday of April. So, Phil, Richard & I all teamed up for a few miles on Tuesday. We walked fifteen miles under the 85-degree sun, through “dangerous” east New Orleans (which was no problem at all), and about a mile are so into the Bayou Savage National Wildlife Refuge. The last half of the day, the mosquitoes grew fiercer and fiercer with us. Luckily, four miles before the end of our day, the scattered structures of NOLA’s eastern edge suddenly revealed blocks of a Vietnamese part of town, and a strip mall with three pharmacies. We immediately went inside for bug spray, and bought a small can to split between the three of us. Though we ended up spraying ourselves up and down, the mosquitoes grew so intense that they found any uncovered square inch of skin to bite. They bit through our shirts. They tried digging through our hair. They’re quite the persistent little pests.

As we were entering the refuge, the magical live oaks’ insidious spring secret was revealed all across the roadside shoulders: stinging caterpillars! I was introduced to these spike-filled caterpillars the hard way, when I leaned up against an oak tree full of them in central NOLA a few days ago. They say hello with a large, painful-as-fire sting. They fall from trees, and walking on the road’s shoulder, under the branches, places anyone at risk. Luckily, we avoided them all as we walked through the asphalt mine field of the almost-butterflies.

When I walk with someone new, I can generally tell how strong they are a few hours into the day. Phil & Richard both were very obviously seasoned veterans. Phil hasn’t been doing any great distance walking in years, but walking with him Tuesday, it was like he was simply picking up a long, stored-away bicycle from years ago– he was obviously very comfortable in this role.
“If I hadn’t met Pam, whom I eventually married, on my walk across America, I don’t know that I would have stopped walking. I really loved it.” Phil explained, and this was so easy to see in his steps.
We’re doing some back-and-forth days this week, days in which all miles are covered, yet Pam shuttles us back to their place in Marigny both nights. Wednesday’s weather has yet to fully reveal itself, and possible thunderstorms may affect our ability to walk (or not). It felt weird returning to NOLA in a car the very day we spent hours walking out on foot, yet Pam’s eggplant parmagiana dinner wiped away any “weirdness” as we all danced in culinary heaven.
Loud storms roared into the night as I lay may bedroll down on Phil & Pam’s wooden dining room floor, very ready to get a great night’s sleep. I’m eager for tomorrow’s treasures to arrive…

New Orleans: Fellow Cross-Country Walkers Phil Goddard and Richard Noble

~ Too Happy Where I’m At ~

Like many of the rest of us, at first I found the news of his past weekend’s record $500+ million jackpot irresistible. Though I never play the lottery or go to casinos, I suddenly felt the need to go gamble. I figured I’d spend $5 on the $500+ million dollar jackpot. There was a convenience store across the street from the New Orleans’ Uptown home where I was staying, and as was the case with many millions of Americans who purchased over a billion tickets, I found myself in line. Standing in line that line though, a stream of thoughts quickly flashed through my mind.
“I feel so fortunate that I didn’t begin this walk as some Silicon Valley multi-millionaire,” are words I’ve told countless people. The reason? If I’d made vast sums of cash within my first fifteen years of adulthood (I began the Walk at age 33), I would perhaps be so glued to the rhythm of blindly increasing the dollar signs, that I may have never even considered embarking on this epic, life-transforming pilgrimage. And even if I had decided on doing the Walk as a big-money man– I certainly would have arranged nice hotel and motel stays for myself all along the way. I would have organized a top-notch, expensive RV to follow me every step of the way– always ensuring a safe place for me to sleep, in addition to only the best possible food– always. Not only would I have taken all of this for granted, it’s also likely that I could be suspicious of anyone offering to help me along the way– wondering: “are they just trying to help me because I’m rich and famous? Are they just looking for a piece of the pie?” Those thoughts and others surely would have poisoned my mind.

Slim Start:
I began the Walk of Inspiration Across America with less than $5,000. I was initially going to be walking for 270 days. Doing the math, I was to be relegated to about $18 daily to cover ALL of my expenses. This adds up to about $550 per month. How many of us live off just $500 a month? Almost none. Complicating things, I typically spend twice as much daily while traveling as I do when living at home. I had no idea how I was going to pull this mission off. Thoughts of all these logistical hurdles were very intimidating to me.
The calling to embark on this walk of inspiration was far too strong a calling for me to ignore, however, and despite not quite knowing how– I knew I just had to move forward. I ran a number of thought scenarios through my mind to determine if I could make it forward. I figured out which questions I most needed to ask myself. They were:
1. Was I ready to spend countless nights on my own, in the middle of nowhere, and always reaching new “nowheres” as the miles progressed? Was I ready to find places in populated areas where I could play “hide and sleep?”
I was never a Boy Scout, I’ve never been an outdoorsman, and I have very little experience camping. I’ve never simply set up camp out in the middle of nowhere, nor do I recall ever camping alone. The idea of venturing out into vast stretches of thousands of miles of unfamiliar territory was intimidating, to say the least. But as strong as the calling for the Walk was, I knew I was going to face a lot of challenges amid the long miles, but I was mentally prepared to face them.
2. What if I ran into foul play on the road?
I couldn’t let this scare me. The calling to do the Walk was important enough to me to risk kidnapping and/or death. The way I settled things in my mind, I never let fear of an auto fatality scare me from driving my car; I didn’t let fear of burglary scare me from going to sleep at night; and though the Walk was something new to me, I wasn’t about to let fear to keep me from answering this calling. Of course, this didn’t mean that all fear vanished instantly–it just meant that I gave myself the upper hand, one that only grew stronger over the miles.
3. What if I my money ran extremely low, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to buy enough food to make it all the way across?
I figured this would be the most threatening of scenarios. Food is expensive, and especially on the road, the price of food was guaranteed to be a hurdle that I wasn’t confident I’d always be able to overcome. A further complication was that I was used to eating higher quality, more expensive food. This became quite the planning challenge, months before I even took my first steps. I was determined to confront the challenge though, and I remembered an image from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, fifteen years earlier:
Inacio, the household handyman for the Pinheiro family, who hosted me for six months while I attended a local private school, comprised part of Brazil’s majority of impoverished workers. Working full time, Inacio earned only $160 per month to support his wife and three daughters. I remember my eyes almost bulging from my head once as I saw Inacio toss a kernel of dry dog food in his mouth. Though household servants typically eat from the same lunch meal that they prepare for the more affluent families that employ them, I was later told that it’s not uncommon for the poor in Brazil to (occasionally) subsist off dog food.
The image of Inacio eating the dog food kernel as if it were no big deal– quite the eye opener at the time for me– will always remain very vivid within my memory. Having grown into something of a “human equality” champion over the years of my adulthood, I definitely hope for everyone in the world to have adequate access to wholesome food. That said, I also understand that some simply will do what they must to survive. And they mustn’t be humiliated for doing so. If severely impoverished humans can survive off dog food, then humans of all economic class levels can conceivably survive off dog food too.
This became the ultimate test for me: is this calling for a Walk of Inspiration Across America so strong, that if it truly came down to it, would I be willing to survive off dog food just to complete it? Wow– that was a big one. It took me a minute to ponder it, but deep inside my gut I’d known the answer all along: Yes. At no point would I hope to have to survive off dog food, but if it came down to having to take such a drastic measure to complete this mission, I would do so. It was truly that important to me.
The dog food test was for me the greatest are-you-ready litmus test for the Walk. Looking back now, thousands of miles into the Walk, I’ll tell anyone that walking across America is 99% mental, and for anyone who may consider such an endeavor, they need to make formulate their own personal litmus tests, to ensure that their minds are ready for the rigorous road as well.

Helping Hands of Angels:
Though I was (and still am) mentally prepared to survive off Kibbles’n’Bits if need be, two months into the Walk, upon walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, I found I had just as much money as I’d begun the Walk with. So many Angels on the path had been helping me all along the way, giving me shelter, food, and other resources to further empower me on my pilgrimage. I never once imagined such a scenario– and I definitely hadn’t planned on this being the case.
I started off not knowing how I was going to make it, but I couldn’t let that stop me. The gut message to move forward was so strong, that I was ready to face the uncertainties, and I’d not only been learning lots every day on the job, I was also being given food and shelter constantly by Angels.

The True Wealth of the Walk:
The Angels whom I’ve been meeting all across the thousands of walking miles have by far been the greatest benefit of the entire experience to me. I feel sooo fortunate that I didn’t have millions of dollars at my disposal to walk across America, for if I had that kind of money from the outset, my experiences would have been nowhere near as rich as they have been. The Angels I’ve been meeting all across the miles are in every way the greatest wealth of the Walk. Being the poor man walking has led the richest possible experiences!

I could definitely stand to lose the $1 or the $5 spent on losing tickets. But at this point in life, I don’t think I could handle the transformation that a winning $500 million ticket would bring. And I wouldn’t want that. Every day I feel so happy to know that I’m living my dream. Challenges are of course constantly present, but life would grow dull and boring without challenges. Every day I feel like I’m living the type of movie I’d be most interested in watching, the book I’d be most interested in reading. (As a result, I’ve been spending very little time with either.)
Suddenly winning the great MegaMillions jackpot would have quickly created far more problems than it could have solved. Yes, I’m confident that I could ultimately put such funds to great use for one and for all, but I’m not ready to deal with any type of lottery circus at this point. Even if I had acquired a winning ticket and quietly locked it away in a bank’s safe deposit box, I’d still be thinking about it all day, every day, all the way to Washington, DC. As I’ve been so fortunate to find myself getting to know and truly appreciate countless locals across these past seven states, the type of enormous distraction delivered by a record-setting lottery jackpot would certainly prevent my heart from being touched so dearly by locals through the next seven states.

As it became very clear that the world’s greatest material windfall could quickly lead to George’s greatest spiritual downfall, I had no choice but to step out of the MegaMillions line…