Walk This Way . . .

I am a walker. An early morning walker. I used to be a jogger, but when we moved into our neighborhood 21 years ago I joined a group of girls who walked together every morning and began a lifelong journey of walking. My friend, Marie and I are the only die hards left of our original walking group, but we still walk - every morning - at 5:40 AM - unless it's raining. We walk through wind, snow, ice, escaped convicts, Bandido motorcycles gangs, anything but rain.
And this is where I walk.
Every once and a while we have someone who wants to join in our morning walk, and we let them. We are not discriminatory walkers, but invariably they will want to change our course to something more challenging or longer or more scenic - like THAT does any good, it's dark when we walk, but eventually they will drop out and Marie and I go back to our three mile Millcreek parkway walk. It just suits us.


At one time the orthodontist I used to work for offered a comment that made me realize how unique our walking was. He was getting divorced for the second time and was being all introspective and philosophic about it when the subject of my walking came up. Someone asked me how long I had been walking, and when I told them 16 years he said, "Oh, wow. How do you do that? I can't even stay married for 16 years."

But here is a secret - the real reason I walk every morning without fail. When I was in college I had an Institute teacher who told us that his doctor promised him that if he would walk consistently every day, he would never die from a heart attack. Of a whole list of things I don't want to die from, a heart attack is up near the top of the list. So I walk, banking on a promise made to my Institute teacher by a doctor I don't even know. And if I do eventually die from heart failure . . . well, imagine the irony.