It is day 52 of my journey. I am sitting at the California Motel in California, MO awaiting yet another thunderstorm to come through tonight. I spent the last couple of nights in Jefferson City, MO. I spoke with a few people on the phone from back home. It has become completely clear to me that something in me has changed. The way I communicate is different. I no longer feel irrelevant. I feel in control of myself. There are now words to my feelings, and actions for those words. I can express how I feel.I don’t feel like I have to stay guarded by my own self doubt. I can say things I couldn’t say before. I can tell you about what you about what you can’t see. Realizing this feels like a huge weight being lifted off of me. It is amazing to me, not only how I feel now, but how I could have ever felt so trapped. I feel better. Simply put.
My last update was from Cuba, MO which is about 92 miles away from me now. I spent an extra day there to wait out a storm. I went in to the restaurant next to where I was staying. There I met Faith who was my waitress. She was so nice and I was telling her about my trip. She ended up paying my bill. She said she believed in what I was doing. Things like this continue to happen. It is a beautiful thing to see so much kindness in complete strangers. 52 days ago I was sort of jaded with humanity and felt most people are the same. I am overwhelmed with how wrong I was. I just need to listen to people, they continue to surprise me. It feels like so many aspects of life are finaly beginning to uncover themselves in my 24th year. What I see now is beautiful.
I am now walking on the 50 West and will continue to into Kansas City. This is the best road I have walked on so far. A very wide shoulder. The only drawback is the amount of dead animals littering that very shoulder. Many of which don’t even look like they had been hit by a car. There was an Armadillo that looked like it had exploded. All of it’s guts and blood shooting out of it. It seemed like it was mid-explosion and had frozen in time. It was a wild scene.
I got in to Jefferson City two days ago. I stayed with a girl named Tina I had met through Couchsurfing. She was so caring and helpful to me. I ended up staying at her place for two nights. I took a day off from walking and just checked out Missouri’s capitol city. I saw the capitol building which was the nicest I have seen. Surrounded by so much green grass, fountains, and flowers. I stumbled across an indoor ice skating rink. I had never ice skated before so I had to try it. Approaching the ice in my skates I felt fear for the first time since I left home. Cut to me flat on my back on the ice as a 6 year old confidently cruises by me skating backwards. I took a few spills on that ice.
I am about 125 miles away from Kansas City. That is a little short of my half way point. Things open up again from there on out. There will be a lot of open spaces to walk through and I’m sure the heat will begin to set in.
Side Notes
I fell just short of setting the basketball shoot record at a bar in Jefferson City. Very disappointing. I have set 4 basketball shoot arcade records in my lifetime. Very proud of that, but it wasn’t meant to be this time.
I have found through all of this walking my knees sometimes begin to ache. I walk roughly 25 miles a day. Every once in a while I leave my cart behind and jog to go see something or scout out a place to camp. I can walk all day with no issues but I run like a broken down old man. There is also like this weird grunting sound that goes along with it.
I ate 8 chili dogs and a bag of Cheetos in one sitting the other day.