Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A long walk

Yesterday I sat and thought. That's all I did. I thought about pizza and Aimless and Missy and probably some other things, too.

You may be wondering, "Who's Missy?"

Missy is figuratively and literally the girl of my dreams. That's all you need to know. (I've mentioned her before; long before I ever hit the road.)

Anyway, I've been really bummed out lately. I need to get out of here, and Aimless has become just about pointless, so I've come up with perhaps a new direction for Aimless: I think I'm going to walk from here all the way to New Orleans, in an attempt to raise money to help Katrina victims.

From what I understand, New Orleans is STILL a freaking wasteland, and that's just not right. This is the United States of America. Almost three years after the hurricane, when people go to New Orleans, they expect to see a reasonably fixed-up city, but it's not fixed up. Not even close.

If I do this... Unlike most charitable organizations, every cent I raise will be used to help Katrina victims. I won't keep any of it for myself. And unlike Aimless, I think people might actually get behind something like this.

So what do you think?



Oh yeah, I walked three miles today on a tread mill, carrying my backpack (loaded to about 50 lbs). After a break, I walked another mile without the backpack. Interestingly, I can't comfortably walk any faster without the backpack than I can walk with it; maybe 0.1 MPH faster. (The difference is that I can walk all day without the backpack. With the backpack, I need to rest about half an hour for every hour I walk.) I'm going to get myself in a little better condition before I leave this time (if I ever do actually leave).

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Aimless
Aimless Video Evidence

2 comments:

revolution said...

i think you should hitch to new orleans first. that way you can desbribe its conditions first hand, rather than by conjecture.

Ryan M. Powell said...

Conjecture: good choice of words. As someone who does not just believe everything I'm told, I am inclined to seriously consider your advice. For all I know, New Orleans (and the rest of the Gulf coast) may be coming together just fine. So I realize I may have been totally full of it in this post. (I don't think I'm full of it, but I may be.)

Man, I just want to do something productive. Mostly I want to do what I can do better than almost everyone (which is selling incredible pizza, not Aimlessing). Unfortunately, my only source of "support" has no business sense. So if I can't do what I should be doing but I can do something that'll make the world a little better, I'd like to do that.

Right now I don't know if I'll ever hit the road again because my brain does a freakin' 180 on me just about every day.

Thanks for the feedback, Lew.