memory log: Wednesday, September 2, 2009

When we left the French Creek Inn, we walked a little bit to a nearby diner (love PA diners) where a few guys sitting outside actually recognized us from the previous day in Oaks. I imagined us developing a sort of local celebrity where people would start tracking the 3 women—one in a bright yellow shirt—who were walking the highways, trails and roads of PA. A local TV station would get on the scent of it and before we knew it, we'd be met by a local crew as we stopped for a bathroom and some OJ at a WaWa or Turkey Hill Minit Mart.

Once we got inside we got a few "you go girls" from the female waitresses. As much as i hate that phrase, it was nice to hear. One thing i didn't expect was how this walk might seem to some women as one of empowerment. The day we had to walk on the US highway, we got a few cars honking at us but most of them were women.

This day of walking was really short—under 7 miles—but it was a lesson in the idiocy of suburban developments. After we got through Phoenixville, which seems to have suffered/benefited from the same gentrification and yuppie-ization of their downtown (artisan soaps, gourmet soups and a ton of irish bars and celtic paraphernalia shops), we entered into heavy suburbia. Sidewalks lasted as far as the new housing development's width, which was usually around 500 yards. Whoever built these places didn't seem to want anyone to venture outside of them. I kept picturing a robot-person walking to the end of these sidewalks and going back and forth walking in place like a kid's toy that's bumped in to a wall. The "houses" were gigantic and the landscape was barren. In between developments was a heavy swath of trees and vegetation that most likely was torn down on its flanking sides to accommodate for the new gargantuan homes. Everything seemed ludicrous and garish: the superfluous amount of windows; the new trees planted to replace the hundreds-year-old trees that were once there; the isolation of the named "neighborhoods"; the lack of encouragement to go anywhere from there but by car. And i thought Phoenix was a car city.

After we managed to not get killed on the side of the road and got to our hotel, there was a lot of icing, hot baths & showers, blister lancing and bandaging. We were starting to look kind of rough. I decided to have an intervention with Tina, who's feet were nearly covered in blisters on every area that came in contact with the ground. She was having to take baby steps and move slowly to not be in terrible pain walking on such raw skin. I suggested she take a cab to the next destination where we would have an additional day of rest to let her feet heal, but i left it up to her. Mostly, i was worried about her feet getting infected and her not being able to do the walk in to Lansdale—which i know she really wanted to do. She decided to take my suggestion, to my HUGE relief. I hadn't actually seen how bad her feet were until the day before last and when i did, couldn't imagine how she managed to keep walking on them. I've seen blisters from running distance, but never that bad.

That night, being in the nicest hotel we'd be in on the whole trip, i slept like the dead.