4 April

 

My Dearest Soulmate:

 

I fell asleep imagining what it will be like when me find each other, again.  When our eyes meet, the memories of all our pasts will swirl around us; your fingers will melt into my hand as if they had never left, and your eyes will tell of our good days spent — your mind at peace with all living things.

 

As I said in my last letter, I am back in the Springs now.  I was on crutches for six weeks due to my foot.  And even now, if I step wrong, I can feel it has not healed completely.  I am told it takes a long time for stress fractures to heal.  

 

I must get into the Arctic in the fall, before the land goes dark 24 hours a day.  My injury has caused me to lose so much time that I would miss much of the land I wanted to see, if I were to pick up in a place that would allow me to get into Alaska on time. 

 

Therefore, I have decided to wait until December to continue from where I left off.  I now have the summer to let my foot finish healing, and to rebuild my financial resources to finish the journey.

 

Do you know what I was doing, crossing that mountain in Arizona?  I was searching for you.  That was the only thing on my mind.  But, I am getting ahead of myself.  So that you will understand, I must digress several months; to October 2^nd. 

 

When I left Key West that day, it was raining solid.  Even so, my pack melted into me as if I had been carrying it for years.  And I guess, on some level, I had — I had dreamt of that day for so long.

 

The only thing that was different than my dreams was the amount of attention I was receiving from passers-by, which had been generated by a Key West newspaper article.  In my imaginings, I had left the island quietly, with no fanfare.

 

Isn’t it a cliché that hindsight is always 20/20?  Well, looking back from where I am now, I can see that this project was never meant to be commercial.  In January of 1997, when I first started to seriously plan this adventure, I wrote to almost every equipment manufacturer for single piece donations in exchange for product PR I would generate by writing articles as I went.  My logic, based on many years in marketing, and case studies showing the value of editorial product coverage, (editorial coverage is 70% more effective than display ads) told me that a manufacturer should be very happy to get its product reviewed in leading publications in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of gear.  I received less than enthusiastic responses to all but two of my requests.  The last two offered me “expedition discounts” which amounted to 30 percent off their retail prices.  I was grateful, but 30 percent wasn’t much off of standard retail.  This really didn’t irritate me as much as it perplexed me. 

 

A similar thing happened once I started walking.  One would think that a person planning to walk over 7,000 miles, from America’s southern-most point, to her northern-most point, would generate some interest in the media.  Press releases and media kits were sent to every major network and newspaper in New York, Miami and throughout the Keys.  Only two Keys papers did stories.  The Miami Herald finally called two weeks after I had passed the city.  (I will say that there was great coverage in Colorado Springs before I left and a radio and TV station had me calling in from the road.)

 

The day that I left, several Miami TV stations had told us that they were going to be there for the start.  Not one showed up, which prompted my brother to quip, “You should have told them that you were going to SHOOT your dog at the Southern Most Point at 8 am, instead of start walking to Alaska.  I bet they would have showed up, then!”  I chuckled and remembered a similar comment my dad had made about 28 years before that.  We had an acrobatic health and fitness show that we performed in schools across the country for six years.  One of the principals thought what we did would make a good story for the local newspaper.  The paper thought otherwise, and I overheard my dad say to the reporter, “I bet you’ll do a story if I get one of my boys to throw a brick through one of your department store windows.”

 

For years, I have carried similar sentiments about the media — as I am sure you may have — and I spent years writing for them!  They certainly are a fickle bunch, eh? 

 

But that day, when I walked out of Key West in the rain, I wasn’t really upset over so little coverage.  I suppose once in a while, when I really dwelled on it, it bothered me, since I believed in what we were trying to do.  And the educational opportunities it offered students, whose teachers that might have seen or read the coverage, was pretty extensive. But, it is now common knowledge, and a sad picture of our society, that the only way to sell papers or boost ratings is to report about somebody having a bad day.  I constantly hear people complaining about it, yet they support it by watching it.  Excuse me? 

 

Which brings to mind the numerous comments I heard regarding my coverage in the Key West Citizen.  They did a great article, and I was on the front page along with a story about an elderly fellow who had driven away from his home in Palm Beach to “go get gas,” and wound up 200 miles later, asking directions to get home, at a fire station in Key West.  Folks told me that that was the first positive coverage they had seen on the front page in, well, most of them couldn’t remember.  And they were really surprised to see TWO “happy ending” stories at the same time!

 

Truth be told, had there been more coverage, it would have had an undetermined, “interesting” to say the least, effect on my leaving Key West.  You see, for some reason, when Klondike and I got in the car to drive down to Florida, she decided to assert her Alpha dog status, as huskies are known to do.  This resulted in a pissing match — literally!  I discovered this my first night when I flopped, exhausted, into my tiny motel room bed . . . and landed on “the wet spot.”  Actually, it wasn’t so much landed as squished!    

 

It happened again, the next night in Dallas, as I was trying to call my friend, Debbie, in Mississippi.  I sat down on “the spot” just as she answered her phone.  As children might read this, I can’t elaborate on what Debbie heard, but her response went something like, “SAME TO YOU, PAL!” right before she hung up.  It cost me over $5.00 in pre-paid calling card connection fees to get her back on the phone because she would let the phone ring once or twice, then pick it up and slam it back down — at a buck thirty a connection!

 

Actually, I made that last part up — it was just fun to write.  Debbie didn’t hang up on me, but she did say, “GROSS!” when I told her what I had sat in.

 

This happened my first night in Key West, too.  (Thank goodness, my partners were real sports, and they ran the bed spread off to the cleaners before housekeeping arrived the next morning!)  It was then that I finally figured out that K was just “marking” her territory.  So I would let her get up on the bed, FIRST, lay down, then I would crawl into bed with her, give her a big hug and some furry kisses (she was always a sucker for luvin’  — like someone else I know, eh?), then I would gently move her out of bed.  No worries.  Problem solved.

 

Now, I had to tell you that story, so I can tell you this one. 

 

All this fussing around with K, on top of running out of time in Colorado Springs, left me with no time to figure out how to organize my pack.  In case you are wondering, this was not a good thing.  Huey tried the first night, Saturday, as I handed him assorted items, and I soon found out that packing for other expeditions I had been on was a little different than this one.  In those cases I didn’t have to carry my whole house on my back.

 

We finally went to bed about 3 am with the first version ready to “test” in the morning.  Our test (or was it my test, since I carried the blasted thing for eight miles?!) proved that no matter how valiant his effort, it didn’t work.  I tried Sunday night till about 4 am with the same results.  Back up at 6 am for the 8 am launch.  The fact remained that my pack wasn’t “packed” the way I needed it to be packed before packin’ out of Key West.  So, we quietly discussed how we might avoid looking like total disorganized fools in front of the national media.  Although we knew there was a good chance it wouldn’t work, our only option seemed to be for me to head down a side street for a while, then, when nobody was looking, one of them would pick me up and take me back to my room to repack.  Then, they would “put me back” a few blocks down the road, on a different side street, like nothing happened.  Of course, I also stood the chance of looking like I got lost on my way off of the island.  And considering that there is only one way out, even the slowest of reporters might wonder how I was going to navigate my way to Alaska.  I thought about the potential headlines: “Alaska Bound Man Gets Lost Three Blocks Into Trek!”  Or worse yet, “Would Somebody Please Show This Poor Sod the Way Out of Town!”

 

No, wait!  It gets better!

 

As I said, no media showed up, so we got a reprieve.  This was good because (clearing throat), as I was making my final packing attempt, my brother opened the door to my room, and Klondike decided she was tired of being a Siberian husky cooped up in a tiny motel room for days.  Now, Richard looks like a linebacker, and I have an inch on him, so you can imagine what it looked like with me cursing at the top of my lungs, as I tried to get past him to grab Klondike’s tail, which was disappearing rapidly.  Meanwhile, with a scene better suited for the XFL playing behind her, she darted off on her own adventure of discovery, sans Robert Lewis Knecht!   This largely consisted of running across coral parking lots, through puddles, and chasing chickens in front of cars — I didn’t realize how many loose chickens there were in Key West.  After my brother an I untangled ourselves, I huffed and puffed after her, trying to run on the blisters I had gotten the day before! 

 

I swear, I am not making this up!