Day 18 – 21 miles

We started bright and early and took full advantage of the free hotel breakfast. We got a good start with a friend of Meghan that joined us for the day.

About 2 hours in to the day we passed a woman who was looking at my cart and reading the sides of it so I told her what we were doing. She broke out into tears on the spot. She lost her son almost 3 years ago. Not to a drug overdose but it was related to mental illness.

We talked to her for at least an hour and a half. It was intense. The whole time I kept thinking that my sister was there with her son and helped make the interaction happen. It was special.

Right after that we met up with Tim and Matt from last night and they walked with us for a few hours. A few others joined us as well. They bought us lunch and we exchanged all contact info to keep in touch. Great people doing great things for recovery.

We kept walking and met up with a TAM mom named April. I’ve been talking to her since my last walk and it was a real pleasure to finally meet her. We walked for a while and took some photos then we had to keep going.

Shortly after, we were stopped by an older man in a car who honked and waved and pulled over quickly and came running out of the car. He was telling us that he is in recovery and goes to meetings often. He said that a lot of people in the recovery community know about us and he was excited to tell everyone that he saw us. Wow.

We kept on going, it had been a long day but a beautiful one. We passed some extremely expensive homes and saw lots of luxury cars. We had sidewalks all day so it was pleasant to look around while walking. Unfortunately the sidewalks suddenly came to an end.

We were too far in to backtrack so we kept going. Trying to stay as far to the left as we could but we were literally on the street as cars were passing by. Most of them slowed and gave us space as they passed but a few of them were cutting it close. It was nothing new to me but I still didn’t like it. We tried to move quickly and stayed alert. It took a while but we finally got back to sidewalks and could breathe again.

We ended up doing 21 miles. We loaded up into the support car and drove quietly in exhaustion to our home for the night. A sober living home named Ability Sober House. We are very blessed to be here. A great group of people and we have everything we need. They ordered pizza for us and set us all up with showers and laundry.

We hung out with the group for a while and then turned in. We have another 21 miles to go tomorrow and we have to start early. Another great day in the books!