Amy bought us some breakfast and then we set off early for a short 11 mile day of walking. We wanted to get to the north side of Philly and then take a day off. It was hot and muggy. We were pouring in sweat by 8:30 am.
We stopped at a walmart so that I could buy some food for Domino and the employee who collects all the carts came up to us and he told us that he lost his brother to an overdose. Things got real. He couldn’t believe that we were doing this walk. Some other people came to talk to us in the parking lot too. Their reactions were funny. They thought we were insane for walking this far haha.
We kept going and had some pretty rough looking neighborhoods ahead. Definitely not Pinetown, North Carolina. Again, people were awesome though. A group of women who were standing outside on the sidewalk stopped us to see what we were doing. They gave Domino some love, gave us a few bucks, and talked to us very loudly for a few minutes and it was fun. They also helped us out with the route we were gonna be taking ahead. I had some questions and they were able to give us some good info.
We walked a little farther and ran into a couple of guys at a train station. They were both heroin users and wanted to talk to us. We tried to give them hope and inspiration. I could tell they didn’t want to live the way they were living but they are so deep in it that they feel stuck. I showed them compassion and understanding and wished them the best. I hope they will reach out for help sometime soon.
A little farther up we passed a woman who was high on something, it appeared to be crack. She was back and forth about us. First she was friendly then she got defensive. She went back and forth a few times and the then she started freaking out about Domino. She went into a total episode because Domino wasn’t on a leash. Domino is trained very well and won’t leave the left of my heel unless I tell her to. I tried to explain this to the woman but she wasn’t having it. I gave a little attitude back out of instinct. I knew that I shuoldn’t have but I did. She kept screaming “hold your dog! hold your dog!” I snapped and said, “hold your mouth” and then walked away. Some onlookers laughed but I didn’t feel good about myself. I am trained to handle mental health breakdowns and knew that I could have done better. I learned from the experience and we kept walking. The area was pretty bad at this point and the scene that we caused on the corner earned us suspicious looks for another block or so. We were good after that though.
We came up on a few construction workers who were trying to figure out what we were doing. We stopped to talk to them and it was awesome. They were totally into what we were doing and why we were doing it. They gave us cold waters and an orange vest for Stick. We talked for a good 30 minutes. It was refreshing. They had so much compassion for the people suffering with addiction and victims of overdose in general.
We started having a lot of hills and the heat was killing us but we just pushed on. The neighborhood started to get nicer as we walked through a university campus. Then we passed a mall and our hotel was in sight. We checked in and I jumped straight into the pool to cool off. Then we began our downtime from the walk. Total shut down mode. Stick had a concert and I stayed in to just rest and do nothing and think about nothing. It was amazing.
Leave A Comment