We woke up and packed up our tents and gear. We went into the church that was left unlocked for us and took showers and got ready for the day.
The City Council President was going to meet us and we were scheduled to have breakfast with the mayor. We arrived earlier than expected so they did a great job of putting all of this together on the fly.
We walked down to our meeting place, a little breakfast cafe with a great outdoor patio. We sat outside and talked about the opioid crisis and about pedestrian paths. They had that whole mindset that their town wasn’t as bad as other towns so they were mostly interested in the conversation about sidewalks. I tried though.
We took pictures for the paper and then walked back to the church where our stuff was. We packed up and got on the road. We had around 14 miles to my aunt’s house where we knew we would be able to hang out for a while and get some rest.
It was a great walk as far as scenery goes, but everything else was difficult. If there was a sidewalk, it was so beat up from tree roots growing through it that you couldn’t use it. When there wasn’t a sidewalk, there wasn’t much of a shoulder. People were driving too fast and didn’t care at all about getting close to us. New Jersey has the worst drivers so far. Including the police officers. Seriously.
I still was enjoying myself though. Stick had a headache and was struggling. He lost his phone and we went back to go look for it but couldn’t find it. It made his headache worse. He was feeling really bad. I felt horrible but there was nothing that I could do. We just kept walking and tried to finish so he could lay down. It was a very long last few miles.
We came into the city of Westfield where my aunt Traci lives. They had been preparing for us to come so the community knew about us. We kept getting stopped to talk. We needed to do it because this is what it’s all about, but we were also trying to keep moving because of Stick’s condition. We managed it the best we could and pushed and pushed. I hated that he was suffering because it really was a great town with great people to talk to.
We walked through the downtown area and then took some dangerous roads into the neighborhood where my aunt lives where it was safe to walk again.
We got to the house and our support car was there waiting for us. We left all of our stuff at the house and drove back to try to find Stick’s phone. We spent a good hour but found nothing. We drove back and he went to bed and decided to deal with it all tomorrow when the headache was gone.
I hung out with my family. It was awesome. I was really tired myself though so I didn’t last long before going to bed.
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