Walking around the bend of a highway where the road was terribly
rough. And I was wearing sandals because it was so rough. Just about
to cross, I couldn’t even see the path where I was headed. And is I
was like, I need to, I see the berm of a river. And I need to go over
that hill. But I come in around this corner, I can’t see if there is
actually a path there to go from this level around the left up to the
bridge that’s crossing the river.
So I might have to go away back or I might have to I’m not going to go
way back. Let me tell you that. But I might have to like drag or pick
up my bag and carry it up this hill. And so just approaching and
approaching and finally at the last minute, it’s like okay, there’s a
path cool. And getting legs stepping up the path toward the toward the
bridge that was there. over the river. Walking, walking, walking, just
looking at my feet and my Oh, so tired. Hello. Hello snake. You’re
beautiful.
Wow. It’s like Oh, hi snake. beautiful green rat snake. I didn’t know
as a rat snake until after I posted a picture up on Reddit. But the
answer quick and answer quickly came back. No, that’s a Japanese rat
snake is a beautiful species but a beautiful specimen. I was able the
rat snake was she was so chill. I was able to put François down in
front of him take a picture. Pick François up start a video and then
the snake was like I guess I guess we’re done here snake sorta snake
and on by.
And I like I wanted to pick it up. And thought it would be
more polite to just let it go on its way. And someone said on Reddit
and to say just say pardon me when you pick it up. And I kind of sort
of think that that’s right. I mean, if it’s an actual in my heart to
excuse me, I would like to pick you up. I wonder if it’s okay, but I
just had this, you know, kind of reverence for this animal.
And projecting today that it saw me as a giant animal. It was a big
snake but I’m a lot bigger than that. And on Reddit, the guy was
guessing is two meters long. I guessed it was 130 centimeters
long. But yeah, it’s big snake looks pretty cool. In decent size.
So yeah, they’re just there was a cool snake and oh, and then my
friend Missy texted me right after that. She’s like, Oh, I just had an
amazing experience. And she was telling me about her experience. And
so we decided that the snake was a messenger letting me know to
contact her because she had just had a had an amazing experience. So
that was neat. I put him on YouTube. I called it Missy’s green snake.
It’s now nearly 4am Thursday 6 May 2021 (according to my computer). To my feet and legs, it’s early on Walkday. My brain knows it is now Day 21, but this entry is about Day 20:
I did not take many pictures on Day 20, compared to other days. Photographs seem to happen more in the morning, but as I get tireder and tireder from walking, the pictures taper off as I’m like bah, who cares about seeing more flowers that are not really differentiatable from other pics I have taken.
Day 20 things:
saw a two car train and tried to take a video but realized later I apparently did not hit record until after the train went by.
saw species of little yellow flowers that I had not seen before
talked to Brian in Corpus for about an hour while sharing stories of mapping. Very fun talking with him as we have similar senses of humor.
“everything was going fine until I talked to those guys in Corpus”
“here’s your diploma!” after walking through flowerbed on campus
almost recorded Joetsu Line shinkansen, albiet far away
Surprised to see Doge is up to 77 yen, and has gone up 11000% just in 2021.
I was attracted by the restroom sign icon and then realized the shop sells my favorite pudding, so I am Chilling at a dairy shop with 3km left to walk today..
I’m feeling quite sad this morning, possibly because the walk is coming to an end, combined with that I haven’t done a lot of the things that I thought I would do, for example interviews with locals using my audio recorder, or make updates on all the different platforms that I had planned to update, including the crowdfunding campaign site.
Oh, and I haven’t finished all the letters that I told people I would write.
And and there have been some contributions on the crowdfunding site where people have asked for letters or postcards but I can’t figure out how to download them to get those addresses so I’m not sure what to do there.
I was able to figure it out before but my tired brain just couldn’t do it this morning and then I forgot about it before I packed up my computer.
Also sad that my computer seems to have rejected the battery starting over a week ago. Well the computer reports the battery is at 100% it immediately shuts off immediately when I unplug the power adapter.
Fortunately, the computer itself has been working fine when it’s plugged in and I’ve used it to great success in keeping my website pretty much up to date.
The walk today is 15 km so significantly shorter than yesterday, no I’m starting 2 hours later than I did yesterday.
I have a call with my friend in Texas and 45 minutes and then session with a client tonight. It’s wonderful to be able to work while I’m traveling.
On my way to the hotel for tonight I walked right by a pizza place but it turned out to be closed.
I searched the area for other pizza places and found one that was kind of near my hotel but the wrong side of the street by like half a kilometer so I was like nah. I ain’t walking way over there just for pizza.
So I bought some of my staple food for this journey and a convenience store and put it into my jacket pockets for consumption at the hotel.
Walking across 信濃川 (Shinano-gawa), I spent some time talking to a sweet old man who spent time telling me about the area and answering questions I had about the landscaping of the river and some of the local shrines.
He gave me two cards from the local shrine, offering one of the two and then offering both after I told him about my anti-suicide campaign of this walk.
After he left, I followed my map to the hotel but couldn’t find it. I walked around to where it seemed to be on the map and suddenly there was a pizza place.
Wow! Why wasn’t this shown on the map before?
I looked down and somehow had fat fingered the map to get myself to the pizza place from before instead of to my hotel.
But a large pizza of which I’ll eat half and save the rest for tomorrow.
いただきます!
Day 19 was
Day Nineteen
(Tuesday May 4th *)
1 part:
Walk 19km,
From Sudaya Inn
To Ojiya Park Hotel
(297km walked so far) nearly 75% complete!
I’ve made it halfway and my feet have slight injuries like skin worn through and starting to bleed on my left foot. I should probably put on my sandals.