Walking Across (Fill In Your State Name Here)

I am suppose to be walking across Kansas over the next eight weeks. 423 miles. And there is still snow covering most of the state. Thank heavens I am Walking Across Kansas in New York. Oh, and in South Carolina.

Confused? So was I when the captain of my Walk Kansas team told me I was eligible to participate in the Walk Kansas program even though I now reside in New York. Walk Kansas is a program to get people up and out the door walking and exercising first thing in the spring. You form teams of six, come up with a snappy name (what's not snappy about Garden Stompers?), tally your walking time each day and hope everyone's totals get you across Kansas in eight weeks. You should also track your fruit and vegetable servings AND you can earn an extra bonus if you get up and walk around at least one to two minutes every hour. (That last part SOUNDS easy but in reality it's hard considering I've been sitting at my desk for the last three hours catching up on correspondence, paying bills, searching the web, and writing this blog without raising my batukus out of the chair.)

The day the tracking started I was attending a wedding in Charleston, SC. A walk in downtown Charleston got me thirty minutes down the Kansas road. Having a guest here in NYC for Spring Break who wanted to do the walking tour put me further into Kansas than I wanted to be at that point. With a tour of the Natural History Museum, a walk past Strawberry Fields and through Central Park, down Fifth Avenue to Rockefeller Center, further down Fifth Avenue to the New York Public Library, and finally over to Times Square I must have surely walked all the way to Salina (middle of Kansas for those of you who don't want to map it) in just that day.

It's fortunate that I enjoy walking as a form of exercise, it also makes it nice to be in a pedestrian city that makes it impossible NOT to walk. I may not walk past any wheat fields this year but there probably aren't many Kansans that will walk past the Empire State Building either.

Gotta get up and do my 2 minutes of exercise............