I’ve made it to Winnipeg. I only have a short five-hour walk to the doorstep of my friend Mark’s place. I’m eating at a Timmy’s that really should be the standard for all other Timmy’s. There is a power outlet with two USB cable ports at every table. This place caters to the traveler. I’m so thankful. The Timmy’s through Northern Ontario lost my business because I couldn’t plug in my phone. The only improvement here would be to leave the ketchup out for customers so that they don’t have to beg for it from busy employees.
What a lovely walk I had through Winnipeg today, although I am now referring to Winnipeg as Windy-peg for the rest of the day. I had a few errands to run, so I had a chance to explore parts of the city by foot. My previous experiences in Winnipeg haven’t been very positive, but today was a great day. I stopped at a store specializing in Apple products. I asked the young man if he liked living in Winnipeg. He said that he had never been anywhere else. “Not even for a vacation?” I asked. “No.”
Today, I was thinking about all the great inventions in the history of our civilization, from the wheel to the iPhone. Wow, it’s crazy how many awesome things were invented. But there is one invention that stands out above all the rest, an invention that, I dare say, could one day save civilization because of its morale-boosting qualities. The inventor of this product should be given a Nobel prize and have his/her image bronzed and placed in every major city in the world.
The product I am referring to, of course, is the chocolate-covered jujube, the greatest invention in the history of mankind.
I walked 80 km yesterday, for few reasons. The first is that I’m staying with my friend Mark tonight and wanted to make sure I had taken care of all my resupply business, with enough time left over to arrive at his place when he got home from work. So, walking 80 kms yesterday left me with only a 29-km walk today.
Second, I wanted to see what walking 80 kms in one day felt like. I had read an article a few years ago about a guy who walked across the United States, averaging 80 km/day. I thought that his accomplishment would be ridiculously difficult and could only be accomplished by well-trained ultra-marathon-type athletes. But it’s not true. Walking across Canada at an 80 km/day pace could be in the realm of possibility for many of us. I think you would need a support vehicle to help with the time wasters, such as setting up and tearing down camp, charging your phone, and finding enough healthy food. But walking 80 km in a day is no harder than walking 60 km in a day. You just don’t have as much time to take breaks before it gets dark. And I feel great this morning, a day later; it’s just a matter of building up to it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this walk, what we think is impossible slowly becomes, not just possible, but the norm.
The third reason I wanted to walk 80 km yesterday is to see if I can pull an 80-km day out of my back pocket any time I needed to. You see, I’ve had an idea I’ve been playing with. Eight days ago, I told Mark I would be at his place today. In order to do that, I had to average 65 kms/day. It was a test I created for myself. Could I sustain a 65-km/day pace for eight days without any ill effects? Well, as we’ve discovered, I can. And here I am today with only a 29-km walk to complete, which means that I can even build up the km over time to create an easy day for myself. The reason this is important to know is because my idea is to walk across Canada now in 100 days. 100 days would mean a tiny bit more than a 60-km/day average. It makes the numbers nice and neat. And it creates a challenging new goal for me within my existing goal.
When I started in Halifax, to suggest that I walk across Canada in 100 days would have been a ridiculous notion. I was worried then about being able to do it in the planned 150 days. But I had much yet to learn about the body’s capacity to handle physical stress and the mind’s ability to get lost in oldies songs for ten hours at a time, not to mention what I learned about Canada’s highways and biting insects.
And here I am in Winnipeg on day 63, close to 3700 kms into the walk. To finish walking from here to Stanley Park in Vancouver, which is about 2,365 kms away, I would need to average about 64 kms/day.
It’s possible. So, I’m going to try it. Canada in 100 days. That’s my new plan.
