Letter to Rachel's Challenge.

I'm eagerly awaiting a response to this.

Dear RC,

I am a teacher at MCMS in Moorehead City, North Carolina.  You fine folks came to see us a few months ago.

For the last few years I have been tossing around the idea of a "pilgrimage" to one place or another.  I never knew where I would go, I just knew that I would head West.  I always planned to take my "pilgrimage" in the fashion of a "knight errant."  Knight errants were men who would travel about seeking out challenges, adventuring, righting wrongs, and doing good deeds.  Knight errants would also typically invoke the name of a lady before they committed a deed of daring do.

Experiencing Rachel's Challenge helped solidify a few things for me.  First of which was a destination.  I would like my long walk to take me to Rachel's hometown in Colorado.  Secondly, in keeping with the style of the knight errant I would like my good deeds to be done in Rachel's name.

Basically I am asking for your permission to use Rachel's name and make her hometown my destination. I understand that the idea of a man hiking about the American countryside like a modern day Don Quixote may seem very much out of the ordinary, and that you may hesitate to acquiesce.  I look forward to hearing a response from you and perhaps discussing my long walk with you further.

Thank you for your time,

Rodney Woods

Life is in the details.

So I've been doing some thinking about my walk and I've come up with some concerns.

Here's some examples:

1. How am I going to do it?
2. Is Columbine/Littleton too far?
3. What if I don't finish?

#1 I can tackle right now.  How am I going to do it?  The simple answer is "I don't know."  I have no idea how I'm going to accomplish this task.  I figure putting my right foot in front of my left foot is a good start and I plan on repeating that step as many times as necessary.

#2 is easy as well.  The answer there being..."probably.  Well actually more like: "It probably is too far but that's where you're headed by golly so quit your belly aching."

#3 is a bit more difficult.  I'm starting as soon as school lets out for the Summer (I'm a teacher if you hadn't surmised) so I will have most of June, all of July, and a healthy chunk of August to complete the trip.  A rough estimate would put me at about 72 days to finish the trip. So, 72 goes into 1,700 how many times? 23.611 repeating.  So I would have to walk an average of 23.6 miles per day to reach my destination.  That doesn't sound like much does it?  However I'm not an uber-hiker and I have to have time to do good deeds on the way or what is the point of being a knight errant?

I'm considering starting my walk in Boone, NC, home of my Alma Mater ASU.  Of course this would only take down my MPD (miles per day) to 20.5 and considering most hikers consider 15 mpd a good sane pace, I might be biting off more than I can chew.  What's a knight errant to do?