Where are all of the Walking Blogs?

I have been trying to find walking blogs to link to from Walking.about.com
But they are very hard to find. If you know of any, please add them in a comment or email me.

Walking for the Love of Ewan

Life intervened with blogging, but also our gang seems to do just find with email and not so much with the blog.

Fine, so I flew to London to see Ewan McGregor live in "Guys and Dolls."
And I went on several wonderful walks, including walking around Hampton Court Palace, walking in Soho, along the Thames, and a St. James walk, historic pub walk, and Dickens London walk.



Ewan is looking more gorgeous then ever before...well worth the trip!

Heartbreaker, Dreammaker, Love Taker....

We had a fairly big gang to walk the Heartbreaker walk on Saturday, Feb. 12. Lana had to bow out due to some bad shrimp. Dave had to bow out due to a broken furnace.

But at REI we met up: Iyaz and wife Elaine, Krista, Wendy, Will, Nancy, Carolyn, Tom, and Rachel. We quickly broke into 3 groups of varying speed in rain and drizzle. By starting at REI, this walk had a longer warm-up time before we hit the stairs.

How many stairs? Will and Iyaz counted - 1024 steps! Tom also counted, but being a macho guy he was subtracting the down stairs from the up stairs!

I was in the middle group with Krista and Nancy. I knew Krista and I would be slower on the stairs than Will would be, and he took off with Iyaz and Elaine and we didn't see them till the finish. We paused for breath on stairs that were over 2 flights long. This is a great cardio workout. It was also great to catch up with Nancy on her doings.

We were discussing our nicknames, ala "Holes." Will is going to come up with some snazzy way of getting suggestions for those without nicknames yet. Here are ones we are sorta agreed upon:
Will: Rocky (always getting rocks in his shoes)
Wendy: Blowout (shoelaces coming untied)
Nancy: Stitch (all those surgeries)
Krista: Camel (never needs a restroom)
Rachel: Princess (of course!)

The final up stairs were totally cruel. Bad enough that at 8K you see these 3 steep flights of concrete steps going up. But when you get to the top, another 5 flights of steps are revealed! You just want to turn around and go back down and head to the finish from there. Instead, it started raining again but we kept moving, up, over, down, and back.

We all made it back. Awaiting Carolyn-Rachel-Tom, we schmoozed with teammates Burt and Romana as well as CRVC prez Joe Kelly. Then we piled into cars and all went to Swagat's Indian buffet at 21st and Lovejoy. This was a new experience for Krista and, I believe, Tom. Might be a bit too spicy for Krista. Rachel discovered that Elaine knows her husband, it's a small world after all!

It was a great time to recover from the Heartbreaker.

Our Photo Pages

My photo pages for the Knights of Knee are still online:

Knights of Knee 2004 Portland to Coast

Links from there to many previous photo galleries.

MLK Weekend Plans Jan. 15-16-17

Saturday: Hosted walks from Good Samaritan Hospital. Meet at 8 am at the hospital, follow the signs/etc. to the hosted walk tables.
Carpool: RSVP to the email group to form up carpools, or to let us know you will meet us there.
Optional movie: A couple of us plan to do the walk at 8 am, then keep walking down to the Fox Tower cinemas and watch "Finding Neverland" showing at 11:35. Then amble back afterwards to Good Samaritan. I'm in the movie-watching carpool, which would leave Tualatin around 7:20.

Sunday: I suggest a nice 10K walk from Butteville to Champoeg, departing Butteville around 8:30 am. RSVP.
Optional movie: I plan to go see "The Aviator" at either Tigard Cinemas at noon or Sherwood at 12:45. Happy to have company! Gotta be ready for the Golden Globes Awards Sunday evening.

Monday: Krista and I are interested in walking, so let's make some Monday walking plans.

From Oaks Bottom to Stayton - Where We Walked

It was a great weekend for Knights of Knee walking. On Saturday, Jan. 8 we gathered in Sellwood and had a great Anarchy Walk led by Will and our whims. We had Lana (returned after a rotator cuff injury), Nancy (returned after plantar fasciitis surgery), Carolyn, Rachel, Will, and Wendy. Although the prediction was solid rain, we had clement weather as we first circled through the "Most Liberal Intersection in Portland," then down to the Oaks Bottom bike path. We enjoyed the path till the spur, newly paved, went off to the left and back up to Sellwood. We circled around Sellwood, arriving back at the cars at 9:30 so Carolyn could make it to her next endeavor. The rest of us walked another loop to the park and finished a very nice 10K.

On Sunday, Will and Wendy took up Krista's invite to do the Cascade Half-Marathon, and Rachel decided to take the plunge as well. We rode there in Krista's comfy mini-'Bago, picking up her dad en route. This is a friendly little half-marathon. Walkers and slower runners can start an hour early, so we took off at 8:30. We were caught by the pack at around the 5-6 mile mark. The route is flat and on quiet roads through farm areas - very pleasant. It's an out-and-back, so if bad weather strikes you COULD turn around at any point. We had a good walk - a challenge for Rachel, Wendy, and Krista but a stroll in the park for Will. The last 1/2 hour we started getting some cold rain, but finished before it really got to us.

Coming up Jan. 15-16-17: Hosted walks from Good Samaritan Hospital Sat-Sun.
We are working on plans for a movie-watching day at Carolyns, but would start off with a walk from Good Sam. I'd like to walk all 3 days....someplace!

The Fellowship of the Ring

We had a very nice New Years Day gathering of the Knights of Knee. Hobbit-sized Wendy and Rachel were joined by the humans and/or wizards Will, Dave, and Rich. First we went out for an hour-long walk around the neighborhoods south of my house. It is always interesting to see how they are changing. And fun to see them through the eyes of friends - Rachel pointed out a decoration of Santa and reindeer and snowman climbing up a ladder to the roof, one I had passed by almost daily and never saw!

Rachel gave us reviews of all of the recent movies. Now we know what to see and what to rent or avoid.

Back at Hobbiton, Rich had been out riding his bike briefly. Rachel and Will attacked the candy jar full of chocolate while I whipped up a batch of anda bhurti (Indian eggs and potatoes) and we dragged out the leftover Chinese food from our takeout dinner with Nancy and Larry Baird on New Years Eve. Will provided excellent pickles - just the right amount of jalapeno for a little snap but no big burn. Rich popped the cork on a bottle of Asti Spumante and we made mimosas and toasted the New Year.

We settled into easy chairs and couches to watch the extended version of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King." We were interrupted after half an hour by the arrival of Anne Byrd to get the Discovery Walk financial statements signed by me. But we enjoyed seeing Anne and forced her to have some orange juice and regaled her with movie reviews. Then I got a phone call about another arrival - I'm a great-aunt! My nephew and his girlfriend greeted a New Years Day baby, Ally Rose Lazott, at 10:30 am, over 8 pounds with prehensile-ly long fingers and toes, according to my mom.

OK, Anne left and we went back to the movie. The extended version is very long, but great to see the additional footage, and still it moves well. We took a popcorn break when the disks needed changing. Will filled us all in on key plot points and trivia of interest, especially helpful to Rich.

Alas, by the time it was done it was dark outside and that sapped my will to walk, as well as Rachel. So, we broke the Fellowship of the Ring and went off to our own Hobbit holes.

Up Next:
We need to walk Jan. 8-9, so let me know your druthers.
Also - I got the full series of Babylon 5: Crusade on DVD and those who wish can watch a few episodes.