A Long Walk

I ran a marathon in 1979. A marathon is a race that is a tad over 26 miles in length. It made me tired, but at the end I got a t-shirt. Yesterday I took a walk. That made me tired too. It was a long walk, but well short of 26 miles. Of course they don't really have miles in Panama, they have kilometers. Miles are forbidden. If you are caught with a mile or two in your possession, you will probably get off with just a fine. If you're nabbed with 26 of them, they'll get you with "intent to distribute" and you could be sentenced to remedial math. With that in mind, I held my walk down to only kilometers which, fortunately, add up a lot faster than miles. It still took me three hours to cover the distance - whatever it was- which is an hour and a half quicker than I finished the marathon. What I did yesterday, was I walked to town. This took me thirty five minutes. I could have made it faster, but at about the two thirds marker, which is a house with a well cared for eucalyptus tree in the yard, my dog's leash broke. Gus is a well trained dog though, so when I say "heel" he will do it three or four times out of ten. If, however, another dog is present, his obedience quotient drops into the "you're wasting your breath with that heel stuff" range. Since most Panamanian houses have at least one small to middle sized dog in their yard and most gringos have dogs the size of ponies, a thing that speaks to U.S. paranoia, having no leash was going to be a problem. After walking about fifty yards, I mean meters, hunched over like Quasimodo and holding Gus by his collar, I decided I needed an alternative solution to the problem. Clever fellow that I am at roughly the same ratio as Gus on that one to ten heel scale, I realized that I was wearing a small back pack that could be utilized, somehow, to hook onto Gus and allow me to stand upright. It was either that or use my belt which I considered not a good idea as I've lost a few pounds, I mean liters, and my pants would then no longer be secured at my waist. Anyone who has tried it will tell you how hard it is to walk with pants down around your ankles. You have to take those choppy little Charlie Chaplin steps which are quite unsightly and besides that, YOUR PANTS ARE DOWN. I hooked a strap at the bottom of the backpack through Gus' collar and held onto the shoulder strap at the top. It worked just fine. It looked silly as hell, but it worked just fine. Our first stop when we hit town was a pet store where I bought a new leash. After that it was on to the video store to return a movie, across the street to the deli to pick up a few items, down the street to Mailboxes Are Us to check on a package that hadn't arrived, then back to the deli to pick up the umbrella I had left there. My umbrella, I should note, is equipped with a hard rubber, cane tip at its pointy end and thus makes an excellent walking stick. Thinking back now, I could have hooked the umbrella to the dog's collar and walked him that way, so there are lots of solutions to these small problems. It's just a matter of which looks the least absurd. After the paragua retrieval, I was struck with a brilliant idea. Well okay it was brilliant idea if brilliant has a synonym that means, "are you out of your mind?" I decided that I was feeling really strong and that instead of taking a taxi home, the original plan, I would walk back. And what's more - you can't just go with a small crazy idea, you must build on them - I would take the long way. The going 'round the mountain route instead of the concrete stairway short cut that we had used to descend. Off we went like Dorothy and Toto only without the skipping and singing. At the end of the town part of our town there is a combination bar and real estate office, a combination that makes sense if you think about it. When you are going to spend house sized money you should have a drink or two first. Gus and I stopped there for water. His came in a bowl and mine came in a green bottle. Fifteen minutes later we continued our trek. There is a very steep road, now paved, that goes up our mountain all the way to the top. Gus and I needed to ascend only about half way where we would turn off at another marathon marker, a basketball court, and then continue along the side of the mountain for what is just a short drive over a rough road until we are home. If you are driving, that is. As it was, walking, by the time we reached the basketball court, Gus was dripping drool from both sides of his mouth like a mini Cujo or Old Yeller at the end and I was just dripping from pretty much everywhere. I had made other jaunts from the house to this point on the planet, the basketball court, so I knew there was about another hour's worth of hoofing still to go. It felt kind of like hitting the 20 mile mark at the marathon. My thoughts ran along the lines of, "what there's more?", and, "are you kidding me?" That is, when they weren't thinking, "I hope that pain's not serious." It's another steep climb from the b-ball court to El Explorador. We made it there in a walking style best described as trudging. Neither of us so much as lifted our heads when a black lab came bounding out a driveway barking his own head nearly off. Yeah yeah yeah give it a rest was kind of our attitude at that point. Our lives were saved at El Ex, okay we weren't really dying, but we were dying to be done, by long cool drinks of water followed by a nearly frozen aguacate batido that tasted like frosted heaven. Onward Laddies, I thought, which was really weird because who thinks "Onward Laddies " these days?, the end is in sight. And so it was, as thirty or forty sweaty minutes later, we crossed the finish line, our front doorway. Gus, panting rapidly, headed immediately to his favorite shady corner while I plopped heavily onto the sofa. Both of us were exhausted, happy and thinking the same thing: Alrighty then, where's my t-shirt?