Walkies

For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to walk Reyna at least four times a week. The weather and my schedule occasionally get in the way, but we’ve been pretty successful overall. We generally get started between 6:30 and 7:00am, walk at least three miles each morning, and occasionally up to five, depending on how much time we have. We average a 20 minute mile, so we’re not exactly meandering, but the walk still takes time. The neat thing about it all is that I’ve lost about ten pounds and Reyna’s in the best shape she’s been in for several years.

The route we take is generally quiet, with only a few houses along the road. Reyna loves it because there’s always something dead at some point along the walk. Occasionally she gets really lucky and it’s a deer, but its usually something smaller, like a possum or snake. She also gets to stalk the oncoming traffic, which is a huge game for her. The downside is that most of the road apparently isn’t maintained by anyone, so the grass and weeds on the shoulder are as high as Reyna’s head in a lot of places. She doesn’t mind it too much, but it aggravates me a bit to walk through all that tall stuff when we have a row of cars coming towards us. Thankfully, that hasn’t been too much of a problem for us.

Until today.

School is back in session and, based on the number of cars, most children don’t take the bus anymore. There was so much traffic today that our walk took considerably longer than usual (we slow down and move farther onto the shoulder when cars pass, since some people don’t make any real effort to avoid hitting us). By the time we got home, I was so annoyed by the whole mess. Obviously, its time to break out the flashlight and reflective vests and start walking even earlier.