Today's walk report: 061313

I hauled ass today... 8.79 km.

I left with the intention to get through the walk quickly, come home and relax. It's really wonderful when I zone out of the walk and into some other place. 3, 4 or more km going by and I'm oblivious of where I had been. I was carried along perfectly, beautifully in complete synchronicity with great music. I was also having musical flashbacks.

Here's one of them...

This song was so entertaining my Sr. year of college. I had this dog named Chinook up at Humboldt State University in NoCal. Chinook was the biggest, sweetest dog but he wasn't the smartest. Or maybe he just didn't seem smart because he was so big and a little clumsy. Anyway, when I used to play Dogs by Pink Floyd Chinook would go absolutely bonkers running around the house trying to find the barking. I wondered how he perceived the sound since the dogs in the song are mixed so they sound distant. Did Chinook recognize the sound as being distant or was it only because he didn't see or smell any dogs that he got up and searched the house? Whatever Chinook was responding to it was really comical. The dogs start barking at 4:50.

This is me and Chinook, 1980. Chinook is the one wearing a shirt.

This is Chinook chewing on one of my favorite running shoes (it's OK, I'm sure I gave it to him.) Back then I was more a runner than a walker but much more a bicyclist than anything else on the exercise front. Besides, I didn't drive. A bicycle can actually get you places.

By the way, those shoes were custom fitted for me and were hand delivered to my house High School days and as I recall my mom ordered one or two more pairs into college. They were designed by a man named Arthur Lydiard who was a New Zealand runner and athletics coach. I believe they were around a $70 price point which was a lot of money for sport shoes back in the late 70's. It's still a lot of money to put something on your feet to runaround in.

I wrote about Chinook once before in this walk report here. Maybe I'm running out of stuff to write but it's natural I have these flashbacks. I'm in the home where Chinook was last part of my life, my walk is very similar to a walk we did together when we returned home from college and, of course, this music connection today.

Oh yeah... relax.