I sustained a serious puncture wound over a week ago, while on my 16-mile training loop for the walk. With a steady, swift pace forward, my left foot stabbed directly into a very sharp, split, knocked over, nearly invisible steel roadside marker. Thank goodness for the athletic shoes, and the strong point of where the shoe met the sharp point of the steel marker, or I may have risked the spike-like steel spear piercing directly through my foot.
I was only about four miles from the farm house, and though part of me felt this warranted a call home for a ride, another part of me knew that I’d be running this roadside risk across the thousands of miles of America. I therefore toughed it out, and walked home in pain.
Though I felt “accomplished” at the end of the day’s walk, later that night, I would pay dearly for the decision to tough it out earlier in the afternoon– as I awoke to go to the bathroom and found that my left foot would NOT allow me to use it– screaming in pain at any attempt to place even a pound of weight upon it.
I was relegated to hopping on my right foot till morning, and then found my way into some crutches. Nearly 72 hours in, the pain was still intense, so I bit the bullet and, without insurance, exercised the only option available to me: I visited the ER of the local hospital (ouch!). They took some x-rays and ensured I’d broken nothing. The expert diagnosis put me at ease– for starting September 20, I would still begin walking across America. Within a few days, the pain slowly proceed to dissipate, and I ultimately transferred from crutches to cane. The progress became good that a week after the injury, I jumped the gun a little by going for a five-mile day– only for my foot to follow up by loudly screaming: “Knock it off! Let me heal first!” (spoken with a serious spike in pain which endured for days).
I didn’t like the idea of this, but I would be needing to suspend all serious walking-related physical conditioning till the morning of Sunday, September 20– the very day I planned to begin the Walk itself.
Luckily, the patience ultimately paid off– as I would ultimately feel some residual pain upon beginning the Walk on time, but having taken the time to heal kept the foot from any serious, start-of-the-Walk suffering.
Given how the injury occurred, I knew there would be many other roadside hazards amid the miles ahead. The overwhelming majority of roadside hazards, from spikes to snakes, would be spotted and evaded well ahead of time. However, I knew that unless I were to adopt a sloth’s pace on the road itself, I’d run the risk of sustaining another debilitating roadside injury. Luckily, it took thousands of miles for that to actually come to pass…

FYI: this blog written & updated well after the fact…