This is perfect

When I saw this I had to print it up. I have one hanging at my desk at work and one on my fridge at home.

I joined Fitness 19 last night. Since I am running out of daylight hours to walk, I can go there and use the treadmills. It was really pretty cheap to join and there was no long term committment or contract. Each treadmill has a TV attached, so maybe I can find the nature channel or something and pretend I am walking outside.

While walking Wednesday night this is the scene I got to enjoy. God has shown me such beautiful sunsets while I have been walking and each one of them has been a little different, but always stunning! I am quickly running out of daylight hours to walk in. Getting out of work at 4:30 and I don't get to the park until 5:00 and I need about 2 1/2 hours to get in 10-12 miles. Towards the end of my walk last night it was really getting dark. I think I may move my walk to the academic spine here at UB. It is a few buildings that are connected. I could walk indoors, climb stairs and there are places where the spine is connected with tunnels to other buildings. I also am looking into maybe Fitness 19 and using the treadmills there (boring!). Maybe if I change it up between the treadmills and the elipticals it will be a little less boring, but I sure won't be getting to see sunsets like these doing the treadmill.

So exciting

I met with Lou Anne and Colleen from Northtowns Pregnancy Center last night. It was an amazing meeting. It really renewed my excitement about doing this walk. They had asked me to think about some of my specific prayer needs and let them know so they could include them in their e-mails. I have thought of what I need prayer for most right now (I am sure it will change as things move forward) but here are what I would appreciate prayer for right now:
1. Prayer for favor on the sponsorship requests submitted with Verizon, Ryka, Hilton and the requests I will be submitting to a printer and a sporting goods store. Please pray that God will show me any other areas that I should ask for further sponsorship and open those doors for me also.
2. People to walk with me or drive along with me even if they can only commit for one state or one city. My particular areas of worry are Wyoming and Nebraska where I could go 40-50miles without approaching a town. Having someone with a vehicle who would be able to pick me up and take me to a motel at night and then drop me off in the morning where I had left off on my walk the night before. I have the same concerns in areas with mountains, I don’t want to be stuck on the mountain at night.
3. Continued health and protection for my family especially my mother and daughter
4. Protection and healing for my body especially my feet. I have ruptured my right Achilles tendon and broke my left ankle so I have issues with pain when it is rainy or damp or I overdo it (I will definitely be overdoing it :))
5. Pray that I remain humble and always place God first in all that I do. Pray that I am always listening to His voice and walking where He has me walk, and speaking the words that He has me speak.
Thank you so much. Prayer is what I need most in all of this!

I should have the link to their website in a week. I will place it here so that you can all go and donate.

God is so Good!

Yesterday morning I was doubting everything. I was asking God to let me know that this walk was of Him. I know I can't do this without him by my side, it is just too much for me alone. While I was walking last night this the picture above is what I saw. It was so awesomely beautiful. The water ahead of me had this beautiful pink tinge, like a watercolor painting, that caused me to turn around and check out how beautiful the sunset was. There were this little silver fish (minows?) jumping out of the water that had me giggling. It was a good thing there wasn't anyone around me at the time, they would have thought I was nuts. As I watched a bunch of ducks in the water with the silver fish jumping all around them, I realized that those ducks had everything they needed right there. God provided for them and He will provide for me. All and all, it was a great night.

Not waiting to live my life

I watched just a short part of the interview with Valerie Harper last night. I was way too tired to watch the whole thing. One thing she said really stuck out for me. She said that after her diagnosis she decided to live life to it's fullest. That is what I want, to live life to it's fullest, but I have no intention of waiting to find out I only have a short time to live before doing it. I guess that kind of sums up why I have decided to walk. I don't want to wait to live life. I want to experience all that I can of life now while I can still enjoy so much of it. There is so much out there that I haven't seen or done. I almost wish March was here now, but I am glad it isn't. I still have soooo much to do!

I walked 21.58 miles on Saturday. I can do this!! It was a nice easy pace. There were butterflies everywhere. That really made me smile. I got in 13 miles by 2pm and then ate some lunch at a nice little restaurant and relaxed for a while. I had a great phone conversation with a good friend while I was eating my lunch. Then I walked some more, checked out the wine and chocolate festival while walking and also checked out a garage sale.

This is what it will be like, getting in about 20 miles a day and taking time to enjoy the little things along the way. I do relize that there will be times when it wont be this great. Times when I will have to get 30 or more miles in to find the next town. Times when it will be rainy and cold and I will be miserable and just want to go home. But I am hoping that most of my time will be enjoying the little surprizes along the way like a nice little cafe with great food, the colors that God has used to paint the grasses, flowers, skies, water. Meeting and talking to new people, and most of all time spent alone in prayer and conversation with my Lord.

Started to request sponsorship

Hurray, it is Friday at last. I sent a proposal for sponsorship to Verizon and sent an e-mail requesting sponsorship to RYKA. I love RYKA sneakers, they are all I wear, so having them supply my sneakers would be great. I am trying to get Verizon to cover my wireless bill, Noelle's internet (she will be my main contact and will be the one sending out press releases for me)a notebook so I can continue to blog on my walk and an Ipod to have music on the road and the newer ones track your fitness (miles walked). We will see what comes of it. Keep me in prayer for these everyone please. That would be two major expenses taken care of for me. I'm gonna also speak to at least one major hotel/motel chain to see what they will do for me. It would be nice to have the sleeping situation somewhat taken care of before hand. I have also been contacting the visitor centers for all the states I am traveling through. The more information I can get the better.

I am supposed to meet with Northtowns Pregnancy Center sometime next week and Noelle is trying to get me a contact name at the Blind Association. Things are starting to move!!

Thank you everyone for your support so far and for all of the prayers!

How to post a comment

Some people have told me they had problems commenting. I played a little and this is what I figured out (I am certainly not an IT genius, so someone might have better ideas here) Where it says Comment As, pick Name/URL, type your name and your e-mail address with a dot where the @ usually goes. Ex. thedish09@hotmail.com = thedish09.hotmail.com.

This is all new to me, so I will keep figuring it out as I go and if anyone knows more than I do about blogging (that is just about everyone) I welcome your suggestions!!

The states I will travel through

Like I wrote before in other posts, I bought an atlas and have been mapping out my route. Here are the states I will travel through. If anyone has been to any of these before or has any helpful knowledge on these, I would welcome it. Are there places I should not miss seeing, are there places I should avoid?

The states are: Massachusetts, New York (after about a month of travel, I will be near my home and get to sleep in my own bed. Hopefully I will still want to continue after that LOL), Pennsylvania (just the very northern tip, will probably only be two days in PA), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming (scary to me, still debating about going through Yellowstone. I posted some of my worries about that in an earlier post), Montana, Idaho, Oregon (My final destination!The mountains in Oregon scare me too, but it helps that I know people there and can rely on their knowledge).

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed

Sometimes when I think about what I am about to do, I am just totally overwhelmed. How can I do this? I am not good at asking people for money or for help. I am not good at following through. Can I actually do this physically? It is a lot, a long commitment. Am I crazy to think that I can do it?

Then my answer is I just need to rely on God. Actually on my own, I probably can't do this, but with God all things are possible. I really believe this is of Him, so He will make a way. I will have to make an effort too, but He will handle the things that I can't. This is surrender, this is trust. There are so many factors that I just don't and won't have control over, so I will just have to sit back and let my Lord take care of those. I will do my part, asking for sponsors, getting the word out about the charities so they can reap the benefits of this, train my body, lose some more weight (this will be so much easier if I am not carrying all this extra weight), read all I can from others who have done this, and just basically try my best to be prepared. Then I just need to give the Lord control and let Him work and lead me. If all that comes of this is that I learn to totally put my trust in the Lord, then it will be all worth it!

UPDATE: I should be meeting with Northtowns Pregnancy Center next week, then I can hopefully get a link on here for you so you can see more of what there about and so you will be able to support them if you feel led.

God's amazing beauty part 2

Here is the picture. I did it!!

God's amazing beauty

I was walking on Friday night and was just finishing up and turned around to head to my car and this is what I saw. So amazing. I turned at just the right time, by the time I got to my car just a few minutes later, almost all the color was gone. I felt like God was saying to me...I will show you this beauty and so much more on your walk.

I will try to get the picture in the next post, can't seem to get it here. Either that or it will show about 10 times. Not having a good electronics day today. I can't seem to make anything work right.

It's a go!

I spoke to my pastor and I have his support so I am going to do this! Nervous and excited all at once. I have contacted the Northtowns Pregnancy Center since they are who I would like to raise funds for. I haven't heard back yet, but I just contacted them and I know they are at a conference, so I expect it to be a little while. I will hopefully be adding a link to their site here so that anyone can go right to them and donate. I will also set up a link to my paypal account for anyone who would like to support me and the expenses I will have preparing for the walk and while walking. Time to really start seriously planning and training! March or April will come really fast, I am sure!

If anyone knows how to do spell check on this, please let me know. I haven't figured it out yet and I am a terrible speller.

Meeting with my pastor

I am meeting with my pastor after work today to discuss doing this walk. I am not sure if I am more afraid that he will encourage me to do the walk or that he will talk me out of it. I should know by Friday whether this is a go. Then I can really buckle down and start serious planning. I can get a hold of the people I want to raise money for, really make this blog public. I have only told a few people so far. I want to wait to make it public until I am certain it is a go. At least as certain as I can be. A lot can happen before March or April gets here.

I went and bought an atlas and started marking out my route. I was just going to order one on Amazon, but I realized I really wanted to flip through the pages and compare different ones side by side to be sure it was something that would work for me.

Oh well, bye for now. Keep me in your prayers please.

I meet with my pastor on Thursday to let him know that I would like to do this walk and who I would like to raise the funds for, so I'm kind of in limbo unitl I talk to him. Hopefully on Friday I will have gotten a go ahead from my pastor and really be ready to move ahead with everything. I have some fold out maps and have been marking my route. I plan to follow route 20 most of the way. I am debating as to whether I will take route 26 in Wyoming for a while. It looks like it would shorten my route a little and it would take me around Yellowstone National Park. I am torn about this. Do I really want to get that close to Yellowstone and not see it? But then again, Yellowstone kind of scares me with all of the wild animals and all. Even though it is not like the animals recognise borders and won't be outside of Yellowstone if I take the route that leads me around it. I still have lots of time to make a final decision. I plan to read a lot more about that area first. I hope to balance being safe with seeing as much of God's wonders as possible. I am also thinking of taking the Erie Canal trail in New York instead of sticking to route 20. It just sounds kind of interesting. I will also be checking more into that before I make a final decision. If anyone has any thoughts/helpful information, I would love to hear it.