Today was an interesting walk. I walked 6.3 miles, which is the most I can stand to do since my boss doesn’t like me to take 2 hour lunch breaks :p
About 3 miles into it a neighbor who knows what my goal is honked like a crazy woman and then pulled up beside me and yelled encouragement… thumbs up and everything. That was pretty cool (thank you :)).
Then, about a half mile up the road I was at an intersection waiting to cross when an older guy (about 60), pushing a stroller with a baby, came up to me and said “I walked every day for an hour, cut 1/2 of what I ate and cut out the soda and I lost 23 pounds! Don’t give up!”
That was really nice of him to share. Of course it reminded me that even though I feel 100 times better, I still look like I need to lose 23 pounds :p
Here’s my favorite story, though. This happened 8 days ago. I was with my 9 year old son (the romantic one LOL). He is a very active kid but this winter he hasn’t been so active… so he would ride his bike ahead of me just so he could take a lot of rests.
When we were about 3.5 miles into the walk, which was about .5 miles from our house, I told him I was going to pass our house and walk another 2.3 miles. I knew he was exhausted and really just wanted to get a reaction out of him.
He said, with a really calm face, “that’s okay.” — no discouragement at all.
I said “really?”
He replied, and this was the BEST part: “sure Dad, I don’t care. I just want to make sure you hit your goal.”
He was thinking of ME hitting MY goal. What an awesome 9 year old!
It was a very tender moment – I sure love my kids!