Walking Through Sesame Street

02/05/2021 In 2015 I had a rextopexy surgery where the recovery has been just as bad as it sounds. It was initially hard for me to stand up, let alone walk without terrible pain. After dealing with that for a year and not seeing much improvement, I decided to shape up instead of ship out. I started with a walk around the block and then tried to improve a little each day. From there, I started focusing on virtual walks. These gave me the incentive and rewards for completing a certain distance, while giving a great sense of accomplishment. After completing a few of those, I set a larger, and at that time, incomprehensible goal for myself. In 2016, my daughter was serving as a missionary in the Czech Republic. I calculated the distance from our home in the Seattle area to Prague. It was 5,219 miles. I determined that I would walk the distance from Seattle to Prague over the course of the time that my daughter was a missionary. That gave me 18 months to walk that distance from #seattletoprague. It was about 9.5 miles a day. It was going to be rough, but thinking about how I could support my daughter and dedicate my walks to the work she was doing, gave me the drive to walk through the pain each day and complete that goal. I was able to then go to Prague with my family to pick her up and walk the last few miles around Prague with those that are the most important treasures in my life. I continued with my walking plan after she finished and dedicated walks to my my wife #LapsForLeAnn and younger daughter, #JourneyForJaylin, and continued to add miles onto my daily tallies. I then determined that I could continue walking all of the way around the world. With the trajectory I was on, it would take me 16,710 miles to complete my journey around the world. #ToddlingAroundTheWorld https://www.myvirtualmission.com/.../toddling-around-the... Come to 2019, and my son also decided to serve as a missionary. He was called to go to Bahia Blanca, Argentina. To support him during his service, I would walk 7,020 miles from Seattle to Bahia Blanca over the course of the two years he would be there. Though Covid hit last year, and all of the missionaries were sent home, I have continued to walk toward that distance and ultimate goal of supporting him, and have now completed 5,769 miles with just 1,250 remaining to get to Bahia Blanca. This journey has required me to walk almost 10 miles a day, but I am right on track to get there in June, which would have been Austin’s two year mark. https://www.myvirtualmission.com/.../seattle-to-bahia-blanca I started keeping a blog of experiences of my walks at www.toddlingaroundtheworld.com Now, in 2021, I see this fantastic #SesameStreetChallenge . I had to sign up for this one! Sesame Street was such a huge part of my childhood and now that of my children. Sesame Street is just one year older than me! One of the things I do to get my miles in during the not so ‘Sunny days, keeping the clouds away…” of the cold, wet Seattle winter is walking on the treadmill. I usually am on there for 1.5 hours in the morning, and 1.5 in the evening. To pass the time, I have started doing #treadmillmoviemarathons , where I will focus on a specific genre or series of movies (all the Star Wars movies, Tom Cruise, Harry Potter, Marvel, etc. )and then calculate the number of miles completed during the movie marathons and tally those up against what would be equal to the distance of an actual marathon. So, all of the Harry Potter movies came out to be almost three marathons worth of movies. (At the 3.1 mph pace I do on the treadmill. During this Sesame Street Challenge, I focused on this list of Sesame Street movies, and even watched the very first episode of the very first season. What wonderful memories! I was amazed that I could recall seeing some of those excerpts from over 40 years ago! I was able to walk for 27.8 miles and complete one #treadmillmoviemarathon , plus going one extra mile! I have pulled out the Big Bird stuffed animal to be my walking buddy on the treadmill. I remember getting this a number of years ago for my young daughter (who is now in college!), though we all know who I really got it for! 😉 My mother recently finished writing her personal history, and as I was reading through it, saw that she had written about how Sesame Street was her favorite show since it kept two of her young children occupied in the 70’s, all while helping educate and entertain them! Thank you Sesame Street for the memories and inspiring thousands to reach their fitness goals! #sesamestreetchallenge