Jenny and Erin

Remember Murphy, the Murphy of Murphy’s Laws? The guy who throws cold water in the face of die-hard optimists and earnest workers everywhere? Well, last week I became very familiar with one of his laws: “nothing is ever as simple as it seems”. Erin and I accepted a dare to walk 15 of Minnesota’s 19 state trails this year. Well, we made a mistake. We failed to clarify exactly what constitutes walking a state trail. Funny thing though, this misunderstanding wasn’t with the person who made the dare, but with Erin, the very person I’m going to be walking with!

First, let me bring you up to date. Erin and I have been meeting to walk 3 miles almost every day at 5:00 a.m. since mid-March. Our training kicked off with a near-death experience, okay maybe this is a slight exaggeration, and has continued with regularity since. Click here to read about that horrible day. We have trudged through snow, rain and strong winds. There have been a handful of very cold days we have opted to not walk (see we’re not total dummies). The mornings have slowly transitioned from cold, dark and silent, to sunrises filled with emerging life – birds migrating, plants budding and people coming out of hibernation to start their early morning runs.

After exactly three weeks of walking we took on our first trail. This trail is 18 miles long; half paved and half unpaved. After finishing the paved section, the section we had agreed to walk that day, I was elated thinking we’d completed an entire trail. However, Erin insisted we were only half done. You see, my assumption was that we were only walking paved portions of the trails (this is what I remember agreeing to as I’m not much for dirt and mud), while Erin believed (quite adamantly I add) that we were walking ALL of any trail we choose, including unpaved portions and the loops associated with the trail (which are sometimes as far as 15 miles from the main portion of the trail). OOPS! After some frustrated words were exchanged it was decided…

We are walking all 15 state trails in their entirety, including every crazy little loop associated with them. What’s another 200 miles or so when we’re already walking 3 million??? Hey Murphy, lighten up, smile down at us as we trudge along.

Click here to find a great website devoted to Murphy and his laws.

This entry was posted in Boots are Made for Walkin on Friday, April 13th, 2007 by Jenny. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.