We walked and walked and walked and somehow woke up in Pennsylvania. It seems like a big dream and almost unbelievable that we are this close. When we tell people what we are doing and how far we have come I can relate with their disbelief. Now that we are in Pittsburgh, we can basically taste home.

During one of our latest walked Ant and I were walking along in silence like we usually do. A feeling came over me and I turned to Ant and said, “This is pretty damn boring.” Surprisingly, it took us to get to this point for me to state quite obviously that walking about 8 hours a day is not too much fun. I look at this revelation as a very good sign. Most of the trip there was a million things on our mind. Now with nothing to worry about, boredom is our biggest obstacle. While there is still some slight pain and discomfort, we see the light and are sprinting towards it.

Before speeding home, we relaxed a little bit in the Columbus area of Ohio. My cousin Jamie lives there with her husband Danny and they really showed us a good time. We enjoyed some good food and just took the time to relax and lay around. We actually hit a few golf balls for an hour, which goes to show how good we are feeling. The area surrounding Columbus is surprisingly very nice and definitely a great place to live. We also got to see the Ohio State campus, which is absolutely massive and seems like an awesome place to go to school. Thanks again to Jamie and Dan.

During our stay there, my first niece was born. She was born on September 6 and is now my main motivation to get home so I can see her. Livia Hope Bonora, 7 lbs 6 oz and I can’t wait to meet her. I’m sure she can’t wait to see her favorite uncle as well.

After leaving Columbus we were ready to get out of Ohio. We still had quite a few walks to get out of the state though. These walks included the towns of Newark, Dresden, Newcomerstown, Urichsville, and Cadiz. On our way to Dresden and Uhrichsville we had police escorts the last mile into town both times. While it is extremely uncomfortable and awkward we were definitely appreciative and honored to have the escorts.

In Uhrichsville, we did three interviews. Two were for a county paper, the Times Reporter and the other was for a radio station. The story ran the next morning so on our way out of town we had plenty of people honking at us and some actually stopped on the highway to say hi and to make a donation.  I want to say thank you to Mayor Rick Rieger who had us set up and a hotel and also provided us with food and drinks at his drive-thru business in town.

During this time, our families visited again. It is always a morale booster to see some familiar faces. We laughed a lot and had a great time. Thanks to Dad, Aunt Sara, Uncle, Ricky, and Michele.

When we were in Uhrichsville we met a woman, Jackie Stewart, at a Verizon store because I had to get a new phone. Whenever our family comes to visit we cause a pretty big scene. We are quite easy to spot out because we are from New Jersey. Normally, that would cause enough attention but because they are all wearing our coast to coast for a cure t-shirts we get even more attention. Our families do not miss an opportunity to tell our story so when Jackie asked they were happy to tell her everything we were doing. She immediately jumped into action and within 20 minutes we had a free place to stay in our next town of Cadiz, OH. Jackie even recommended a good bar to watch opening night of the NFL and then met us there once she got off work.

In Cadiz we got hooked up with Tammy Mattern. She owned a beautiful bed and breakfast that isn’t even open yet. She is in the process of restoring the house but allowed all seven of us to stay there. Once we arrived we had a local news reporter there for an interview. The next morning we did another television interview for NBC. At night she took us to her favorite spot to get drinks and eat dinner. Tammy was wonderful host and we couldn’t thank her enough. It is pretty shocking to have so many people to do so many nice things for us.

Cadiz was our last town in Ohio. From there we headed to Weirton, WV where we were set up for another comp’d night as well as a free dinner at Dee Jay’s. On our way there we met the Dowdle family, who had heard about our story and just wanted to talk for a little bit. They pulled over on the side of the road and waited for us to reach them. It’s the little things like this that make this walk so great.

The part of West Virginia we were in was only 7 miles wide so we ended up being in 3 different states in just two days. In a blink of an eye we were out of West Virginia and into Pennsylvania.

Bill Logan, a man working for the same Electric Co-op network who we got connected with back in Missouri had gotten us two tickets to the Pittsburgh Steelers game as well as a hotel stay in downtown Pitt. Bill and his wife Mary took us for some pre-game drinks and then post game dinner. We will be meeting up with them again near their home in about a week. Bill is doing everything in his power to make sure the rest of our trip goes well as he is working on hotels and publicity. Bill is part of the same network that we met in Missouri when we met Barry Hart, who has helped us out tremendously.

To give a brief summary of today’s walk……horrendous. We’ll explain in detail in our next blog.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Pre-Walk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.