Our walking party did not reach our goal of Medina, OH, this week. Nevertheless, Julie was quite pleased to have passed into Girard tonight, just over the Pennsylvania line. Girard was named after Stephen Girard, an 18th-century banking tycoon from Philadelphia. He owned land in the neighboring township of Springfield. After his death, his will established a boarding school in Philadelphia for orphans, Girard College. I’ve heard about this school my whole life because my Uncle Nevio was placed there after my grandfather died. Even though my grandmother was still living, she was not able to take care of him and the school somehow granted him admission. Officials from the town of Girard had lobbied to Girard’s foundation to site the school there, but they went with Philadelphia. Meanwhile, I landed in Hamburg, NY, and Ben is in Miflinburg, PA.

COVID disrupted our traveling plans during 2020. My friend Julie was distressed when she realized she had not seen her nieces and nephew in Moab, UT, in a year. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands and take a virtual walk there. For every mile she walks in her neighborhood or along her favorite trails near Albany, NY, she tabs 10 miles toward her goal. I caught wind of this project and decided it would be a good trip for Smallwander to tag along on. I asked her if we could stop in on Smallwander towns along the route and report on what we ‘see’. I’ll try to map it as we go once a week or so.

We’ve picked up a couple other travelers along the way who were looking for a little post-New Years exercise project, Ben and Renee. Ben helped us set up our spreadsheet to auto-tab our distances. Renee is still deciding if she wants to enter her numbers into the chart, but we’ll let her backfill them later.

Since the first of the year, our virtual mile totals are Julie, 336, John (me), 160, Ben, 133, Renee, unknown (but she has been walking). That puts Julie in Westfield, NY, me at about 20 miles outside of Geneva, NY, and Ben settling down in Danville, PA. I would like to set up a rendezvous where we can intersect and have a Zoom meeting at the end of this week in Medina, OH. I’m going to see if I can pick a place where we can ‘gather’, and maybe have a toast. Maybe I can score someone who can ‘host’ us. Let’s see how this works!