Yukon

In Vancouver I had sold my first gun, never having had an occasion to use it, and I was scared of the thing anyway. On my way north this time, however, the incessant panic talk had stampeded me into buying a gross and unwieldy shotgun - a "Savage," so it said on the barrel.
To learn something more about the weapon, I took it to the local gun expert, which in this land populated with nothing but gun experts happened to be the assistant postmaster. He confirmed my worst fears: "It's factory-flawed. You've got one shot and then you might as well chuck it." We agreed that one shot would probably only enrage several hundred pounds of bear and all but guarantee for me a swift and messy exit from this life.
Fortunately, I chanced to meet a man named Leach, chairman of the Yukon Trappers Association. "I've been in the bush for getting on thirty years," he said, "and never have I seen anything I didn't want to see."
"Well, what did you carry?"
"A bell." He then added, almost defiantly, "You won't need a bloody gun!" That did it. I happily abandoned the Savage.
Beyond the small settlement of Upper Liard, I came upon a herd of horses grazing beside the road. They eyed me and my pinging bell, for they, too, wore bells, partly for the same reason. It was an odd musical confrontation as our different notes momentarily mingled on that cool spring day.

From The Longest Walk by George Meegan

Distance walked since last post: 36.2km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 298.9km
Days left until departure: 4

He had seen the dream

George Meegan arrived in Nicaragua on his walk across the Americas just after the Sandinistas took power in 1979. He got a frosty reception from some Nicaraguans who mistook him for a gringo, but as usual our resourceful hero managed to find a way around this.

With little traffic to watch out for, I dashed on at a good lick. A tiny Swiss flag that I had attached to my gear fluttered behind me. I had picked up the flag at L'Escargot, one of Anthony's swank restaurants in San Jose, and was displaying it on the theory that it would defuse hostility; after all, Switzerland (unlike Britain) had no imperial background to raise a revolutionary's ire. (In fact, I could claim some right to carrying it, for Mum was born in Switzerland.) The flag now drew the attention of a Sandinista toting a submachine gun, who signaled for me to pull over and addressed me forcefully. "You are not a Swiss. You are a Yankee bastard - pretending to be a Swiss."
"I'm not, I'm not," I protested strongly. "I'm an inglés bastard pretending to be Swiss." My clumsy admission apparently disarmed the chap, who motioned me with his gun to pass.

On the whole, though, the predominantly young Sandinista soldiers treated Meegan with respect, which is more than could be said for members of the armed forces in many other South and Central American countries he traveled through. In fact, one Sandinista literally gave him the shirt off his own back.

"Hey, gringo, where ya going?" he first said. This was on an empty stretch of road high above a valley before the town of Dario. Two young military police of the Liberation Front driving by in a jeep had stopped to question me. They got out while their girl companion waited in the vehicle.
"I'm walking through Nicaragua, your republic." At this the three of them let out a spontaneous cheer. The girl now got out of the jeep and offered me a plastic bag full of sweet ice, bound at the neck, with a straw dangling into slush. As I gratefully sucked the synthetic udder dry they asked me more questions: "Where are you from? What are you doing here?" Prodded by their enthusiasm, I revealed more than I normally do. When they learned I was English, this pleased them enormously - at least I was not an American. I finished my story: "... and I'm the only man to have walked from Argentina to Nicaragua - and I'm going to try to reach Alaska." They were speechless, simply overcome with joy. My original interrogator, a well-built fellow, now introduced himself as Bismarck, removed his shirt, and with great ceremony placed it on top of the ragged one I was wearing - "for friendship's sake," he said.
"You must be careful, Jorge," were Bismarck's last words to me as he did up the buttons. "Our sun will burn you." To this day I clearly remember, in the magic moment that followed, the chill wind singing past the telephone wire high above us. As we stood on the bleak hillside, a shirtless Sandinista and a double-shirted Englishman, we were one. He had never asked, "Why?" He knew. We were brothers; he had seen the dream.

Distance walked since last post: 14.2km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 230.1km
Days left until departure: 21

The food of champions

I'm almost halfway through The Longest Walk, George Meegan's account of his epic journey on foot from the bottom of South America to the top of Alaska. After a frustrating start (there were so many typos on the first few pages I almost felt like giving up), I'm now thoroughly enjoying it. Here's a brief extract which should give you a good idea of Meegan's slightly eccentric personality and endearing sense of humour.

On the approach to Puerto Supe I attained another milestone, completing 8,000 km, and by the time I reached town I was famished.
"Got any food?" I shouted up the single step of a waterfront hut, a makeshift restaurant.
"No. Have you?" came the reply from inside.
"Well, actually... yes. I have a coconut and a tomato."
"Fantastico!" And with that I was ushered inside, the great nut was cracked open with the help of a hammer, and all the family reached in. To the accompaniment of squeals of astonishment I then fried the tomato; for these people, it was like frying an orange. I assured them that all Britons do the same, which elicited further gasps. And thus the patron fed the restaurant.
The average restaurant I passed in the desert can only be described as ghastly. To keep things on the up and up, the floors are given a daily washdown with gasoline. A common story in these parts is that some hapless traveler once stubbed his cigarette out on one of these floors and everyone was lucky to escape with his life from the ensuing fire.
Cafe children were kept busy separating the good grains of rice from pebbles and other rubbish that comes in the same sack - time-wasting work that makes car washing interesting by comparison.

Meegan doesn't subscribe to what Alan Booth calls the "Protestant Walk Ethic" (i.e. eschewing all forms of road transport while on a long walk), but as he is out to establish a new record for the longest unbroken walk, whenever he does take a ride he is very careful to resume walking exactly where he left off. On one occasion he'd walked 14 km after a break of a few days in a town in Ecuador when the thought struck him that he may not have walked one four-block section in the town. Any gap in the journey would have robbed him of the record, so he went back and walked this few hundred metres.

Finally, another quote for those people wondering what (apart from coconuts and tomatoes) fueled the man who still retains the record for the world's longest walk:

I was hungry, and so after reaching the center of town, I spent a frustrating hour trying to get an onion. Of all the passions and food cravings I had in South America, the humble onion remained the king. For me a raw onion with salt on bread made a meal and provided a good vehicle for salt, which, after water, was my greatest need and desire in hot climates.

Distance walked since last post: 27.6km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 215.9km
Days left until departure: 24

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Distance walked since last post: 12km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 137.1km
Days left until departure: 49

On quitting

Larry King: Did you ever think of quitting?

George Meegan: No, because I never had the courage. To give up requires great courage. To turn back requires great courage. I think any fool could go on. Provided you have the legs to move. And I think to surrender one's dream, half finished, is a terribly difficult thing and I never quite had the authority within myself to do that.

Quoted on the back cover of The Longest Walk by George Meegan

Distance walked since last post: 21.2km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 74.9km
Days left until departure: 82

George Meegan

While surfing the net the other day I came across this list of people who have walked, or are in the process of walking, around the world. Coming in at number five is George Meegan.

Strictly speaking, Meegan didn't walk around the world. He does, however, hold the record for the longest unbroken walk, established when he journeyed on foot some 30,600km from Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America to the northern tip of Alaska. The walk took him six years and eight months, during which time he married his Japanese fiancee, Yoshiko Matsumoto, and fathered two children.

Some two decades after Meegan completed his epic walk, the elder of these two children, Ayumi Meegan, traveled to San Fransisco where she met Tyler MacNiven (who later gained fame - and half of the one-million-dollar prize money - as co-winner of season nine of The Amazing Race). MacNiven fell in love with Ayumi, and in an effort to impress her (and no doubt her father), he hatched a plan to walk the length of Japan. He completed his walk in 2004 and later made an hour-long documentary about his exploits, Kintaro Walks Japan, which can be viewed at Google Video.

Today, George Meegan shares his time between England and Japan, where he holds a position as associate professor at the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences at Kobe University. He stood as an independent candidate in the recent UK General Election, campaigning on a platform of reforming the education system, which he regards as ignoring the needs of children who don't fit into the school system.

George Meegan makes a brief appearance part way through Kintaro Walks Japan. His intensity and his enthusiasm for walking are plain to see, but he doesn't seem entirely comfortable. In an earlier interview on Larry King Live, an excerpt of which is included in Kintaro Walks Japan, he comes across as confident and media savvy, yet an article in Backpacker magazine from the late-1980s describes him as having a distaste for publicity. He appears to be something of an enigma. Perhaps not "out of his mind" (as suggested in the same Backpacker article), but definitely an eccentric.

Distance walked since last post: 6km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 53.7km
Days left until departure: 89