It was nice and cool yesterday, so I took the day off and did another one of my super long hikes through the city. I’d been thinking it would be fun to walk the full length of Sunset Boulevard, which is about twenty miles long, in one long day. I got up before dawn and took the subway down to Union Station, which is downtown and near where Sunset begins. Parts of downtown can be pretty depressing – noisy and dirty – and it doesn’t get much better going through Hollywood.

About ten miles in one of my little toes started to hurt really bad so I had to stop and make some adjustments with some bandaids that I’d brought along. I was limping for a while and afraid that I was going to have to call it off, but eventually I got back in the groove. On the Westside, going through Beverly Hills parts of the street didn’t have sidewalks (I guess they gotta keep the riff raff, like me, out) so I had to take some parallel streets to get through.

Finally, late in the afternoon, I had only a few more miles to go and the exhaustion really hit me. I was feeling pretty dopey walking along but I just kept telling myself to keep moving my feet. I knew if I stopped, I’d get really sore and that would be it. Finally I saw the Ocean off in the distance and it was beautiful. It was about five o’clock when I plopped down on the sand where Sunset ends and took off my shoes. It was really great to just sit there and be hypnotized by the surf and the gulls and run the sand through my toes. I hung out for about two hours and nearly nodded off on the bus ride back home.