The zombie horde has milled around our house for two weeks now. Last night, I myself finally congested up but woke up at 3:30 AM the next morning ready to put my miles in. Yes, today is a Zombie Outbreak Response Team belt buckle kind of day!

When I checked the weather, I saw a 19℉ windchill. That's colder than any other of my walks, though I have had colder temp days. I had that bad experience yesterday with my feet and I just didn't know what kind of energy levels I had access to until I got into the groove. I checked My Maps and considered some low-key segments that I missed in my passes through. I thought maybe if I was ambitious, I could reach Sleepy Hollow.

So, I hit the night air and was taken aback by that Christmas chill. As I began to move, I considered how this might be a short walk—who could blame me? I was coming off the heels of a sickly 22:51 3.7-mile walk...

"It's cold!"

"I'm sick!"

...there's always all those internal detractors, aren't there? We can make all sorts of excuses. But, those don't hold up in front of the mirror, do they?

And thus, I walked. And walked. And walked. Along the way, I did glide through Sleepy Hollow Park, but I also swung by the old Fred's, the old O'Charley's, and the old Zondervan's. I walked past the once-24-hr-now-6-AM Kroger's that I had sacked groceries some 30 years ago in 1994. I saw all of the old 16-year-old faces...the 45-year-old reflection reminds me that nothing but memories remain.

I passed In the Cellar (a favorite tabletop store), inhaled the making of donuts of a shop's pre-open hour, hurriedly walked through a desolate segment of Freeman Park, and entered a neighborhood to make it by my sister's old house. There I was posing again with her and my parents for a Thanksgiving 2000:

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I continued down Elmore, hit Hwy 70, and ran out of Bartlett.

On my way back up, I took my wife's offer of a pickup on the non-sidewalk, blind curves side midpoint of Alturia. I had it within me to push on and maybe I should have but it became light out.

All-in-all, it was a 6.34-mile journey at a 20:30 with the time spent in the 7th mile at a 18:57 pace. When I came home, I felt like I had more in the tank as I pulled the nostalgia out of the trunk.