Kevin's Walk Central is operating!

Kevin's Walk Central is composed, for the moment, of only one intrepid volunteer, Mr. Alan Cook. Alan has very kindly donated his time to helping me plan my route back to the east coast. Given the straits I've been in, I'd say he has taken on a massive responsibility. This means two things to you:

1. If you want to become part of Kevin's Walk Central to help with route planning, please write Alan at:

kevinswalkcentral [at] gmail [dot] com

2. If you have info or ideas you'd like to pass along to Kevin's Walk Central (e.g., houses that might volunteer a couch or bed, potential houses of worship or cheap university dorms or decent campsites along my probable route, interesting people I should meet, etc.), please email Kevin's Walk Central at the same address so Alan can examine your ideas more closely:

kevinswalkcentral [at] gmail [dot] com

Let me discuss KWC in more detail.

The primary, and admittedly selfish, purpose of KWC is to free me up to just walk to a destination, arrive there, talk, and leave, confident that I've got another place to go. Kevin's Walk Central is like Mission Control, then, and I'm the plump astronaut hurtling through theospace. As things stand, we still haven't built up enough momentum to get the route to start planning itself, so I'm hoping that a group of volunteers can kick-start that process. What's happened thus far is that I've arrived at a place, and then the trail's gone cold, causing delay and expense (not that I'm blaming the places where I'm staying! I've already discussed why I'm in the current predicament).

KWC volunteers will be poring over maps, discussing plausible routes over this or that patch of land (I'm looking for ease more than anything, so routes that take me along roads will be better than rough mountain trails), contacting various religious institutions, homes, etc. If we end up with several volunteers, I'm hoping they coordinate with each other. The end result will be to present me with my next destination(s), and my route(s) to it/them. The people at those destinations will already be expecting me.

Assuming we get a group of KWC volunteers, my hope is that they will take the time to get to know each other, as one major theme of this walk is interconnection. It's not enough just to be a cypher at a keyboard; let's foster some human relationships. A practical reason for this is that the group can, over time, develop an "institutional memory," so that if one or two people drop out later on, the rest of the volunteers can recruit newbies and quickly train them as to what to do.

When planning the routes, volunteers might try thinking outside of the box: start with a far-off destination and plan the route towards where I am, for example.

Alan's the only guy working KWC at the moment, so he's the Big Cheese. As I noted at the beginning of this post, if you're interested in helping us out, please write Alan at the above KWC address.

We're hoping to hear from you soon! Remember that it doesn't really matter where you're located (except maybe for long-distance phone charges). Alan himself is thousands of miles from where I am.

Thanks!


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