Another funny coincidence

There's a piece about me in the Times today by a journalist whose name is also Goddard. Isn't that weird?

Uniontown, Pennsylvania. 374 miles

Nine miles in six days - now that's what I call a snail's pace. But it's been the most unforgettable six days of my trip so far.

I was getting a bit worried about the pain in my leg, which I'm pretty sure is a condition called shin splints. Thank you so much to everyone who emailed with advice and suggestions - the consensus was that rest was the best remedy.

Trouble is, I'm not good at resting, which would normally involve twiddling my thumbs in my tent or motel room, and I didn't relish the prospect.

For the first time, I'd given out my phone number in a newspaper interview. Cheekily, I said that I welcomed calls and offers of accommodation - motels and nights in the tent are fine, but one of the main reasons I'm doing this walk is to meet people.

By a huge stroke of good fortune, two people responded. Both went to great lengths to help me recharge my batteries for a while.

The first was Wilma, one of the warmest, kindest and most generous individuals I have ever met. I shall miss her very much.

The second was Tim Woolston, to whom a similar description applies. He left a message saying he was an Englishman living in a Christian community called the Bruderhof, in Farmington, PA, and they'd like to meet me. Intrigued, I went to see them, and ended up spending three days with Tim and his wife Martha.

Founded in 1920, the Bruderhof (place of the brothers) has some 2,500 members living in communities in the US, Germany, Britain and Australia. Their strong emphasis on pacifism has made them victims of persecution in the past.

Spring Valley, where I stayed, is home to around 250 men, woman and children, while New Meadow Run, just across the road, has another 250.

Members pool all their money, and also raise funds through two businesses: Community Playthings, which manufactures toys and furniture for schools and daycare centres, and Spring Valley Signs, which makes handcarved signs.

I was overwhelmed by the welcome I received. I've shaken so many hands in the past week that I'm in danger of adding carpal tunnel syndrome to my list of maladies. I've made speeches to a couple of hundred people at a time - something that would have had me quaking in my hobnailed walking boots a month or so ago. And I've spent several hours picking beans on their huge expanses of organic garden, and screwing castors onto furniture in Community Playthings' state-of-the-art factory, where all the staff work for free.

Some of the happiest moments involved kids from the communities' two schools. At Spring Valley, the fifth and sixth graders asked me to talk about Jayne and my walk. We had some time left over afterwards, so we did battle in a hilarious geography quiz, them versus me, in which they disproved once and for all the stereotype that Americans have no idea what exists beyond their own shores.

The kids at New Meadow Run school make their own bread and sell it in the driveway on Saturday mornings. They donated $500 of the proceeds to my walk. Thank you all so much!

I was really impressed by the way in which these communities have made such sacrifices to put their ideals into practice. It was only a brief visit, but it looked to me like a very successful experiment which the outside world could learn a lot from.

One sobering thought: they told me I was the fourth person this year to pass by their entrance on a trans-US trek and to be invited in: three walkers and one horse rider. I've also met two others, so maybe there are huge armies of us crisscrossing the States, oblivious to one another's presence.

It's back to real life tomorrow as I resume the walk. I'm going to keep my mileage down for a while, as I don't think the injury is fully better. The relative solitude will also take some getting used to after all this constant open-armed hospitality.

Chalk Hill, Pennsylvania. 365 miles.

I've made a big (by my snail's-pace pedestrian standards) detour back into Pennsylvania.

Jayne and I used to have a calendar on our wall showing Fallingwater, the house built by Frank Lloyd Wright for department store magnate Edgar J. Kauffmann in 1935. We always said we'd like to see it some day, so I've finally fulfilled an ambition. And it was well worth the effort.

Wright practised organic architecture, designing buildings that harmonised with, rather than dominated, the natural environment. Fallingwater cascades down the side of a hill, a series of sandstone walls and cantilevered concrete platforms bestriding a tumbling stream and surrounded by dense forest. It's rightly regarded as one of the greatest private residences of the twentieth century, and was way ahead of its time.



On a more prosaic note, this is Norm and Marg Westwood. I wandered into the tiny town of Addison, PA, and met Norm in the street. I asked him if there was anywhere to stay in town, and he and Marg made a flurry of phone calls to find out. There was one B & B, but the owner wanted me out at 6.30 am, so they said come and stay with us.

We sat on the deck of their beautiful house, putting the world to rights over a beer and watching the sun go down. They are delightful, witty people and I want to thank them for their hospitality.



And on a very prosaic note indeed, I have a problem with my feet: one of my shins hurts a lot, and slowed me down to a crawl this afternoon. My only worry about this walk is that something will go wrong physically and stop me from finishing, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed and cutting down my mileage for a few days.

All in a day's work, no. 1

Skyler Bolden (left), 22, has a boring job. I don't think he'll mind my saying that; he bores wells for a living. I bumped into him at work in someone's front garden this afternoon.

"Most places here, outside of the towns and cities, get their water from wells. This customer came to us because his was filling with sand. We started digging him another one, but the water was salty from all the salt they put on the roads in winter, so now we're trying again. We get the water samples back from the lab, and if they're OK we go ahead and dig.

"On average, we have to dig to around 400 to 600 feet to find water, and it takes us two to three days. Almost everyone has groundwater on their property, but sometimes finding it is a matter of trial and error, and on occasions we have to go as deep as 1,200 or even 1,500 feet.

"We're using an Ingersoll Rand drilling rig here. We put a bit down the hole and push compressed air down the hollow stem to turn the bit into a hammer. It breaks the rock and flushes it out of the hole - sometimes we mix in water and foam to keep the hole clean.

"Then we force a Betonite grout round the outside of the pipe to line the well, and install a pump. Nobody uses an old-fashioned bucket and rope any more. This well will cost the customer around $7,000 to $8,000.

"My dad , Wayne, started the business twenty-five years ago. I just grew up around it and found it interesting.

"Remember those nine guys that got trapped down a mine in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, back in 2002? We helped to rescue them by digging two or three de-watering tunnels. They came and thanked us afterwards, though we've sort of lost touch with them since then."

Recipe of the week

Phil's baked bananas
Take three bananas, place in a plastic bag. Leave in top pocket of backpack for three hours at 37C (99F, gas mark 1) until skins are black and bananas are hot and soggy. Consume immediately. Much less unpleasant than they sound.

Grantsville, Maryland. 329 miles.

For the last few days, I've been following the route of the National Road, America's first tarmac road. It's now part of US highway 40, which stretches almost from coast to coast and used to be the main east-to-west highway.

It's hard to imagine this meandering two-lane country road teeming with settlers and soldiers, as it did during the 19th century; some of the bits I've walked along have a desolate feel, lined with abandoned farmhouses so decrepit a single kick would probably bring them crashing around my ears. While some sections have been busy, most have been almost completely devoid of traffic.

The landscapes of western Maryland have been stunning: rolling, forested hills, the occasional 3,000-foot mountain (I just switch into low gear, put my head down and try not to think about the road ahead) and more sparsely populated than I've been used to.

This has meant that water has sometimes been a problem, especially as the temperature climbs; it was phenomenally hot yesterday, and the two one-litre bottles that used to last me all day are enough for a couple of hours. I started off by asking people in their front gardens for water, and when I couldn't find enough of these I took to knocking on doors.

On two occasions, the road suddenly and unexpectedly merged with the interstate. This wasn't shown on the map, and I had no other way of getting to my destination, so I just crossed my fingers and kept going, illegally, with hundreds of cars whizzing past at 65 miles an hour. I hope this isn't going to happen too often, especially as I once got pulled over by the police.

Today has been what I call a Tooting Day - nothing to do with the south London suburb, but a response to coverage of my story in the local media. Drivers often toot their horns when they see the "Coast to Coast" banner on my backpack, but on Tooting Days (there have been about ten so far) it happens much more frequently. They're also more likely to stop for a conversation, hand me a bottle of water and/or give me a donation, all of which really lifts my spirits.

The walking is going well at the moment. The blisters that slowed me down to a crawl shortly after I started have now almost gone, and when the straps on my pack are properly adjusted I hardly notice it's there.


This has to be America's most grandiloquently named rural dirt track: click twice to view full-size

Cumberland, Maryland. 305 miles.

Confession time
It could only be a matter of time before a blog by Phil got round to matters linguistic, and so it has come to pass.

As I venture deeper into the wilderness, so my civilised suburban standards have begun ebbing away. My tattered shorts are held up by a piece of equally frayed string, I wear the same t-shirt two days running to save on laundry, and my socks - well, let's not go there.

But I'm also turning a blind eye to the Americans' constant, ubiquitous manipulation of my beloved English language. The night before last, I stayed at a motel that was part of a chain called Americas Best Value Inn.

I could just picture the shiny-suited executive standing up at a board meeting: "We can save $50 million a year on our printing costs just by leaving out the apostrophe. No one will notice except that Brit guy - whats his name, Phil Goddard? - and he's just a pedant."

I left out the apostrophe in whats as a joke, by the way.

Two nights before that, I visited a Kampgrounds of America kampground. Since you ask, I stayed in kamping kabin no. 17. To me, replacing Cs with Ks suggests wacky eccentricity - hardly the kind of image a kampground would want to kultivate.

But this practice is responsible for two of America's finest contributions to international culture, so maybe we should grin and bear it. The world would be a less colourful place without Krispy Kreme donuts and Krusty the Klown.

While we're on the subject of words, in the past couple of days I've been through two places with mildly embarrassing names, both in Maryland: Hancock and Pratt. But the real granddaddy of them all was the little town in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where I spent the night a while back.



It used to mean "crossroads", apparently.

I saw this today in the window of a chiropractor's, and I thought it perfectly summed up the purpose of my journey. Then she came out and asked why I was taking a picture of it. I told her, and she gave me a hug.

Hancock, Maryland. 271 miles.

People
Coincidence no. 1
I was sitting outside a church making a phone call when some people wandered out, asked me what I was doing, and invited me in for a drink. In my typically polite British fashion, I declined because I'd had just had lunch and plenty to drink. One of them introduced himself as Bob Allen.
Three days and forty miles later, I walked into a bookshop looking for maps, and who should be in there but Bob Allen. He invited me to dinner and this time, rather less ungraciously, I accepted. This led to the creation of Goddard's Law: if you've got the choice between walking one more mile or meeting one more person, meet one more person.
This is Bob with his wife Rika, sons Hira and Yoshi, and foster-son Austin. Among other things, Bob lectures in the ethnography of the Amish people, who live in large numbers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was a fund of interesting facts. I pitched my tent in their back garden, and Hira put his newly acquired one up next to mine. We got rained on, but we lived to tell the tale.

Coincidence no. 2
And this is Paul, Carol and Amanda Cheshire, of Dublin, Pennsylvania. I was sitting in the street and playing with my phone; Carol and Amanda were sitting in a cafe opposite wondering what I was doing. Being Americans, instead of keeping it to themselves, they came up to me and asked. I told them, and they promptly invited me home.
Paul, it soon transpired, is a translator like me - I've never met a fellow member of my profession by chance, simply because there are so few of us. He is translating the Bible into Malinké, a language spoken in Senegal; I translate crappy inter-office memos and PowerPoint presentations. He is serving God, I am serving Mammon, but our jobs are much the same.
[Photo to come]

Coincidence no 3
And finally, I'd like to introduce Stuart Hamilton and Dave Toolan, two doughty Brits who've had the brazen effrontery to walk across the States at the same time as me. They're following the American Discovery Trail, which starts in Delaware, and began three weeks before me. But then they were laid up in Washington DC for a long time, thanks to Dave's dodgy tendons. I was aware of their existence because I'd discovered their truly excellent and very witty website, and we spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago.

Two days ago, I was approaching Hagerstown, Maryland, and followed my usual practice of ringing the local paper to see if they were interested in a story. The news editor said: "Oh, thanks for ringing, but I've just been speaking to your friend." "Er, I don't have a friend," I said (Well, I do have one or two, actually, but they have wisely elected to stay at home). "Your friend who's walking with you," she clarified.

Then it dawned on me: "Is one of them called Stu?" Yes, they and I had both arrived in the same small town on the same hot afternoon. I reckon the chances of that happening are approximately infinity to one, and the journalist who interviewed me said her colleagues had discussed whether we were operating some kind of scam.

We finally managed to meet up for lunch today. For obvious reasons, we have a huge amount in common, and we got on like a house on fire. I wish them all the very best with their walk and their fundraising.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 199 miles.

"Sylvan idyll"? "Suburban dystopia?" Sorry, got a bit carried away there. I'll try writing in plain English from now on.

There are two major events in Gettysburg this weekend. One is a spectacular annual reenactment of the battle, which I'm ashamed to say I didn't visit because I have a translation deadline approaching. I'm accepting little bits of work here and there to while away the endless hours in motels, though I must say blogging and answering emails passes the time in a very agreeable fashion. So I've hardly set foot out of my room, but at least I've had my very first rest day since I started. I went out without my 40lb pack for the first time, and it felt really strange.

The other event is Bike Week, in which tens, if not hundreds of thousands of bikes converge on the town - that's bikes as in big growly Harley-Davidsons, not little tinkly Halfords Fifty Quid Specials like the one I ride at home. I love bikes of both varieties, but I had their rumbling constantly in my ears from dawn to dusk as I trudged down highway 30 yesterday, and by the end I was fed up with them.

It was a good day distance-wise - in fact my best so far, at 20 miles. That might not sound very much, but I spend half of each day oversleeping, getting lost, having rest breaks and adjusting the straps on my pack, so that's not bad going.

York, Pennsylvania. 168 miles.

Hello!

Sorry about the delay in getting this blog up and running. Also, you'll find it a bit disorganised, but in a nice way, as in jumping backwards and forwards and going off at tangents all the time. I hope you enjoy it, and please do add your comments, because I want to make it as interactive as possible.

My name is Phil Goddard, I'm British, and I'm 47. I'm walking from New York to Los Angeles in memory of my much-loved wife Jayne, who died on colon cancer in January 2006. I'm also raising money for the Association for International Cancer Research.

I think I'm going to enjoy the walk, for two reasons: places, and people.

The places are the countless beautiful little towns with clapboard houses and white-painted churches, and the two-lane roads meandering through verdant cornfields. But it hasn't all been like this: I've decided there should be a special symbol on the map for roads lined with strip malls, cheap motels and McDonalds, so people like me can steer clear of them. Apart from asking people, there's often no way of telling in advance whether my route is going to be sylvan idyll or suburban dystopia.

The people: well, my sister and hardworking part-time PR consultant, Jacqui, has been bombarding the local media with press releases as I walk, and the response has been excellent. I've already done seven newspaper interviews, so people keep stopping their cars, winding the window down and chatting and/or thrusting money into my hand. Also, I have a "Coast to Coast" banner on the back of my pack, a surefire conversation starter.

Some of these encounters have been very moving. At lunchtime today, a guy sat down at my table and told me he had colon cancer - he'd had radical surgery, and was expecting to survive. And then this evening, a couple just walked up to me in the street and invited me to dinner. They'd just come from the funeral of his sister, who'd died of lymphoma.

It's been a very humbling experience, and already I've been overwhelmed by the flood of goodwill.