Life: At Two Miles an Hour

I dragged my aching foot across the asphalt. One more step. Then one more step. My chest was heaving as I tried to gulp more oxygen into my tortured lungs. Great drops of perspiration poured down my face and stung my eyes. I had been in saunas that didn't make me sweat this hard. My hands were slippery with the stuff. Another lunge - another step. Searing pain shot through my shoulders, arms and hands. Somehow the pain in my arms and hands didn't make me forget the pain in my lungs, back, thigh, calf, foot... How can you hurt in so many places at once? "Come on baby, you are almost there," the soft voice behind me urged. That voice had been my greatest source of encouragement for the past 21 years. My wife Kara was unquestionably my biggest fan and promoter. She made me believe things about myself I would never have imagined without her. I took another step. I could see it now. An iron bench - its cool green paint glistening with the splashes of sunlight that danced through the thick canopy of cottonwoods growing along the stream my trail followed. I fixed my gaze on the bench and pushed through the pain and distance that separated me from the relief I desperately needed. My mind flashed to Zeno's Paradox, where - if you cover half the distance from point A to point B, and then half the distance again, and so on, you could continue covering half the remaining distance forever, but never actually get there because there are an infinite number of halves to cover. Maybe so, but at least at some point you could stop moving. I pushed these thoughts aside and took another step - halfway to the bench. At last, despite Zeno's pessimism, I crumpled in a heap on the bench. "Way to go, hun! How do you feel?" "Like I've been hit by a truck," I moaned between gasps. I leaned back on the bench and closed my eyes, waiting for my heart to slow and for the light breeze to cool me down. "You are doing it! We need to do this again this afternoon," she said casually. I squinted through the slits in my all-but-closed eyes to see if she was joking. She was not. I gave her a noncommittal grunt in response. I wasn't exactly encouraged at the moment. I was going to do the impossible! I was going to walk across America on crutches and this was my first training exercise. I had walked a quarter of a mile. I wasn't all that sure I could make it home, let alone cross a continent. A quarter of a mile and I felt like I was going to die. What was I thinking?