Introduction

     Two years ago in 2006 I quit my job and at the age of 52 tried to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (AT).  I did not undertake this endeavor casually.  For decades I had dreamed about it and finally decided that I was getting older faster than I was getting wealthy enough to put it off until I was financially secure.  Over the years my wife had listened to my dreaming and she fully supported my endeavor.  I had used several vacations to spend a week camping on the AT in Pennsylvania and had loved every, well most, minute(s).  

  My brother drove me in June 2006 to Mt. Katahdin in Maine and I set out southward on my dream.  About  85 miles later, 70 miles into the “100 Mile Wilderness,” I blew out my right knee coming down a mountain.  While I had worried about having the strength to climb mountains at my age, it was the less strenuous but more jarring downhills that were too much for by ACL reconstructed joint.  I limped out my last 30 miles over three days, which was plenty of time to stew in my failure.  Don’t wait until you’re 52 to fulfill your dreams that you have at 25.

  A few months later while I was still recovering I heard a radio story about a man who was trying to walk every block of  every street in New York City.   Thru-hiking is a term normally associated with walking the AT from end to end.  Sometimes it’s used for other long trails like the Pacific Coast or Continental Divide Trails.  But this guy was thru-hiking New York starting with Manhattan.  He thought that it would take several years. 

  This gave me the idea of thru-hiking my hometown, Upper Darby, PA.  Since I’m a regular runner, I’m actually going to thru-run not thru-hike, but I mean to cover every block of every street.   

  Upper Darby has a lot of streets. On its eastern edge it is directly adjacent to the city of Philadelphia .  With a population of 80,000 it is Philly’s most populous suburb and the sixth largest municipality in Pennsylvania.  It has many more people, houses and therefore streets than the more well known PA cities of Scranton, Bethlehem, Harrisburg and Lancaster. The school district claims 40 languages are spoken in our children’s homes.  The houses 

here range from a 300 year old Swedish log cabin to 60’s ranches, brick row-homes to Victorian mansions.

  A great facet of our township is that virtually every house has a sidewalk, nearly every street is sidewalked on both sides.  I’m not going to run every sidewalk, since it would double my trip, but I will say a prayer for all those who have zoned, built, swept or shoveled these under appreciated community assets.  These are fantastic for pedestrian safety and for building a sense of neighborhood.  I’ll never understand why the new exurb Mc-Mansion tracts fail to build these simple, but critical, necessities.

     Although once an avid marathoner, I’m not even a daily runner anymore with all my injuries.  But I’ll be out two or three days a week to complete this journey through Near-at-Hand-Land.  I have a large street map from our Department of Public Works that I will use to plan my routes and record my progress.  I’ll also post after each entry a weblink to a saved route at www.gmap-pedometer.com.   This site uses Google Maps to measure a route of your choosing.  Unfortunately it will also inform you that your four mile walk was only 2.37 miles.    If you click on, or copy and paste the link into your browser’s address bar, that day’s route should appear overlaid on a street map of Upper Darby.  Come along.  Follow along.  Get inspired.  Run or walk your hometown.  You never know where the road will lead you.