Weight: 199.2lbs post walk

Diet: Chicken, asparagus, rice and soup for dinner and 1bagel and honey for breakfast

This entry covers yesterday and today but I only timed todays walk. Also, the mileage on my watch and the data above doesn’t really match what’s marked on the trail, but the real mileage was about 4.2 miles total today. Yesterday was a three mile walk.

Yesterday, I invited one of my favorite people out for a walk. It was the first time my neighbor, David, and I walked together after fishing together for the last 10 years. I have been his mentor in fishing so he can take his grandkids out on the lake and be successful or at least have a clue about what to do. That’s very important to me because grandpa needs to know where the fish are and how to catch them when the grands come for a visit. In return, David has been my spiritual mentor, and I have learned so much from him over the years. David and his wife, Ann, have authored at least two books, and I wanted to pick David’s brain a bit about a couple of aspects of writing, as well as some spiritual guidance on my new endeavor. I got both from him; but more importantly, I got the encouragement I needed to keep going.

It’s kinda funny in a way, but David asked me what the folks around me thought about me putting down the fishing rod for a while and writing a book. I had to crack up a bit because they have busy lives and really don’t read my blog, but that was all okay because that’s what gives me the fuel I need to keep going. It’s like I shouted, “Hey, guess what fam? God told me to write a book!” This is a good pictorial depiction of the expected response….

Man, I love that picture and sometimes I crack myself up looking at it. It’s like I just told a raunchy Navy joke or something.

I told David that I know it sounds weird, but I no longer had the slightest desire to fish, and the book is what I’ve been tasked to focus on. So, David and I walked on, and then David put his hand on my shoulder as we walked along, and he prayed for me aloud. People were walking by, and here we were, David and I walking in prayer. It was David on my left with his hand on my left shoulder praying, and Noah was on my right with his hand on my right shoulder, saying, “Welcome to my world, Jim.” After our prayer, David said, “If there’s anything I learned about you over the course of the last ten years, it is that you have an uncanny dedication and devotion to your interests, whether it was training for a marathon or learning to improve your fishing skills.” I wasn’t looking for technical help in my writing skills or suggestions from David as much as I was looking for encouragement, and he did just that.

This is my third week of walking the trail, and one thing that I get from spending this kind of time by myself—whether it’s fishing, running, or walking a trail—is clarity. It may be the extra oxygen from being outside, but for some reason, I can sort it all out and come up with a plan. Remember a few entries ago when I talked about always setting goals for yourself? One goal I set for myself is to get down to 175lbs and see if it’s possible to run again on two replaced knees. But another goal for now is to finish my writing over the course of the next few months. Here’s a sneak peek at the layout and title. The title is explained in the preface.

The book has three sections of short stories, and the name of the book is “The Shadows of October” (Stories of Fishing, Freedom, and Faith). Each section has a number of stories from my life.

The fishing section is called “Fifty Years of Fishing” and will interest the Lanier fishermen because the first story is called “Twenty Years on Lanier” and that encompasses a lot of what I learned in those twenty years and some of the fishermen around the lake that were an influence on me. There will also be other stories from some of my fishing adventures over the years.

The second section is called “Twenty Years of Service,” and it will encompass 20 years of service to the Navy and this country in short stories. There are a few stories from the blog that will be included in this section, but there will also be some stories that I’ve not shared with anyone. There are some things that I experienced in the Navy that I don’t talk about much, but some people ask about them. You can’t work in the environment that I worked in and not see some gruesome things over the years, so I’ll share a few of the more heinous incidents that used to give me nightmares, as well as a raw look at what it’s like for us maintenance folks in fighter and fighter/attack squadrons.

The third and last section is called “Fishing for Faith” and is about faith as it pertains to my story and my journey through Christianity. This section will be devoted to my grandchildren so they can have a tangible look at their grandfather’s life (so far). There are stories of some unexplained events and explanations of how God has been a factor in my life and has given clarity to the unexplained. I’ve said it before in the blog, but my grandfathers were great men and significant influences in my life in their unique ways. I just wish someone would have written a book about their lives because all I have left of my grandparents are the pictures and the memories, and they are fading fast.

My plan is to release the book on my dad’s birthday in October which gives me about 3 months to finish my work. We’ll see how it goes but eventually this blog is going to go away, either by a hacker or myself, but I’m going to extract everything I’m going to use in the book very soon. Most folks don’t know this, but my blog was already hacked, stolen and sold off without my knowledge once, but it was recovered. The next time I might not be so lucky.

Song of the day. Not the original but an awesome rendition.