Measured in distance, I’ve been self-isolating for 1,000 miles. Over 2 million steps in 143 days and maybe an equal number of sheets of toilet paper; I don’t keep track of that last statistic, so that’s a shot in the dark. It’s midday and inching ever closer to 110 degrees, which is a relief as some days ago, we pressed into 118 blaring degrees of Fahrenheit or 48 Celsius. Today, I was outside to not only ensure I reach that one-thousand-mile mark today but it’s also because I’m doing the Prolon modified fast again. There’s something about a highly calorie-restricted diet that makes me restless when I’m not napping, and I’ve got to get out and walk. With my river hat on acting as shade and my ever-lengthening curly hair protecting my neck, I venture out.

I just looked at the walking route between Madrid, Spain, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which comes to 1,043 miles. That path would take me through Antwerp and Brussels before hitting the French border. Once in France, I’d pass through Saint-Quentin on my way to Paris, the next 337 miles would take in a good stretch of the Loire river valley. Where Google says I should leave the river and head toward Château de Chambord, which would certainly be dandy to visit, I think I’d rather deviate to Tours to take in the 850-year-old cathedral. South, my journey would bring me to Poitiers, where I could walk in the footsteps of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I don’t so much care about Eleanor, but the name Aquitaine has always beguiled me; so to say I’ve been to Aquitaine would be a feather in my chapeau. This detour is paying off as not only will we pass through Cognac, but Bordeaux is on the path to the Spanish border. Again, Google gets it wrong keeping the trail inland when right there at Bayonne; it’s only 5 miles to Biarritz, and who wouldn’t want to hang out there for a couple of days?

Donostia-San Sebastian on the Spanish coast is just 28 miles south of the mini-vacation on this long walk. I swear this is the last detour as we are now approaching 1,200 miles as we deviate over to Bilbao. But this will be great as the walk now leads through Burgos, and if I’m presented with the opportunity to walk in Clint Eastwood’s shoes in Burgos, where the iconic cemetery showdown scene was filmed for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I’m going. From here, it’s only 160 miles to Madrid. I thought about heading home from Madrid, but if we fly over to Naples, Italy, it’ll only be 872 miles of walking to hit up Frankfurt and visit with family. All told this adventure would be approximately 2,000 miles of walking, and at the rate of progress regarding this plague, I’ll have walked those 2,000 miles in circles around our block while visiting our apartment every single one of those days.

To think how much time we give up to work until the time we may no longer have the vigor to go on 1,000-mile walks is crazy. I hope that realizing this, Caroline and I will one day take the six months of walking a mere 5.5 miles or 8.9 kilometers a day to trek on some amazing journey such as I described above or maybe this one from Vienna, Austria, to Oslo, Norway, that comes in at only 1,012 miles that I’m looking at. Oh, then I see that Brighton, UK, to Inverness in Scotland, is 586 miles, but that would mostly be in the rain, so maybe not that one.