August 3: Day 5
After packing up our belongings and saying goodbye to the Westminster Unitarian Church, we started walking at 9:10 a.m. with the sun high in the sky. Prepared for the heat with plenty of sunscreen and water, we (now 20 walkers) began our hike down Route 1. Today, we had more exposure to drivers than on any other day yet. There must have been at least 6,000 cars that passed us, and the supportive honks were practically continuous! Their enthusiasm lifted our spirits (and our feet!).
At 1:20 p.m., we stopped for lunch after clocking 12 miles (our average is 10 miles before lunch)! We were welcomed by three individuals from last night's audience, and we were all happy to eat with some familiar faces after a day full of cars whizzing by!
Since we were ahead of schedule, some of the pressure was off for the second part of our day. We had just 3 miles left as we started walking again around 2:20 p.m., and we ended up continuing on to walk an extra mile today, finishing 16.5 miles by 4:30 p.m. (we'll use that credit on another day perhaps...). At this point, we were extremely grateful to Anne for coming to pick up part of our group, helping us immensely by shuttling us to our new home (for the next two nights) at the All Souls Unitarian Church in New London, CT.
A local dharma group invited us to sit in on their weekly meditation session at the church at 5:30 p.m.--nearly right after we walked in the door. After Palden la led us in prayer, we did a half-hour sitting meditation with them, although some walkers could be heard snoring and shifting around their sore muscles. Then we did a short walking meditation (we were really accumulating that good merit today...) that was followed by a huge spread of delicious vegetarian dishes for dinner. We are so grateful for the ultimate donation that the church organized for us: free showers were available nearby! Tonight, not only are we clean and well fed, we are also going to be well-rested as we sleep soundly in an air-conditioned building!
