What else do you remember about what he was like then?

M: He was the person who absolutely had to cover a certain number of miles every day. If you don't have somebody who's doing that, you don't make it. And he was stronger than I was at that point and he was in better shape, and that was hard, but useful, because I had to keep pace with him.

Dad, what do you remember about Mom at that point?

D: She was a very passionate person.

M: That means I got angry on a dime.

D: Well, that's one kind of passion. But so open to different people, and so good at talking with them, learning about them. And really so courageous in pushing along through various kinds of pain, because there were definitely moments when it looked like we couldn't really go on. We started early to avoid the hot weather and then we got hammered by snowstorms in western Pennsylvania, in the mountains. And then we came down the mountains and we hit the hot weather, in Ohio, and it was torrid. We had big rainstorms. It was really hard going.

M: Neither of us wanted to live with having failed at this. I really wanted to prove to myself that I was tough enough to do it. But I don't know if you needed that yourself.

D: I don't think I really doubted that we could do it. It seemed very doable to me.

But you were older. A lot older. Scandalously older, really.

D: Now, that's putting it a little strongly... I just liked being with your mother!

M: I think we both discovered we really liked being with each other. We sort of knew that, but it proved that that wasn't just in the moment and that it would survive challenges.

How'd you spend the bicentennial?

D: We spent it in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

M: Watched fireworks.

D: We saw the fireworks on TV, right?

M: Did we? I thought we sat on the edge of the lake. And also, this was when we went into the photo booth and took all those pictures of ourselves to announce our wedding.

So Dad, did you propose?

D: Um...

M: No.

D: We were walking on the road to Bucyrus, Ohio...

M: Miserably hot — 110, really.

D: And I looked down into the grass by the side of the road and there was a twenty-dollar bill lying there. That was a lot of money in 1976! It was more than enough to cover a night at the Holiday Inn in Bucyrus, where we had a view out the window of the earth-moving machines that are manufactured there, and where they had a Brown Derby restaurant right in the hotel. We decided the time was right.

M: I think it was sort of like a consensus of migrating birds. Your dad didn't get down on his knee and ask me. It was more like, "So, do you think we should just get married?" It was that understated. Probably because it embarrassed both of us a little bit, but also because, you know, it was the '70s. We had thought we would never get married. We thought we would live together. I wasn't sure I wanted to marry anybody.

So what was it like when you arrived?

D: It was certainly very satisfying. I think we walked thirty-five miles the day before we got there, and would have gone the last six if we hadn't wanted to make a sort of more planned entrance the next morning.

The author with his parents today.

M: I remember it as one of the happiest days of my life. I just remember feeling completely overjoyed when we finished. I was ecstatic, as we closed in on it.

And then you got married, and then you had me!

D: Well, that took a while to work up to also!

M: You were a bigger adventure than walking to Wisconsin, Petey.

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