The 50 Mile Hike Phenomenon

I found this website interesting. Seems like quite a challenge.

I'm old enough to recall that brouhaha.

Some time in the past three or four years I read that President Kennedy more or less pulled that comment, to the effect that any fit, red-blooded American lad should be able to hike 50 miles in a day, out of his, let's just say, 'hat'. After all, that's roughly a double-marathon, and it's well beyond any ordinary fitness level in the industrialized countries.

The media picked that up made such a fuss about it that he forced his kid brother RFK to do one - to prove his point. It about killed him. (JFK, of course, could not have hiked 50 miles in a day to save his soul.)

Here are some pictures from the 50 mile walks. Guess you don't need trekking poles and synthetic clothes to make it.

The Minneapolis Hiking club did it for 43 years.

It sure would keep our military in good shape.

I recall it, too. My mother actually did some of the "Volksmarch" outings that were one piece of the craze; my Dad more or less indicated that he thought he'd already filled his quota of such hikes on Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa (after some practice hikes in Pennsylvania and Mississippi.)

As a kid, I walked everywhere - never had much desire to learn to ride a bike, which I felt was too much hassle - you had to watch traffic, steer around rocks and gravel, and then find somewhere to lock the blasted thing up after you got there. It was easier just to walk. (That carried over into the "simple is better" mantra that describes my backpacking style, I guess.) I still prefer walking to biking.

As I recall, one other after-effect of this craze was the rails-to-trails movement.

Back in the day, all rails were trails.

We'd have to walk 5 miles each way in the blowing snow to pick up coal that fell off the cars so we'd have enough coal to heat the house for half a day. If we were lucky, someone's cow got hit and we had to carry it back.

You had a HOUSE?

Sorry, couldn't resist - I'm done now.

Yeah, that's what we called the refridgerater box we lived in.

I love that one! Well done - you win this one. Now we need to find a thread to use for the tie-breaker.