16K "Dropping"

Ingrid and I had been planning to do what we were calling a "dropping" for several weeks. We wanted to challenge ourselves with a 15K walk and so I figured out where we could start, and planned out the route so that it would take us about 15 kilometers to walk back home. And then I asked my oldest son, who recently got his driver's license, if he would drop us off at our starting point. "Sure," he said, "but technically, that's not a dropping." Oh, yeah? "A dropping is when you get dropped somewhere without a clue how to get back or even knowing where you are, not to mention how far you are going to walk and the exact route, Mom!" Hmmm. Well, we still are calling it a dropping, because we got dropped off and we walked back. In my book, that's a dropping. And we were pretty darn proud of oursevlves for completing it: It was a gorgeous sunny day and we had a great time. The route we picked had some really nice paths, a lot of variety and some decent hills. By the time we approached our home stretch, after three and half hours, we were definitely feeling it. Before we parted we stopped the Garmin so we could see how many calories we had burned (830) - and then we both headed home, which was another 400 meters or so (I started a new route on my Garmin on the way home just to be sure). Which means we did 16K - our longest distance to date. I was pooped when I got home and my legs were killing me. But I was very pleased with our accomplishment. The only downside to a dropping (well, our style of dropping) is that the last stretch is a bit too familiar (= boring), being in our own neighborhood, and since we don't finish together, we don't get to share a cold beer at a cafe afterwards...I think our dropping formula is going to need some further tweaking if we decide to do it again in the future. But it was fun to try for a change!