Thursday, April 03, 2008

The man, the myth...

Maybe even the (blogging) legend, The Big Hominid is moving. As always, I will probably keep him on my blogroll for another month before fixing the link.

He will be preparing for a wonderful sounding walk across the US in support of inter-religious dialogue and news on the subject can be found here.

I guess that people who set off on endurance trips don't compare themselves to others - the motivation comes from inside, not from outdoing another traveller's accomplishment. I hope that's the case, because I enjoy endurance travel with the huge opportunity for personal reflection and my bicycle trip across Canada (78th time I've been able to work that into a post!) is far overmatched by the scale of his trip.

In the linked post, he states that his walk may whittle him down to a less freakish size. Perhaps he has been in Korea too long; I think that once he arrives in America, he will be average sized and average shaped. I should say North America (or even Northern North America) because Canadians are no smaller.

If he imagined marching through the woods with other hikers making claims of seeing Bigfoot, well, he should have stayed here. Besides, as a half-Korean, I doubt his feet are beyond size 10 and he can probably buy shoes anywhere (sorry, the complaints of this large-footed author are not relevant here).

I'll be following his march as closely as I can and wish him the best.

4 comments:

Kevin Kim said...

Thanks, man. Much appreciated.

True: I'm not comparing myself to anyone except perhaps to note that what I'm doing is no longer that special. I haven't actually done the research, but at this point it seems likely that dozens if not hundreds of people have done the human-powered trans-North-America thing, crossing thousands of miles on foot or by pedal (bipedal-- get it? oh, I crack me up! ...sigh...).

If, however, I were to compare myself to someone, I would do so-- unfavorably to myself-- by holding up Terry Fox as an example of true dedication. What I'm doing amounts to little more than stage diving. What he did was touch lives.

Peace,


Kevin

kwandongbrian said...

I'm proud to say Mr Fox ran past me as I stood on the side of the highway cheering.

What about comparing yourself to Forrest Gump?

Kevin Kim said...

Oh, man... I've already gotten that one more times than I can count. And I can count almost to ten.


Kevin

kwandongbrian said...

I want to avoid sounding like Buddha mind = idiot mind, but Forrest lived totally in the moment and did not get distracted with things happening elsewhere. Also, things seemed to turn out well for him - there are worse models for you.