Thursday, December 12, 2013


If you're visiting this site for the first time, I invite you to select the month of May, 2012 found to the right of this page. The first day begins on May 19th.


Many people have asked over the years what my brother Aaron and I did for schooling during the Walk.

My Dad, Richard, was a teacher in the nearby Santa Barbara community of Goleta, California for more than 40 years. When I was a toddler back in the mid 70's, he took a sabbatical from teaching and obtained his masters degree and administrative credential at the University of California Santa Barbara.

My parents approached the independent studies program with our local school district in Ventura. They requested that our school district admit Aaron and me into the program so that we could undertake our goal of walking across the U.S. At first the district denied my parents request stating that the program was rarely used and that it was designed for children in the television and motion picture industry. Dad then appealed to them in the pocket book. He told the district that he was more than happy to pull Aaron and me out of the district and start his own school because of his administrative and teaching credentials and my Mom's teaching credential as well. He just thought that they might like to have the state funding for Aaron and me. Dad proposed that they approve curriculum for the 6 and 8th grades along with our daily journals being graded for English credit. After this suggestion from my Dad, the district was more than happy to accommodate our unique situation.

During the summer leading up to the Walk, I completed a substantial amount of schoolwork. This would prove helpful during our trip. Many of our evenings after walking all day, required that we do our schoolwork. When an assignment or book was completed with my parents guidance, we would mail the work back to Ventura for grading. New assignments and our grades would be mailed to us via general delivery to a post office in an upcoming town or community. This allowed Aaron and me to remain on schedule academically and move back into our schools when we returned from our adventure. I started high school and Aaron started middle school in the 7th grade the following September of 1987.