Hello Everyone,

Well here I am again writing about the continuation of my trek, Leg 3.
As you may remember, I began my trek last year at my home in Santa Paula and trekked to Klamath Falls, Oregon. I trek over 760 miles total in two legs. The first leg was about 360 miles and the second leg about 400 miles.

I had developed plantar fasciitis before I began my second leg and started anyway, but decided to stop in Klamath Falls as the pain became to great to continue.

It’s been almost eight months since I stopped and during that time completely stopped exercise walking in an attempted to heal the injury. I have been diligent in my healing exercises, seeing a chiropractor (my good friend Robert Berkowitz in Ventura), and recently a great acupuncturist.

After all these months of rest and treatment, I felt my foot was about 60-70% better, but not completely pain free. I was concerned about the warm weather if I waited later in the summer, so I decided to start now back where I left off, Klamath Falls, Oregon. I have some good exercises and advise so I hope I can work through any pain.

I took the train out of Oxnard Sunday morning and arrived in Klamath early Monday morning. I had booked a seat at the last minute, and then at the last minute, splurged and got a Roomette, a small private room.

I consider the start of my trek the minute I step on the train. I felt lucky as I got a room on the ocean view side. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, are included and the porter came to my room to ask what time I wanted my reservations. Wow, I didn’t know they still do that on trains.

The best part of my trek is always the people I meet and being on the train was no exception. I had a nice lunch and conversation with two Amtrak Electrical Engineers and they filled me in on all the good and bad things about Amtrak. They don’t take the train if they are in a hurry.

My dinner was even better, not only was the food good, but my table mates were very nice and very interesting. Two were a husband and wife of Chinese decent, but they were born in South Africa. He was a doctor and she was an acupuncturist (how ironic). Interesting stories about his medical school in South Africa, where, because he was classified as colored, he was not allowed to work on white cadavers. He was also not allowed to treat whites. Both went back to China and learned acupuncture and were the first people to introduce it into the main stream in South Africa.

They emigrated to the America twelve years ago and volunteer registering the homeless people in Orange County as it is their passion because of all those years that they were not allowed to vote in South Africa because they were colored.

My breakfast mates were almost as interesting. I was enjoying our conversation so much that I almost missed my stop in Klamath. Lucky for me the porter came and told me the train was leaving in a few minutes. Sorry to go on like that, but that’s what I tend to do in my blog.

So I had a nice night’s sleep in my room, with the curtains open and watching the night lights going by. I got to Klamath and my brother Tom picked me up and took me to Ashland for two days so I could pick up a few supplies and figure out my route. I won’t bore you with the two days and will continue my blog when I leave Wednesday, May 13.

Please excuse the typos, etc., as I was having a hard time charging my iPad and found it easier to keep my phone charged, so I am blogging on my phone.

Best wishes,
Ted