Wow! California dreaming has become a reality. My run in the dark on Day 64 was near to perfect. I was on California's famous Route 1 just below Big Sur. I had crashing surf at my right elbow and the road was quiet, just me and the pilot van. A deer ran with me for a few feet in the thicket across the road. Large seabirds were sweeping low flying back and forth in front of me. During one jog inland, a horse snorted at me from across a fence. The scents were an array of conflicting smells, including skunk grass, anisette, salty seaweed and toasting corn. I think the latter was probably the corn nuts I ate about an hour before my run. My only complaint was the crown on the road. Luckily I was on the right side. Right crowns jar my tight iliotibial band but left crowns jar my entire pelvis and lower back. We had backtracked to fill in for a Team Yellow runner so I was running back towards San Simeon and right past the Hearst Castle.

I visited the Hearst Castle in the early 1970's, during my first trip to this part of the States. On that trip I took in all the tourist sites as well as camping and hiking in some wilderness areas. I was alone in my Karmann Ghia convertible, paying about 28 cents per gallon for gas, travelling across the country and then up Route 1 from Los Angeles to the deep woods of Oregon. In Oregon I hooked up with a friend and lived in a teepee for a week. Those were the days. I always remember those free times when I come to the Pacific coast. I feel pretty free right now on this global run. Not because we are free to do what we want. To the contrary. But because my usual life's responsibilities are still thousands of miles away. The time here is already flying by and New York is at our doorstep. I can taste my first hike up Camel's Hump and riding my bike to Worcester.

I'm hoping that by the time we get to New York someone will have found my Blue Planet Run sneaker. Throughout the city 20 big sculpted sneakers have been created and decorated by famous people and dedicated to each runner. We found Simon's at the United Nations when we took off in June. His was created by Courtney Cox and entitled "Imagine." These have been on the auction block through Ebay. If any one has seen mine, please let me know.

I can tell I'm home because I'm back in the land of not being able to open anything. I thought the packaging in Japan was overdone, but at least there the packaging tore open with relative ease, or had decipherable directions on how. Here I can't get into anything without grunting. The Listerine bottle I purchased took me about five frustrating minutes to open.

We spent the night and our day off in Santa Maria, a concrete suburb 10 miles off the Central Coast. I woke up surrounded by highways and fast food places. It is "McDonald" land, the land of oversized everything. Too much food, too much air conditioning, too many cars, too many oversized people. The weather is beautiful and we have a pool so I've spent the day snoozing, reading and visiting with team members. I'll get another solid sleep before we resume running. Tomorrow other team members will be negotiating Los Angeles and, if I stay on Team Green, we will be running over the San Bernadino Mountains.

Returning to the States also means access to the news and it is two things, distressing and "same old same old." The distressing current news includes the disasters - the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge, the wild fires that are still rampant in the West, and the never ending and escalating war. The "same old same old" are the controversies that Americans are so good at creating and the stuff people do to make others miserable or because of greed and social irresponsibility - FEMA disaster
trailers exposing dwellers to formaldehyde poisoning, lead contamination found in toys manufactured in China, doctors refusing to artificially inseminate gay women and their bogus claim of religion as their reason, storm email worms, and airline fuel charge collusion.

Four news stories especially interested me today. First that Iraqis are loving and buying Pringles. All through Russia we could always count on Coke and Pringles. Something about that is an insight into American influence on palates.The second was Russia's laying claim to the Arctic by placing an undersea flag. Thirdly the water shortage and faucets running dry in Baghdad. Lastly, findings that the Asia haze is speeding up the glacial melt. Each of these news stories relates to either somewhere we just ran through, something we experienced and/or water. The tales of woe in America are real to those living it just as are those disasters affecting world peoples. What I hope to see is people reevaluating their life priorities and figuring out how to make a difference on a global scale in some way that impacts on the greater life-threatening issues. Like access to safe drinking water. I hope that our BPR run around the world is raising awareness to the extent that every one who knows about us does something to help, perhaps as little as conserving your water use to as big as going to our website and contributing to the cause directly. Remember that every dollar contributed to the Blue Planet Foundation goes directly to a water project in an area of need. And that contribution does not simply provide water. It funds projects that teach and enable people in need to gather, harvest and treat their water locally. Because of Dow covering the costs of this event, there is no administrative overhead reducing the value of the funds contributed for water projects. It's time for us all to reflect and do what we can to save the lives of so many people who die daily because of contaminated drinking water.

Water is life. Pass it on!