Doctor's lesson: healing starts with exploration

LOS ANGELES

- Steve Lopez, Tribune News Service

Dr. Roy Meals, a longtime hand surgeon, likes to move his feet. He has climbed mountains and he has run three marathons. But when he shared his latest scheme with his wife a couple of years ago, she had a quick take.

"You're nuts," she said. Maybe so. He was closing in on 80, and his plan was to grab his trekking poles and take a solo hike along the 342-mile perimeter of Los Angeles. His wife found the idea less insane, somewhat, after Meals agreed to hook up with hiking companions here and there.

But you may be wondering the obvious: Why would someone hike around a massive, car-choked, pedestrian-unfriendly metropolis of roughly 500 square miles? Meals had his reasons. Curiosity and restlessness, for starters. Also, a belief that you can't really get to know a city through a windshield, and a conviction that staying fit, physically and mentally, is the best way to stall the work of Father Time.

One more thing: Meals' patients over the years have come from every corner of the city, and the Kansas City native considered it a personal shortcoming that he was unfamiliar with much of LA despite having called it home for half his life. To plot his course, Meals unfolded an accordion style map for an overview, then went to navigatela. lacity. org to chart the precise outline of the city limits. The border frames an oddly shaped expanse that resembles a shredded kite, with San Pedro and Wilmington dangling from a string at the southern extremities.