GOODYEAR

On tires, toenails, and walks with an old friend.

- DAVID SEDARIS

It was a midsummer afternoon and my old friend Dawn and I were walking from an un-air-conditioned Nepalese restaurant to our hotel in the dull, flat town of Montrose, Colorado. The sun seemed larger than usual, and brighter. It felt as if we were under a broiler. The road we were on was six lanes wide, or maybe eight. There was no sidewalk, so we were pressed right up against the curb, being passed by flatulent motorcycles their riders helmetless-and eighteen-wheel trucks that were equally loud but at least generated a breeze. One of the many good things about Dawn is that she never complains about walking, never says, "You told me it was only another few blocks an hour ago," never moans that her feet are tired or so swollen that her shoes no longer fit. The farther the better, that's our motto.

Our record is forty-three miles in a single day-ninety-one thousand steps, according to our Fitbits. "Where did you do this?" people ask when I boast about it. It's a question that baffles me. If someone told me he'd eaten seventy-five corn dogs in one sitting, my response wouldn't be "Where?" but "Why not seventy-six corn dogs? Why not eighty?" We always talk about breaking our record going for a hundred thousand steps but now I worry that we might be too old, and how weird is that? I was nineteen when we met in the front hall of our dormitory at Kent State, and Dawn was a year younger.