As we turned on to the Peoli Road, a dirt and gravel affaire that meandered about 6 miles through a Spring lush valley, he chatted away about the human condition, the economy and what he had been up to all these years. He wondered how we communicated before, with me not speaking. I smiled.

Before this year's walk Bernie had located the owners of the house we had stopped at 20 years earlier who had moved away, to ask if he wanted to come and join the walk. I remembered the house as I walked out of the trees. I remembered the talking bear that was a speaker phone.

Bernie still smoked while he walked, but this time he didn't ask me if there was some secret I had for walking.

We put up our tents on the property of Bob Nelson, the West Lafayette Rotary President. It overlooked the road to the hills beyond. The rain had gone but there were still some clouds in the sky. Bob pointed to the hills in the distance where ominous group of clouds gathered and told us that those hills were 10 miles away. They looked like the hills we had been struggling up and down during the day.

That evening we made our way back to town for showers at the Methodist Church. Kids were playing Volley Ball. The girls wore long dresses, their head in a little bun covered by a ---and the boys dress slacks and shirts. Two chaperones sat at the sideline. After the shower we found Dicks Place for dinner. The meal was remarkable in as much as it tasted "home cooked" with great care. Towards the end of the meal Dick came out to meet us and tell us all how much he appreciated what we were doing for the community, by taking the time to walk through.