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Fat man walking
« on: 2005-07-23 10:45:01 » |
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The stuff myths are made of is so intriguing. I mean those half-true but very personal stories which often have a bigger impact than a well though out factual analysis. This story, for example.
'Fat Man Walking' gains Web following
July 23, 2005
http://news.com.com/Fat%20Man%20Walking%20gains%20Web%20following/2100-1025_3-5800583.html
When simple-minded Hollywood hero Forrest Gump ran across the country, he gathered followers faster than he grew facial hair.
Steve Vaught--a 350-pound self-described "Forrest Lump" who's walking across the country to shed weight--has the same such following, only his real-life fame has been fueled by the Internet.
Tens of thousands of people are regularly checking in on 39-year-old Vaught's progress through his busy Web site, http://www.thefatmanwalking.com/. Vaught's wife, April, who has been penning his online journal, alludes to a Web audience of about 100,000, and that was before Vaught was featured on the "Today" show earlier this month.
Vaught left his hometown outside San Diego on April 10 in an attempt to walk to New York City to "lose weight and regain my life." While he embarked on the journey for personal reasons, he hoped his story might "serve to encourage others to take their lives back--to get up and do something about it today," according to a Web site posting written before he left.
As of Friday, Vaught was only near Flagstaff, Ariz., where it's monsoon season. He's fallen way behind his goal of traveling about 20 miles a day, which would have put him in Missouri by now.
But he's already accomplishing his goals. He's lost about 50 pounds (he was 400 pounds) and has been the source of great inspiration. That's been made evident by the countless postings and e-mails to thefatmanwalking.com--so many that the site was overwhelmed and had to be taken down for a few days last week while it was put on its own server.
"For the record, I have chills running though my body and am blinking away tears as I write this," wrote an Akron, Ohio, blogger named Joshua, who called Vaught a hero. "I hope I can complete my own journey of weight loss and do that same. I salute you Steve. I bow to you. I honor you...Rock on."
Even the more skeptical bloggers, like Erin Slick, said she's intrigued despite not always being so keen on extreme weight loss plans. "Will he lose the weight? More importantly, will he keep it off?...I have to give the guy credit for originality. Go fat man go!"
<snip>
Walking Off the Fat, Across the Land
At 400 Pounds, a Californian Set Off for New York. In Arizona, He's at 350.
July 8, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701972.html
On Sunday morning, he found a creek just as the desert heat forced a midday break. But when he woke from a nap and tried to fill his water bottles, the stream had already gone dry. Late that night, he walked right past his scheduled motel stop in Truxton, a flyspeck on historic Route 66 so slight it vanished when the sun went down.
<snip>
On Monday, out of water in 102-degree heat and miles from any town, he sent a frantic text message to his wife, who called the local police. They drove him to a hotel, where he rested a night and a day, sick with dehydration. On Wednesday he started late and tangled with a scary dude on the desolate highway.
"I'm quitting," he told his wife this week. She said okay.
But within hours he hit the road again, as they always sort of knew he would. For quitting is not so easy when you're 500 miles from home.
<snip>
He is a big guy, 6-foot-1, a former Marine and longtime tow-truck operator who, as the fat melts away from his cheekbones and jaws, is beginning to bear a slight resemblance to the buffed-up actor Jerry O'Connell, but with a lumberjack beard and shock of hair like an unmowed lawn.
Well, that depends on what you mean by "insane." Doctors, certainly, would call it inadvisable. A seriously overweight person who embarks on any kind of strenuous physical activity could place dangerous stresses on his joints and heart, said Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.
And such activity is especially worrisome in an area of environmental extremes, without someone to support him, Klein said.
<snip>
Once he entered the desert, he has had to cut back his walking hours dramatically. Now he walks from about 5:30 to 8:30 in the morning, when he has to stop and find shelter -- preferably in a store or post office if one is around, but usually under a bridge or in a culvert or bush.
He will sit there for 11 or 12 hours, until it is cool enough to walk again for a few hours. Just sit there. "I'm too bored to read," he says, or even take in the landscape more than he already has.
<snip>
On a recent afternoon, Vaught accepts a ride from a reporter 35 miles down the road to a public library, where he checks his e-mail.
There is one from a 37-year-old guy preparing to run his first marathon. A 62-year-old woman planning to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. People in such places as St. Louis and Altoona, Pa., offering food and water and a place to stay when he comes their way. Overweight people across the country begging to know Vaught's daily mileage so they can match it at home.
Only a few call him crazy. Almost all say what an inspiration he is.
<snip>
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