Our city has a 4th of July parade every year. People look forward to it every year. Some people get out there and line the street with chairs as early as 5:00 a.m.

Despite living in this city for the last 20 years, up to last year, I had never attended the parade. It's a really rinky-dink affair, the great mixing of commerce--especially real estate--and patriotism. Our church has a potluck pre-parade potluck breakfast, and I attend that, but I sneak off shortly after it is over to get out of watching the parade. Even when our son was in the parade, I did not watch.

Then last year came. The church powers-that-be decided that our church needed to be more visible in the community. They asked Dorey to head up the church's Fourth of July Parade float committee. For several months, Dorey and her committee worked to put together a float. After all of her work, it would have been a tad crass of me not to show up and watch her float go by. So I went to the parade. It was as horrible as I suspected. But the church's float was great. We live on an island with several drawbridges. The float had a drawbridge that went up and down. It was the highlight of the parade, even if the float did not win a prize. This year, the church did not have a float, and Dorey and I went to the breakfast, and snuck away from the parade, and went on a walk in the neighborhood.

So the stats: Yesterday, I walked 11,286 steps. As of this moment, 12:46 p.m. on July 4, 2009, I have walked 106,967 steps in nine days.