Mule team

November 20, 2007 4:52 PM

Footloose in America: around the world in 20 years A husband-wife team left their home in June of 2001 to circumnavigate the world by foot, and they took their mule along with them. They haven't gotten very far but it sounds like they've had lots of adventures in the past six years, as they walk from town to town doing odd jobs. [via this flickr photo/story]
posted by mathowie (9 comments total)

This young man is traveling across America on foot, and his website is worth a look (I was hitchhiking along more or less the same route, he's a real amazing guy).
posted by iamck at 5:07 PM on November 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

They've almost reached western Massachusetts, woo hoo! But yeah they seem pretty cool. This is something I ought to do some day, travel the world, or a small part of it, with an amiable mule.
posted by Flashman at 5:07 PM on November 20, 2007

color me jealous.
posted by gnutron at 5:11 PM on November 20, 2007

I remember seeing them on CBS | Assignment America [YouTube].
posted by ericb at 5:29 PM on November 20, 2007

What a lovely story. Just makes me feel really good. I like Bud and Patricia Kenny (what beautiful faces they have) and their slow, process enjoying walk. What a cool thing to do, see the country or the world at a slow, relaxed, *personal* pace, the way it aught to be.

aww, When that mule, Della, keels over, 1:35 into the YT vid, she groans just like I do after a day's work. Had no idea mules groaned or slept on the ground like that. A real mule team.
posted by nickyskye at 6:18 PM on November 20, 2007

I love this story, and I love Bud and Patricia (and Della, of course.) What an amazing, transgressive choice they've made, living like this. I'm jealous, too.
posted by maryh at 7:12 PM on November 20, 2007

In the early morning of July 4, 2001, twelve days after those people started on their great adventure, I stood on top of Mt. Katahdin in Maine with my friend Cesar, who was beginning his 2175-mile hike south to become (as far as he knows) the first diabetic, and maybe the first Cuban as well, to hike the Appalachian Trail. That completed (it took him about 14 months), he decided to walk around the world as well. (He's planning to do it over 10 years, I think, not 20.) He started in Key West, and currently has made it to somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

There's a great novel written some 35 years ago by David Ely about a similar world walker, Walking Davis.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:01 PM on November 20, 2007

Note the solar panel on top of the cart. The cart also generates electricity from the rotation of the wheels.This powers stage lights and a sound system for the poetry shows. And it powers a computer and printer.

That is so great it's persuading me to become a mule-herder myself.
posted by thehmsbeagle at 8:48 PM on November 20, 2007

This reminds me, I need to drive gym so I can walk on a treadmill.
posted by HotPatatta at 11:39 PM on November 21, 2007