“I’ve seen that road before. It always leads me here.”
— The Beatles “The Long And Winding Road”
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Some people have just got to keep moving. Jerry Campany is one of them.
A former Marine and a current employee of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser sports department (and a former co-worker of mine), Campany likes to walk.
He walks during breaks at work. On his way to the street to get into his parked car for the long ride home from the Star-Advertiser offices, he’ll take a detour so he can walk more.
Campany took up golf within the last 15 years because he can walk the course, never in a cart, if he can help it.
If he has a choice between an elevator and stairs, it’s always the stairs.
Also, if he hears the cleaners turn on a vacuum at work, that’s a signal for him to take a walk. Noise that is totally unnecessary to this man’s ears. Same thing goes for the landscapers using leaf blowers near his home. That’s a grand ol’ time for him to take the dog for a long walk.
Brooms and rakes get the job done, too, and so, in Campany’s mind — Why not use them instead?
Jerry Campany, near the top of Mt. Kaala in 2012.
(Image credit: BedrockSportsHawaii.com).
This unique individual also refuses to use an umbrella, something, I think, he learned from a USMC drill instructor, who said something like, “You never under any circumstances need an umbrella.”
Once, when he saw a TV image of a Marine holding an umbrella for President Obama, Campany was absolutely horrified.
Eh, and a relatively rare Roberto Clemente card he owned that someone else was gushing over? Take a bite out of the corner. The card is just card, folks.
The subject of Jerry Campany taking a walk is on BedrockSportsHawaii.com’s radar because he wrote a column that ran in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser today. It’s a good read: Jerry Campany Tripping Around Oahu The Hard Way.
It’s about something he used to talk about trying to do — walking around the perimeter of Oahu, a 127-mile jaunt — which he embarked on starting today.
If you see him, honk, but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly on footpaths off the beaten track.
Walking long distances is nothing new for him. He’s done the trek from his home in Makakilo to the office in Kakaako for a work shift several times.
As Campany says in the column (and this is something he’s told me before): When he first touched down on Oahu, instead of getting a ride from the airport to Schofield Barracks, he walked.
Also in the article: He walked the Honolulu Marathon for no other reason than because friend and co-worker Cindy Luis had also entered the event.
I am not what you would call a hiker, but I climbed Mt. Kaala — at 4,026 feet, the highest peak on Oahu — with him in 2012. He’s done it a handful of times with whoever he can get to go up with him.
And I’m not sure if he has done it within the last few years, but I do know he wanted to kayak around the island, too. Maybe that’s next, if he hasn’t already done it.
Many people have walked around the perimeter of Oahu before, some with causes and some for publicity.
For Jerry, I’m 99.9 percent sure there is no real reason behind what he is doing other than the simple fact that he can.
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