25 Hours. 25 Miles. Free Food Only. Never Let Go.

We suggest you read our praxes in the order above, although for all we know it may be more fun completely in reverse. In any case, please enjoy the musical backdrop for each, chosen from among those songs we sang during the 25 period as appropriate to the task.



When we first saw this task, we wanted to live entirely off the land and try out skills at recognizing edible plants. However, doing Free Food at the same time as Walking nixed that. There just aren't enough calories in berries. So we determined that we would have to rely on the generosity of fellow humans, specifically store-owners, plus be alert for any freebies we could find along the way, as well as snacking off the island's considerable bounty: abundant blackberries, tasty raspberries, and a sort of berry called a "salal berry." (It is unfortunate that salal berries look exactly like another sort of berry which is poisonous.) It actually ended up much more interesting than I think it might have been if we had been able to rely on nature's bounty.

The greatest constraint on this task was time. Every minute we spent foraging was a minute not moving forward. We had to balance the potential value of the food we might gain against the time lost. As it was, it took us a full twelve hours to do the walk.

The Night Before: We ate as much dinner as possible and at eight pm exactly stopped eating and joined hands.



Breakfast: The first thing we ate was a few raspberries, grazed by the side of the road. We found some salal berries and ate them as well, on general principles. Then we got into serious blackberry picking. I like really big breakfasts. This did not qualify.



My original strategy was to trade blackberries we'd picked to Embe's Bakery, which was located in the Ganges, first of two towns we hit up on our walk. However, we got sidetracked into our favorite coffee shop in the curiously abbreviated 'illag Center (sounds Welsh, hmm). A strikingly blue-haired friend of ours works there. Waldo cemented our friendship a few days ago by bringing her some blackberries, which apparently she loves.



The coffee shop, as might be expected for a Sunday morning, was seething and full of tantalizingly yummy smells, and our blue-haired friend was very busy. We got her attention eventually by waving the blackberries at her persuasively. (“For me?”) We explained our mission: walking across the island and back. (“You guys are awesome!”) and then went into explaining Free Food and that we were hoping to swap the blackberries.
She explained that apparently the coffee shop will not swap blackberries, but she will. She darted into the back room, beckoned us over, and slipped two day-old sandwiches into our hands, then darted off again with our blackberries. We sat down immediately and shared half of one, then packed the rest. Mozzarella, basil, tomato, and pesto. Yum.



We also found apples along the road as we walked and ate those. I think they were from a private house, but they were overhanging the road and looked as though no one would likely pick them.


Lunch, Sort Of: After a five hour forced march, we were less than halfway to our goal and had run out of water. Waldo spotted a sign near an impressive-looking winery saying "Tastings".


He suggested we check it out.
The interior of the vineyard was unexpectedly pleasant. There is a path to the inner sanctum that is covered by an elegant wooden trellis with as-yet unripe grapes growing through it. We passed a group of well-dressed people, eating what looked like a very pleasant meal and drinking wine. They all nodded and smiled as though conferring a benediction. We nodded and smiled back.

Near the actual tasting area were two girls attempting unskillfully but with great panache to play various classical tunes on a giant base and a fiddle.

A slightly snobby woman met us inside and explains in a businesslike manner that she will conduct our tasting. I think she was slightly put off by our rather grubby appearances and the fact that we kept refusing to let go of each other's hands.
After the hot, dusty road the winery was disconcertingly like paradise with a slightly unpleasant archangel. We tasted six or seven wines accompanied by bites of cheese, olives, or dark chocolate.


We had struck gold: this was a free feast! We promised to return to purchase a particularly fabulous bottle of blackberry port for my relatives, snapped a few pictures, then filled our water bottle and left.

Teatime, I Suppose: We reached the second town on our itinerary around three, Fulford. Fulford is hardly a town, really. It's mostly a coffee shop, and we made a beeline for that.The strange thing, from my point of view, is that I was not particularly hungry. I had eaten a few canapés, a quarter of a sandwich, and berries to walk thirteen miles, and the only thing I was craving is water, and to sit down. We explained our story to the two good-looking fellows behind the counter.



They didn’t believe us, but we stuck to our story and then, having convinced them, explained about the fact we can’t buy food. We asked, tactfully, if they has anything unsaleable which they might donate to the cause. The larger blond one looked around surreptitiously and then said, “Well, this is broken, and we can’t sell it, so…”



He handed us the largest scone I’ve ever seen. Decent-sized portions had broken off, but it still looked mostly intact and extremely delicious. We found a table by the window and proceeded to rapidly nom the scone. White chocolate cranberry. We also ate the other half of the first sandwich. A friendly waitress filled our water bottle again. We rested a bit, visited the bathroom, and set off.

Dinner: On the long walk back, we stopped at about six and shared the last sandwich.



We got back to Ganges at about seven, by then both feeling as though we had been systematically beaten by nasty people with hammers. We still had about an hour and a half of walking to go. Our water bottle was empty, so we visited another friend of ours in Ganges: a guy who works in the sweetstore.



He is also from California, and we made his friendship when I asked him a few days ago, after years of childhood wondering, what exactly the X-rated chocolates were. (Exactly what you’d think, but in surprising detail).
We talked through what was then a well-established spiel – explaining the walk we’d done and the not-buying-food proviso. He was actually very curious and we gave him the SF0 URL. He filled our water bottle and we asked him, as per usual, if there was anything unsaleable he could donate. He came back with a half-full bag of liquorice. We thanked him and left.



One of my favorite qualities in a task is that reading it restores my faith in humanity a little bit. I love tasks where the tasker benefits from the generosity and kindness of non-taskers. I’ve had my share of that sort of task – a man I barely knew flew me across a freeway – but I seriously did not expect that Waldo and I would actually be given more than enough food for a 25-mile hike. The only way I can really explain it is to think that we tapped into a bardic tradition. We explained to people our absurd story - walking across the island and back without food - and our story was interesting and unique enough that they donated whatever they reasonably could.

Also, the licorice was extremely welcome, especially because as we were leaving town, it began to rain.

End of Task: We didn't get back to the place we are staying until nine, after a very, very, long stint of walking in the rain, so we extended the free food deadline an extra hour so that all our tasks would finish at the same time. And then...FOOD.