LANSING, Mich. — Come springtime in mid-Michigan, trails come to life again with people enjoying the weather we haven't seen in months. For longtime friends Cherry Hamrick and Mark Buzzita, however, weather doesn't matter.
“If you don’t go out because of the weather, you’ll never go out," Buzzita said. "It’ll either be too cold, too windy, too rainy, too snowy, there’s always a good excuse not to go.”
The friends have walked every day together since the start of the pandemic totaling over 3,800 miles and 1,123 days and climbing.
The duo took off after they became friends in a local running group, walking every day when they found time and increasing the amount of times a week during the pandemic.
“The very first day when things were starting to shut down back in March of 2020, and it turns out the place I work was going to be closed down for a little while," Buzzita said. "Even though Cherry and I had already walked that Sunday, we said, 'well hey, I’ve got some time, and I’m going to be off tomorrow do you want to walk again tomorrow?'”
They asked each other that question again and again until it wasn't even a question anymore.
“We did it for two days in a row, and then it was three days, a week, and then, it turned into months, and here we are three years later, we’re still out every day,” Buzzita said.
As a runner, Hamrick got the idea to start tracking their miles on a map of North America.
“I realized we got enough miles to go to the Mackinaw Bridge," Hamrick said. "Then, I was like now what should we do, and I was like well, we’ll go across the UP, and then, we have a cabin in Canada, so I thought well let’s go to the cabin kind of in northern Ontario.”
Their mileage made its way across Canada and down to Route 66 in California where they're now headed back towards home.
“Now, we have 2,400 and some miles to go, so we have to keep going to get back to Chicago,” Hamrick said.
They've run into some hurdles during their three years.
“I wore a cast on my foot twice for months at a time, that didn’t stop us,” Hamrick said.
And traveling gets in the way.
“Our rule book says minimum of a mile, and if we FaceTime, then that counts," Hamrick said.
They're always found a way around the road blocks.
“I’ve only forgotten twice," Hamrick said. "I get a text from Mark 'are you ready?' And I’m like ‘ahh.' Still managed to do it.”
Knowing each day they'll have a friend to meet somewhere along the trail.
“It just became part of our day," Buzzita said. "It wasn’t are we going to walk tomorrow it’s when.”
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