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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Walker Doing It for the Pain

By Beth Hahn
Mountain View Telegraph
    When you've been walking as long as Dennis Kinch has been, even bad coffee tastes good.
    Kinch, a 50-year-old native of Boston, is walking from Chicago to Los Angeles along Old Route 66 to increase awareness of chronic pain— and ease his own.
    He is a volunteer spokesman for the National Pain Foundation and is doing the walk to meet with chronic pain patients along the way, speak at medical conferences and enjoy seeing the United States by foot.
    Kinch suffers from two progressive diseases that affect his joints and spine. Someday, he may not be able to take another step.
    But in the meantime, walking helps ease his chronic pain, he said at his motel room in Moriarty on Friday as he prepared to set off toward Albuquerque.
    Kinch left Chicago in September for the 2,400-mile trek to Los Angeles.
    Unfortunately, the hardest leg of the trip came just a few days ago outside Clines Corners.
    "I was walking uphill with a really strong headwind," he recalled Friday morning. "It almost did me in."
    Kinch carries about 200 pounds of supplies in a wheelbarrow, for which he rigged a harness out of duct tape and wires that he found along Old Route 66. The harness helps him pull the wheelbarrow without his hands, while balancing its weight more evenly on his back and allowing him to walk at a more comfortable pace, he said.
    Kinch said the walk along Old Route 66 has made him appreciate community and home.
    "I'm learning to appreciate every little thing that there is, even bad coffee," he said.
    Kinch is scheduled to spend three weeks in Albuquerque meeting with chronic pain patients and speaking at medical conferences. From there, he hopes to arrive in Los Angeles on foot in mid-June.
    For more information, visit painconnection.org/WhereIsDennis.