Red Arrow Walk
On Wednesday evening I visited one of the Cairns Rotary Clubs. I have tried to visit at least one club in every city and I’ve been doing more than that so far. At the club on Wednesday I really enjoyed the table I sat at and met an entrepreneur named Sandy McEachan and his wife Mary. We had a lively discussion about purpose, what else would you talk about at a Rotary meeting? At the end of the meeting Sandy told me about his Saturday morning ritual of hiking the Red Arrow Trail with some friends and asked if I wanted to join him. As someone who is always up for getting some exercise, I said hell yeah!
So, we connected via email and phone on Friday and Sandy picked me up at 6:20 AM this morning. We headed on what I thought would be a long drive to the starting point, but it was only about 1/2 mile from where we are staying. We met up with 4 others and started on our walk. Two of the other walkers headed in a different direction after about 5 minutes. I learned that there are two trails, the flat one and the mountain. Well, you can only guess which trail we took. Of course, we were climbing a small mountain. We got to the top and I was feeling pretty good. We had planned to meet the two that took the low road at about 8 AM, which gave us 90 minutes of hiking. The views from the top of the mountain were really amazing, with a clear view of the airport from one side and a wonderful view of downtown Cairns from the other side.
I thought I was doing great as we headed down the mountain, with a few dozen flights of steps aiding our travel. When we arrived at the bottom I thought we were done, but Sandy looked at his watch and said that we had 35 minutes before we were to meet the others and started back up the stairs. I was standing there thinking we were done, but I guess I was wrong. We headed back up the stairs, which seemed like forever! My calves were starting to burn but I didn’t stop. We got back up to the top, had a drink of water and then found our way back down, this time for the final time. We met up with the rest of the group a few minutes after getting to the bottom and we headed to breakfast downtown at Candy’s.
We had a really nice breakfast as another one of their friends joined us. It seems like they do this just about every Saturday morning, and have been doing it for years. This group met at a local gym and this is their workout crew. In addition to working out together they love to travel together, with a number of them heading to Greece and Turkey later this year. Sandy started to take me back to the AirBnB apartment and asked if I wanted to see his shop, which he was very proud of. We spent a good 30 minutes walking around his offices and I was so captivated by the passion he has for his business, even after 20 plus years. I look forward to staying in touch with Sandy and expect him to find his way to CA in the near future.
I enjoyed the exercise and told Drew and Karley about it when I returned. They both want to do the hike so I believe we will be at it again tomorrow 🙂
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 