Day 1: The Walk Begins (Again)

Shortly before ten on a chilly Tuesday morning, the Fool began his journey for a second time with another ceremonial dipping of the hands in the Atlantic Ocean, this time on a beach on New York's Staten Island. He then headed northwest, accompanied by one of the Friends of the Fool. Along the hospital grounds to their right they saw a number of huge male wild turkeys. One of them even gobbled in support for the Fool's upcoming adventure. At the Dongan Hills station of the Staten Island Railway, Friends the Fool departed and our walking hero was finally on his own. He headed northwest for the Bayonne Bridge, the only pedestrian-accessible bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey.

Along the way to the bridge the Fool met a man from the former Yugoslavia who told him how he hitchhiked around Europe in the Sixties and Seventies. But in the Eighties, he said, no one would pick him up; times had changed. "Maybe we need a revolution," the Fool suggested. The man raised his fist in agreement.

The Fool crossed the Bayonne Bridge into New Jersey and walked northeast through the city of Bayonne. Because the only bridge across Newark Bay is closed to walkers, the Fool had to continue northeast all the way up to Jersey City, to the mouth of the Hackensack River. There he headed west again and proceeded into downtown Newark, where he settled down for the night at the Robert Treat Hotel.