UA grad to walk across country - for a beer

LITTLE ROCK — As a corporate transportation coordinator in Fayetteville for six years, Woody Brown was constantly cubicle-bound, stressed out and worried about potential downsizing.

So when he ditched that job for a turn teaching English in South Korea, the 35-year-old University of Arkansas graduate embraced the adventure and fell in love with a newfound sense of freedom.

Over pizza and beer during a trip back to Arkansas, friends questioned Brown about his shift in professions and his new outlook.

"I said ‘I have so much freedom now that if I wanted to, I could walk across the country,’" Brown recalled boasting. "I said that off the cuff just as a shocker statement. But my one friend kind of bit into me and said 'I'll bet you a beer that you won't do it.’"

Brown, it turns out, is not one to turn down a bet. And thus, a plan to hike 4,000 miles from coast-to-coast across a dozen states, for a single beer, was born.

The trek - which Brown will chronicle through updates on his Web site, www.onebeerbet.com - is scheduled to begin May 1 at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Over the subsequent eight months, if all goes according to plan, he will gradually make his way through the deserts of Nevada and Utah, the mountains of Colorado and the vast expanse of the Midwest. He should trudge through eastern states at the onset of winter.

“I think it's one of those things that will definitely be a defining moment in my life,” Brown said from South Korea, where he is wrapping up his third year of teaching. “It’ll be something to tell the grandkids.”

The beer bet is nothing new for Brown and friends back home in Arkansas, where Brown's family moved when he was a child. It’s just that the stakes are usually a little lower, like earning a drink for talking to a woman at a bar or scoring a win in fantasy football, he said.

Reaction to the bet has been varied. Brown has noticed women tend to think it’s inspirational while men are more dismissive. Some people laugh. Others, like his mother, Debbie Brown, worry.

She is the reason he will carry a GPS beacon that links up with his Web site, updating his precise position every 10 minutes and wirelessly transmitting the information – and a little peace of mind – back home to Sulphur Rock, Ark.

Debbie Brown wasn’t exactly pleased when she heard about the cross-country hike, but she said she knew not to try and talk her son out of it.

“When he sets his mind to do something, he's going to do it,” she said. “I wasn't thrilled with his bungee jumping either. Or his parachuting. But if it makes him happy, I'm all for it.”

The east-to-west route follows the American Discovery Trail through and along a mixture of city, state and federal parks, abandoned railways and still-active highways.

Successfully completing the journey requires careful advanced planning, Brown said. He’s in the process of picking out the best camping equipment to bring along and is calculating his food options by the calorie. He figures he will need between 4,000 and 5,000 a day given his high metabolism and the physical nature of the hike. Shoes should get about 1,000 miles to the pair, so he’ll go through four sets by Delaware.

Brown has been methodically plotting his path in advance using the computer mapping program Google Earth. It allows him to “walk it virtually” in 20-mile increments while making sure there are spots to pick up food and water. And it also helps him work out the timing, which is important. The Rockies, for example, are snow-covered and impassable by foot except for July and August.

And then there’s the other extreme: In one stretch in Utah, Brown will have to traverse more than 300 miles in a desert climate with no development whatsoever.

“You either have to go out and bury the water ahead of time or what I’m going to do is have a baby jogging stroller to carry it,” he said.

Brown plans to camp most of the time but stay in hotels maybe once a week. That’s part of a total cost which may swell up to $12,000. He has been saving for about two years.

Despite the intense planning and preparation that goes into readying for the trek, Brown still isn’t sure what kind of beer his friend will buy him if he finishes.

He is sure of one thing, however.

“It's going to be the best beer I ever had,” he said with a laugh.