Backward walk forwards cause.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - If you spotted a sinewy "Super" Bill Kathan Jr. strolling down the Yaquina bayfront on Sunday afternoon with severely chapped lips and a healthy tan, you might have noticed something peculiar about his gait.

It's not so much that he was walking in the street; tourists do that all the time here. He wasn't limping or lilting or hopping or skipping. He was walking backward, which would maybe be a perfectly ordinary thing to do if he hadn't been doing it that way since April, and for 3,300 miles, and all the way from Hartford, Conn.

In other words, Kathan has been walking backward a lot lately, but with good reason: He's trying to raise awareness about children's health and physical fitness.

What's that got to do with walking backward? Kathan is no public relations dummy. He knew if he walked forward he'd be just like any of the rest of us, even if he walked all the way across the country that way. So he walked backward instead, a few miles at a time, about 25 miles a day, because he thought people would pay more attention to him that way.

Kathan was right. As you might imagine, people stopped him all the time, mostly to ask a fairly simple, obvious question: What the heck are you doing?

"People stopped, took video and pictures," Kathan said. "Once I thought the flash photos were lightning."

Most were friendly. Some were mean. Kathan had interactions with the police, some of whom didn't like that he sometimes veered into roadways when the shoulder got too narrow. But joggers and cyclists do that all the time, Kathan would argue. And he did his best to keep an eye on traffic in both directions, he said.

Watching cars was a must, it turned out. Some of the people Kathan encountered weren't so keen on a backward-walking man taking up space in the road. One commuter tried to run him over in Indiana.

"He drove past me, then his hand went up," Kathan said. "He turned around and came right at me."

Some of the pedestrians were ornery, too. In Cleveland, Kathan was confronted by three young men who disliked his quest so much that one of them punched him in the face, knocking his hat off.

But the trials of the mission itself were much more daunting than unwelcoming strangers.

Kathan tried and failed to get a team to take this trip with him, so he did the journey solo in a van. He'd walk a few miles, then walk (forward) back to get the van and drive to the next relay point, keeping a careful log of how far he traveled with each leg.

Kathan didn't have much money, so he bought replacement shoes at thrift stores, at times only after he had worn all the way through the soles of the kicks he had on, such that the hot pavement scorched his bare feet. When the van broke down in Pennsylvania, Kathan relied on the goodwill of a local mechanic, who paid for the replacement part and put Super Bill up for the night, until he could get the vehicle fixed. Another time, his fog lights caught fire and Kathan burned his hand trying to disconnect them from the van.

He also fell a few more times than he would have liked, wishing he had done a better job of looking behind him. Roadkill was a common hazard.

"I tripped over a couple of (raccoons), a prairie dog," Kathan said. "I banged up my elbow good."

But there also were shining moments, such as when Kathan met Shawn Atkinson, a general contractor from Ashton, Idaho. Atkinson was so taken with Kathan's story that he decided to become a sponsor - in a big way. Aktinson bought "Mr. Bill" an RV.

"I figured he could use a little financial assistance," Atkinson said from Newport after Kathan finished the walk.

Kathan, a 55-year-old career farmer from Vernon, Vt., got the idea to turn himself into a role model in 2000, after watching a television show where a guy broke the Guinness World Record for the most consecutive jumping jacks in an hour.

"I said 'Hey, I can do that,' ' Kathan said. "And I broke the record."

He then says he set a new world record for nonstop jumping jacks in 15 minutes and most in a year, at 2,605,600, Kathan said, though such records couldn't be verified by The Register-Guard on Sunday. Kathan also claims to hold the record for one-finger push-ups in a minute, backhand push-ups in a minute, 10-meter frog jump (he says he closed the gap in 6.4 seconds in 2005), leg lifts and a 60-yard backward dash, completed in 9.56 seconds.

To add a little flair to his arrival in Newport on Sunday, Kathan decided to try busting the record for most backhanded push-ups in a minute. The record is 123, according to Guinness. With a crowd watching, Kathan did 128, by his count.

Then he had lunch. And he walked into the restaurant facing forward.

Winston Ross / The Register-Guard

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