Evening walks offer bonding time

They’re the walkers.
Anyone who has traveled South Meridian Street, Boundary Pike, Wayne Street or any of several streets in between in Portland during the evening has probably seen them. It’s an every day occurrence.
Each evening, sometime between 6 and 8 p.m. — before dinner — Linda and Gary Bone take to the streets of Portland for a walk.
“I always say now I do it more for just tension release,” said Linda, 65, who has been taking these brisk evening strolls for about 40 years. “I still work full time and you just kind of need a change of pace …
“I do it more for my brain than my body.”
Gary, 68, is just Linda’s latest partner.
She started walking solo in the mid 1970s. Later her twin daughters, Erin and Emily, now 39 and living in California, joined her. After they went off to college and then moved away from home, eventually the Bone’s youngest daughter, Kelsey, now a 25-year-old Indianapolis resident, took over the role.
“That was always good mom/daughter time. Lots of bonding,” said Linda. “We’d just talk about everything and anything.”
But after Kelsey graduated from Jay County High School in 2007 and headed to college, Linda needed a new sidekick. On the night after dropping Kelsey off at Purdue University, her husband of 46 years agreed to give it a try.
“It was a little tough at first, but I tried to keep up,” Gary said. “I had to jog instead of walk a few times.”
The Bones keep a quick pace on the route that starts at their Boundary Pike house and heads north, continuing north on Wayne Street, west on Main Street, south on Meridian Street, east on Floral Avenue and then back home again. They complete that three-mile route in 35 minutes.
“I used to change it up a little bit,” said Linda. “On the weekends we used to go further. Ever since Gary’s walked with me we’ve walked the same route.”
And they plan to keep on walking for as many years as they can.
“We just kind of look forward to going every night,” said Gary. “We’ve done it for so long.”