JOHN RINGO: Nine Hours To Change The World.

I’ve been feeling physically so weak and my lungs have been so bad sometimes I have to stop and catch my breath after a flight of stairs. This from a former paratrooper who used to run four miles before breakfast. It’s a combination of smoking, lung scarring from childhood pneumonia and that Chattanooga has one of the highest pollen counts in the world. Literally. The only place worse is a rain forest in Southern China. That problem? Gone. I’m breathing better than I’ve breathed in years. I feel twenty years younger. I take hills like a mountain goat.

Depression? What depression. I just had the time of my life.

I spent nine hours walking more than I’ve walked since I was posted to Multi-National Forces in Sinai. Days when an 18k patrol followed by a hump up a 3,000-foot-high mountain carrying a hundred pounds of gear and ammo was a fun game. Days I missed. I chatted with a young guy who’s joining the Marines, spent quite some time hanging out with a young couple who were starting their own construction company, chatted with young (including four-year-old types and up) and old (guy older than me who was interested in the game as a way to get more exercise), rich and poor, white and black and every other color of the rainbow.

All of us hunting the elusive, imaginary, Pokémon.

Pokémon is the ultimate leveler.

As somebody was saying on Twitter, Pokémon Go did more to get kids outside and moving in one day than Michelle Obama’s government programs have done in 8 years.