Trio taking long walk for diabetes patients

At 8 a.m. Saturday, a 64-year-old Napa man and his 67-year-old brother and sister-in-law from Texas will pull on their comfortable Z-Coil shoes and start walking from Ocean Beach across the United States. Byron Moats' wife will tag along in an RV stocked with food, supplies, beds and a toilet.

Their 2,700-mile trek to Savannah, Ga., started as an adventure. But the two couples quickly decided, because three of the four (Moats' sister-in-law excepted) have diabetes, to raise money along the way for the American Diabetes Association. Hence, their Web site quickly became c2c4ada.com.

After training for the past 10 months, the threesome hope to walk about 22 miles a day and complete their odyssey in five months.

Moats, a retired preacher, says he stepped down from the ministry three years ago after an accident caused some minor brain damage.

“And that's probably why I'm doing this walk,” he quipped.


Byron and Julia Moats.