Walter Carr sent his friends a flurry of increasingly pleading text messages. The college student’s car had broken down, and he was supposed to begin his new job as a mover the next morning — at a home 20 miles from his apartment near Birmingham, Ala.

He struck out finding a ride, but he wasn’t about to miss his first day of work at a moving company called Bellhops. Carr, 20, needed the work. He mulled his predicament and concluded there was only one option: He would walk it.

“I sat there and I thought, ‘How can I get to my job? What streets would I walk through? How long would take me to get there?’ ” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

He searched the route from his apartment in Homewood to the house in Pelham, and according to Google Maps, it would take eight hours on foot. As a former high school cross-country runner, he knew he could do it in less.

Carr ate a meal of bologna and eggs at 8 p.m. and took a nap. At midnight, he woke up, grabbed his wallet, phone, a baseball and a kitchen knife to protect him from stray dogs. He headed out into the dark.

“I’ve always been that person who figured things out on my own,” Carr said. “I went out walking.”

A few hours in, he did come across a dog. He threw the ball. The dog ran after it. Carr went the other way.

On the trek, Carr had the route mapped out in his mind. He jogged some. He walked a lot. When his legs began to burn...READ MORE + SEE VIDEO