Bob Estep has been into physical exercise all his life and works out at least three times a week at the West Seattle YMCA, still finding time to go golfing and help his family.
Bob Estep takes on life one step at a time
When you get older stairs can be a problem. But not for Bob Estep. At the age of 78 Estep is incredibly active, walking every day and working out at the YMCA most days. In the last few weeks he decided to walk all the stairs in West Seattle. He was inspired by a report he heard of someone who had done this in Queen Anne neighborhood and since he is in such great physical shape, he thought he'd take on the same challenge here.
If you doubt for a minute whether a 78 year old can do this you should know that he also rides one mile for every year of his life on or around his birthday. That's right,
this spring he's going for a 79 mile bike ride to Redmond and back. He also walks the 3 day 60 mile walk to cure cancer every year to honor his wife who died of breast cancer. Estep also finds time to golf three times a week and play volleyball. "I take no medications, I'm never depressed, and I wake up every day asking myself, 'What can I do to help someone today?'" He's been a physical fitness fan all his life and he believes it has helped him in many ways. "Even when I was working, I'd jump on my bike go ride for 10 or 15 miles and just let things go and get that stress out of my head. The other thing I do is try to get myself in a position to help others rather than putting the emphasis on me."
For his stair project Estep began near his home in the Admiral District. He approached the project strategically –– seeking out all dead ends and finding the stairs that are inevitably nearby. He had lots of walking experience in the area when he trained for the 3-day walks. His geography was the northern tip of California Ave., southern was Roxbury, west border was the water, east border was Delridge.
The effort took several weeks and on his trek he kept notes, discovering for example that the longest set of stairs has 360 steps near Lincoln park at the west end of Thistle Street. Shortest: just 12 steps near the Luna Park Cafe. The total number of steps in West Seattle according to Estep is 1983. It's his opinion that the support brackets on the longest steps are made from the former rails for the street car that used to run up and down California Avenue. He might be right. He used to ride it.
Bob Estep has lived nearly his entire life in West Seattle and has been lucky enough to have seen it at pace most of us would find hard to match.
