By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

MECHANIC FALLS – Cool, gray and foggy, it wasn’t the best morning for an early walk.

But third-graders Gaby Comeau and Caitlin Hawley couldn’t wait to get going.

“It’s fun,” said Gaby said as dozens of Elm Street School students gathered nearby for the short trek to school.

“Yeah,” Caitlin said. “You get to walk with your friends.”

For 20 minutes Wednesday, 160 kids in kindergarten through eighth grade gathered at the edge of a mobile home park a half-mile from school.

For International Walk and Bike to School Day, the Elm Street students and about 1,000 others throughout Maine tried something some had never considered before: walking to school.

Organizers hoped the kids would see that walking is good exercise, fun, a cool thing to do.

“It brings us back to the old days,” said Deb Carlsen, a teaching assistant, as she watched the children gather. “I had to walk to school two miles every day.”

A small, first wave of students left for the school a little before 8 a.m. The second wave – more than 100 kids – converged on the mobile home park a few minutes later.

Because many kids lived too far away to walk, nearly everyone caught their regular school bus and rode it to the meeting area. One girl who lived nearby brought her cat.

In pairs, with a child in a wheelchair leading, the kids formed a long, straggly line and headed toward school.

“I like it and I don’t,” said 14-year-old Aaron Koss, a tall, athletic eighth-grader, as he walked down the tree-lined street. “I like it because it proves to the world that there’s something better to do than video games.”

And he didn’t like it because?

“No leg room,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and glancing at the kindergartners that surrounded him. “I literally have to walk heel to toe.”

The walk took less than 10 minutes.

“I like it,” said Caitlin, as she and Gaby stretched to step on the wide white lines of a crosswalk. “I like talking and being crazy.”

Inside, faculty met each student with a plastic gold medal stamped “Winner!”

“Happy Walk to School Day!” counselor Kathy Demers shouted as she hung a medal around each child’s neck.

Some of the kids wanted to do it all over again.

“It’s more fun than the bus,” Caitlin said.