Doctors traveling around Los Angeles prescribed a prescription: escape your own neighborhood.

Dr. Roy Meals is a veteran hand surgeon who loves to move his feet. He has climbed mountains and run three marathons.

But when he shared his latest plan with his wife a few years ago, she was quick to buy into it.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

Maybe so. He was about to hit mile 80, and his plan was to grab hiking poles and hike solo along the 342-mile perimeter of Los Angeles. After Miles agreed to connect with fellow hikers from various places, the idea seemed less crazy to his wife.

But you might be wondering the obvious:

Why would anyone hike in a roughly 500-square-mile, car-choked, unwalkable metropolis?

There is a reason for eating. First, curiosity and restlessness. Additionally, you believe you can’t truly understand a city through its windshield, and firmly believe that keeping your mind and body healthy is the best way to stop Father Time from working.

One more thing: Meals’ patients over the years have come from all corners of the city, and the Kansas City native considers it a personal shortcoming that he’s not familiar with much of Los Angeles, even though he’s called it home for half his life.

To plot his route, Meals unfolded an accordion-style map to outline, then headed to Navigation pull.lacity.org Draw precise outlines of city boundaries. The border formed an oddly shaped expanse, like a shredded kite, with San Pedro and Wilmington dangling from a rope at the southern end.

Dr. Roy Meals takes a break from his walk to talk with Louis Lee, owner of the JD Hobbies Store on West 6th Street in downtown San Pedro.

Meal divided his trek into 10-mile sections, for a total of 34 miles, and began walking two sections a week for four months, walking counterclockwise from the 5,075-foot summit of Lukens Mountain north of the city.

It can be said that the first day started with a bang.

Food slipped on loose rocks near the top of Lukens Mountain and fell, bruising his elbows and knees and breaking the aluminum shaft of one of his walking sticks.

But Miles won’t wave a white flag or call for a helicopter evacuation.

“Later, at home, I used my plastic surgery skills to repair the broken pole,” Myers writes in the book “Route: “Discoveries Along the City Lines of Los Angeles,” his just-released book about his travels.

Dr. Roy Meals walks along West Sixth Street in San Pedro.

Meal, now 80, still sees patients once a week at a UCLA clinic, spending much of the rest of his life in an upright position, adhering to his self-imposed rule of venturing no more than a mile from the city limits. In order to return to the starting point every day, he often takes the bus and finds that although the bus drives very slowly, the passengers often express their gratitude to the driver when they get off the bus, which he thinks is a “beautiful acknowledgment sound”.

The doctor strolled down the vast sidewalk with two hiking poles, like a cross-country skier. He carried a small backpack, wore an “Los Angeles” baseball cap and a shirt with the outline of the city limits emblazoned on the front, and handed out business cards with links to his book projects.

Those who clicked on the link were advised to escape their neighborhoods and follow Myers’ prescription for life: “Adventure on foot and make interesting, life-enriching discoveries. No matter where you live, be kind, curious, healthy, and engaged!”

Meals are what it takes, and as his last name suggests, he’s never been shy about sampling Los Angeles’ bountiful cuisine.

He tried skewered pig intestines at Big Mouth Pinoy in Wilmington, savored tongue-and-lip offerings at the Tacos y Birria taco truck in Boyle Heights, thoroughly devoured cheeseburgers and peach cobblers at Hawkins House of Burgers in Watts, and ventured into Ranch Side Cafe in Sylmar, curious about the billboards for American, Mexican and Ethiopian food.

During the meal, I tried hang gliding at Dockweiler Beach, fencing at the Santa Monica border, rock climbing at Chatsworth, boxing and go-kart racing in Sylmar, and weightlifting at Muscle Beach in Venice.

While walking one of the many paths he writes about in his book, Dr. Roy Meals stopped to admire the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial Wall.

In each area, Myers searched for statues and plaques, exploring historical points dating back to the Gabrielino and Chumash families, as well as Mexican and Spanish rule. He also examines the curiously checkered histories surrounding the city, delving into Los Angeles’ long-gestating real estate grabs, water politics and annexation plans.

Miles wrote in “Walking” that the remains of the foundations of Studio City Campo de Cahuenga were one of several sites that “aroused my emotions.” There, in 1847, Andres Pico and John C. Frémont signed a treaty ceding parts of Mexico to the United States, changing the landscape of both countries.

In Venice, Myers was equally moved when he came across an obelisk marking the spot where more than a thousand Japanese Americans boarded buses to Manzanar in April 1942.

“May this monument … remind us to be ever vigilant in defending our constitutional rights,” it reads. “Government power must no longer perpetrate injustice against any group based solely on race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion.”

At the Firehouse Museum, Myers learned that “black firefighters were met with extreme hostility at mixed-race firehouses, including being forced to eat separately… Little did I know that a visit to the Firehouse Museum would become a lesson in the history of racism in Los Angeles,” he writes.

Dr. Roy Myers walks through the armor-piercing projectile exhibit in San Pedro.

Although Meals visited famous sites like the Watts Towers and the Getty Villa, some of his most enjoyable experiences were what he called “incidental” discoveries that weren’t on his original list of points of interest, such as the Obelisk in Venice.

Miles writes: “Among those I stumbled across were platinum prop houses, Sims poetry houses, and warehouses filled with spices, buttons, candies, Christmas ornaments, or coffins. The owners, museum docents, and those who care for vulnerable children, bees, rescued guinea pigs, and injured marine mammals all truly love what they do; and their level of commitment is inspiring and contagious.”

His books are also very inspiring. In a city with miles of broken sidewalks and countless tent villages, we can all find a thousand things to complain about, among other glaring flaws. But Miles felt the heartbeat of Los Angeles with his stethoscope and discovered a thousand things to cheer about.

When I asked the good doctor if he would relive some of his hikes with me, he suggested we meet in areas he awarded gold medals for many attractions—San Pedro and Wilmington. There, he visited the Banning Building, Drum Barracks, Cape Fermin Lighthouse, the Friendship Bell presented to Los Angeles by South Korea, various buildings in Vinegar Mountain, World War II bunkers, sunken cities, maritime museums, etc.

When we met Garfield on Sixth Street in San Pedro, he was dressed to the nines. Hiking poles, a T-shirt with a puzzle map of Los Angeles, a plain “LA” hat.

“Let’s go,” he said, and we walked toward the waterfront, but not very far.

Dr. Roy Meals took a break from his walk to visit prominent San Pedro resident John Papadakis, 75, the former owner of a nearby now-closed Greek tavern.

A gentleman was walking out of the office and we said “good morning” to each other. He identified himself as John Papadakis, the owner of the Greek Taverna, a long-established local restaurant that has now closed. He invites us back to his office, a museum filled with photos, Greek statues and sports memorabilia (he and son Petros, the famed radio talk show host, were gridiron grinders at USC).

Papadakis declares that San Pedro “is the seaside soul of the city.”

We are on the road, keeping our eyes open to the wonders of this infinite city that reveals more of itself every time you turn a corner, say hello, and hear the first lines of a never-ending story.

Along the street we visited the renovation of the Art Deco Warner Grand Theatre, which is about to celebrate its 100th birthday. We at Louis Lee’s JD Hobbies dug into old issues of Life magazine, talked to Adrian Garcia about the “dog groomer” side of his shop that “specializes in senior dogs,” and got the lowdown on 50 private schools with uniforms from Norman’s Clothing circa 1937.

At the Post Office we looked at Fletcher Martin’s 1938 mail delivery mural. Back outside, looking out onto the harbor and sunny high seas, we met a merchant seaman relaxing on a bench who told us that his son worked at the New York Times. I later discovered the touching story of the journalist’s long search for the man we had just met.

“Hiking made me reflect on and respect Los Angeles like never before,” Meals writes in his book.

As we walked, discussing what to do next, Myers said he was considering exploring San Francisco the same way.

We were approaching Cape Fermin, where Miles pointed out the serene splendor of the Moreton Bay fig tree, which provided an acre of shade and brought a fresh, salty breeze.

Dr. Roy Meals walks along Port Los Angeles West Road in San Pedro, one of the many roads he mentions in his book.

“If anything,” Miles told me, “I would be quicker to notice the little things. You know, stopping to admire a flower or even just an interesting shadow pattern on the street.”

The message of his book, he says, is simple.

“Basically, just slow down and take a look.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com