BY Michael C. Juliano

A 60-year-old man from Vermont has been going the extra mile with the hopes of ousting President and Vice President from the Oval Office — 485 miles to be exact.

With a blue coat on his back and a yellow sign calling for Bush’s impeachment in his hand, John Nirenberg, a professor of organizational behavior at the Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vt., began walking on Dec. 1 from Boston’s State House to the nation’s capital.

Hoping to arrive in Washington before Bush’s State of the Union Address in late January, he plans to deliver a petition of signatures he has been collecting along the way to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When asked if Pelosi knows he’s on his way, Nirenberg said an Associated Press reporter called her office seeking comment on his walk, to which a spokesman sent a stock answer.

"I’m also sending her a letter hoping she’ll talk to me," he said. "She seems nice enough and I don’t see why she wouldn’t."

As he makes his way along the Post Road, he plans to stop in Westport from 10 to 11 a.m. on Saturday to join the weekly peace vigil on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Memorial Bridge. From there, he will make his way toward Norwalk to attend another vigil from 12:30 to 2 p.m. at Norwalk City Hall, 125 East Ave.

Estelle Margolis, a Westport resident who has participated in the weekly vigil on the Cohen Bridge since it began on June 11, 2005, in protest to the Iraq War, said she has "no quarrel" with someone joining the vigil to express a political view.

We’ve been on the bridge for 2-1/2 years because it’s a very deep, profound commitment we have to getting out of Iraq. That’s one of the most important things we can do," she said, adding, however, that she is not in support of trying to impeach Bush. "It’s too late. It’s a huge amount of time, energy and money that I think is being diverted to a totally unrealistic pursuit at this point."

Nirenberg’s progress, his blog and other information on his journey may be viewed on his Web site at www.marchinmyname.org

I’m doing this because this administration is out of control with its disgraceful violations of the Constitution," Nirenberg said on his cell phone Monday afternoon as he walked through Mystic. "If Congress does not act on the abuses that have occurred, then they’ll be consenting to any abuses committed by future presidents."

Nirenberg, who has been sleeping at motels and is trying to average about 15 miles a day, said his walk is more low key than most campaigns to impeach President Bush.

"This is more my own conscience driving me, more of a personal effort," he said, adding that he has collected about 300 signatures in hand and more have been posted on his Web site. "I don’t know what it’s going to take for Pelosi and the others to get it."

A message to Pelosi’s office was not returned as of press time.

He said a video on his Web site of him walking has been downloaded about 5,000 times.

On his Web site, Nirenberg said he is afraid that America’s attributes of freedom, civility and morality are being destroyed by the current administration.

It isn’t just that this administration authorizes torture, that is reason enough for me to take this action, but Bush and Cheney have placed themselves above the law," he said. " And that is the first step of all dictators and tyrants