It’s about a year since I signed on to my failed venture with Team in Training, and I’m a little nostalgic. I was a cruddy runner,
but it was a great sense of accomplishment to go from being barely able to crank out 2 miles in February to being barely able to crank out 12 miles in April.
Friday of last week was absolutely gorgeous, though, and I walked in to an afternoon appointment. It was a little further into town than I estimated, and I totally wore the wrong shoes … by the time I made it home on the the return trip, shin splints and some cleverly placed blisters had me nearly crippled. Even so, it was ridiculously invigorating and I think I might be onto something I can actually do on a somewhat regular basis. It’s not quite as rewarding as running, but then again, unlike running, walking doesn’t put me flat on my ailing back for weeks at a time.
As I walked the mile or so in, I realized that when I lived in Chicago, I walked all the time. Out here, in nature’s playground full of evergreens, healthy hikers, etc., no one walks. Or rather, folks only seem to walk at places they have to drive to get to.
As I traipsed along, I got the strangest stares — in Vancouver, Washington, you apparently only walk because you’re too crazy or too down and out to drive a car. An obviously middle class white chick walking along the city’s woefully inadequate sidewalks isn’t something drivers and vagrants in this town were expecting to see. (Nor were the jackasses rolling through crosswalks during my right-of-way expecting me to shout and smack their vehicles instead of politely letting them nearly run me over. You can take the girl out of Chicago, but….)
There’s a dusting of snow out there this morning and I’ve been working at home, finishing up some freelance work. Now I’m trying to decide if I’m up for walking in to town to go to my office and meet a lunch appointment. I’m thinking so, especially given the fact that everyone around here seems to forget how to drive when there’s any kind of weather at all.
In the meantime, I’ve got another review posted from last week, one from a month ago that I forgot to link to, and there’ll be another coming this week. Check out last month’s play review here and this week’s crazy dance preview here.
Those ‘Couverites definitely need to have people like you to call them out on their lame-ass behavior! Go Temple!
Just last night I had a similar incident on my way home on my bike (not even in The Couv!), and as luck would have it, the people in the car were getting out of the car just as I caught up with them. What’s odd is that I was the most calm I think I’ve ever been in that sort of situation, but they still wouldn’t even listen to anything I had to say (not that I was trying to say that much). I’m thinking about writing a letter inviting them to give me a call when they’re ready to have an adult conversation instead of just yelling “move along now!” over what I’m trying to communicate to them. I guess it’s lucky I know where they live, and not the other way around. : )