Walking girl

New Yorkers walk. Either out of necessity (maybe one in every 26 people I know actually has a car), or out of budget concerns (I’m not about to pay a cab driver $10 plus tip every time I need to travel a mile or two down the road when my able body can get there for free), or out of public-transit aversion (sometimes you just don’t want to be in the dark, dungy subway or creep along at a snail’s pace on the bus). No matter the actual reason, New Yorkers walk to work, walk to meet friends for a night out, walk to the grocery store, walk to the movies, walk to go shopping, and – my favorite – walk to the gym. The tasks non-New Yorkers would never consider completing on foot, New Yorkers actually view the addition of a car as a disservice to the task. I often speed on foot past a congested intersection of horn-blowing cars and yelling cabbies, and I remind myself a car wouldn’t be so much of a luxury as a big, expensive headache.

To finally put a quantifiable number with my seemingly over the top claims - I swear I walk a million miles a day! - Julie sent me a pedometer. After familiarizing myself with the pedometer instructions and punching all the buttons several times, I clipped it on my waist and walked a few steps to see if it worked. From the couch to the kitchen = 5 steps, yep! From the kitchen to the bathroom = 2 steps, right-o! From the bathroom to my bedroom = 6 steps, alright! This thing works!

The first day I forgot to wear it. So the second day I was determined to wear it, but also had previously decided to wear a dress. Pedometer and dress do not make a good wardrobe combination! With the pedometer clipped underneath the skirt and me slightly obsessed with checking the step count, I constantly had to steal to the bathroom or a dark corner in order to quickly check my progress throughout the day. End of day total = 10154 steps – just over 5 miles!

With the city streets being laid out in a grid format, every informed New Yorker knows that 20 street blocks equals 1 mile, so it's easy to calculate the distance from point A to point B. Although the zigs and zags of my walking commute get jumbled, I can safely bet my daily walking around an island totaling 27 square miles hovers near the 5-mile mark.

Day 1's easy victory of 5 miles made my interest in the new toy wane because I forgot to wear it again for three days straight. The forgotten device would pop into my mind mid-stride – "dang it! I’ve probably already walked a mile, and it’s only 10 AM!" So I made a point to clip it on for my Sunday running around - up to church, over to the park, wandering around the park, down to shopping, over to a barbeque...

End of Day 2 total: 17,587 = almost 9 miles.

Next gift requests from Julie - a foot soaker and massager, please!