Walking Journal and Walking Stories

Did anyone walk today/yesterday? (which ever applies.)
I wanted to, but the combination of feeling utterly pooped after work, plus quite a downpour just as I returned home, meant it wasn't quite do-able. Oh well, soon, I hope.

It rained all day yesterday. Hopefully the weather will behave this afternoon and I will walk home today.

I hope so, too, tsar.
You get a wee bit twitchy when you don't walk for a few days, don't you?

It tends to reinforces my laziness when I don't walk plus strangely enough I also snack on junk food more when I'm less active. Twitchy may not be the right word but it does seem to affect my mood in negative sullen ways.

Yes, I know what you mean. Walking makes you feel less sluggish, more alert ... & also kinda virtuous! So you tend to act more sensibly, healthily ... if that makes any sense at all.

Despite winter coming on, I'd like to try to keep walking regularly, if I can. That's my challenge. It'd be very easy to stop when the weather becomes less walk-friendly. Much easier on beautiful days like Saturday, or yesterday. Maybe I'll try & find some sort of light-weight, hooded raincoat/cape thing ... or something? I don't much like the thought of being soaked to the skin on a regular basis.

I was in Montreal for a couple of days last week. Early in the morning (I am
a lark in a family of owls) I went out for a combination walk and bicycle ride
in Old Montreal. Montreal has a short-term bike rental system called BIXI.
You swipe in your credit card and for $5 you have use of the system all
day. There are bike racks all over town. I took a bike from the rack near
our hotel and rode along the waterfront. I put the bike in a BIXI rack and
then I walked a bit along Notre Dame. I took another bike a little later and
rode to the old clock tower and back to the hotel. Great way to start the
day.

I had all intentions of walking all the way to home from work this afternoon and bloody heck!

Through the day time I kept looking out the window: lots of sunshine;
This afternoon: still lots of sunshine;

3:30 PM (the time I leave work): still more sunshine;

Walk 5 blocks, remove my dress shirt so I'm just wearing a nice tan t-shirt: some clouds, very warm with a slight breeze, still very sunny.

Walk 10 more blocks: the sky is 3/4 full with storm clouds and the slight breeze is a gale force wind! ;

Get to the library on 5th Ave. and 39th St. and get my reserved books: a few sprinkles start to fall;

Decide to walk to the 59th St. and Lexington while it hasn't started to rain;

Take the N train to the Queensboro Plaza in Queens. Run one more errand then since I took the train I am a tad bit ahead of the storm clouds;

Walk home from Queensboro Plaza while the sky is only partly cloudy;
By the time I get to a block away from home the sky is completely overcast.

The walking space between 59th and Lexington and Queensboro Plaza maybe only one train stop on the subway system. If I decided to risk it, I would have had to walk the entire 35 to 40 minute walk with no shelter from the rain. Not worth the risk.

Damn you Mother Nature!! Spoiled again!

Oh crap, tsar!

How disappointing was that?

Never mind, today's another day. Are you going to make another valiant effort?

Work, no walking for me today. I'm hoping .. tomorrow?

So the answer is affirmative!

Yay!

Sounds like a gorgeous day in NYC, tsar!

You didnt do this on SUnday Pm in Times square did you?

Shhh! Hush! You'll blow my alibi!

I dropped my son Nigel off at East House and told him I was going to
"stroll around the grounds until I felt at home." He's in his early
twenties so I wasn't sure he got the reference, but he laughed anyway
and went off to his job interview.

The grounds I strolled were of McLean Hospital, a renowned psychiatric
hospital in Belmont. James Taylor was a patient here, as were John
Nash and Sylvia Plath. I didn't know whether there were any celebs
there now. Just as well. Probably be a bad time to ask for an
autograph.

McLean looks more like the campus of a New England private college
than a mental hospital. The buildings are stately, most are brick and
of the Tudor style. I'd heard that Frederick Law Olmstead had a hand
in the layout and I believe it.

I had pretty much seen what there was to be seen of the property in a
half hour or so. Then I wandered on down to Mill St and walked to the
Rock Meadow Conservation Area and turned in there. I walked by the
Victory Garden where some locals were tending to their vegetable
patches and a little way out onto the meadow on a path lined with bird
houses on poles.

After a while I headed on back to McLean. The sign at the entrance to
one building gave me a chuckle.

SLEEP RESEARCH LABORATORY
DROP-OFF

Not longer after I got back back to East House, Nigel called me to say
he was on his way back from Human Resources. We got in the car and
returned to Stoneham.

Who knew McLean was so seemingly pretty!

I walked an easy path with a small group in the Fells. We had a new member who was older and a little round in the middle. I didn't want to push him too hard. He was fine - could have been more of a slave driver.

We saw a dead baby Canada Goose I think it was killed by the wet dogs I saw an owner whisking into her SUV. Poor little fuzzy thing.

Poor little fuzzy goose.

You never know what you'll come across on your walks, do you?

I haven't walked as much as I would have liked this week, but have managed to fit 3 (something like 3-4 kilometre) walks in. Not too bad, but I'd like to do better than that. On a regular basis.

Yesterday, late on a sunny afternoon, I did the quick, around my suburb walk .. which led me to Bunnings & their plant nursery in the last stretch. Which gave me the opportunity to grab a few herbs & seedlings I needed: apple mint, oregano, tarragon (what an optimist! Tarragon in May! Ha!) silverbeet & rocket (mine died in the heat last summer. Something I didn't think was possible. ) It's always good to have another purpose on these walks!

There are always encounters with others on my walking journeys. People looking for directions, people chatting while we stop at the traffic lights & wait for them to turn green, people talking about the weather, people walking their dogs, "oldies" out for a stroll around the block in the sun (good on them!) ...

By far the most "interesting" encounter (& I swear I'm not making this up!) was on Tuesday afternoon. A brilliant sunny day. On the last leg of my walk home from (almost) Brunswick I stopped off at my usual cafe for a cup of tea ... after I'd settled myself in & found an unoccupied outdoor table, offloaded my backpack & ordered, a woman at a nearby table gestured at me to come over & talk to her. Me? looked around to see if she was gesturing to someone else ... yes, she meant me. So over I came. The conversation went something like this:

She: "Come closer, I want to talk to you privately."
Me: "Oh, OK..."
She: "This man (pointing at the man sharing her table) is looking at you."
Me: "Oh OK ..."
She: "He wants to know if you're taken."
Me: " ...um .."
She: " Are you involved with someone? Are you married?"
Me: "Yes! As a matter of fact I am married! (smiling brightly)
She: "So you're taken then?"
Me: "Yes I am! And I have to go soon! I need to finish my cup of tea & ....!"


Never a dull moment! But will this putting off talking to people while out walking? Will it put me off my favourite local cafe? No! But goodness me, what was that all about?

Love it!

That sounded like a healthy and fascinating little jaunt George.

Much better then any soap opera one can find on any US networks!! What will happen next to our roving Ms Olga!

It's been a few weeks since I've last walked in Albuquerque, so I thought I'd post a few pictures before they go stale. As many of you know, Albuquerque is a town with clear rules of conduct ...



... straightforward speed limits ...


... guarded by watchful dinosaurs.



The architecture there is ... well ... not like in New Jersey ...



... for example, they have a very nice Art Deco cinema ...



... and they have a place called the "Church of Beethoven", featuring this moving sculpture of shoes walking on water.



Oh and by the way: This is the picture Bob and Diane see every time they drive home after grocery-shopping. As my Canadian friends would say, not bad eh?

Good to see you here, Thomas!
So this is Albuquerque. Interesting, interesting! Never seen the place up close like this before.
Tell me, did you do any walking in that amazing mountain in the distance (last shot)?