I’ve started walking home from work on a semi-regular basis . . . one to three times a week. It’s about seven miles and usually takes about an hour and forty minutes to finish. By the time I get home I’m usually drenched in sweat. The sweating notwithstanding, there are a couple of things that I find interesting about it:
- I’m never tired once I get home.
- The pads of my feet are the only “damaged” part of my body. Often covered in blisters.
- It’s very easy to get into a comfortable zoned-out rhythm. It’s a great after-work thing.
- The walk over the Manhattan bridge is my favorite part because the view is so nice. The deafening trains running by every 4 minutes, however, is not nice at all. But, particularly after going through all of these topless street tunnels through the city, it’s nice to have a completely unobstructed view of the world.
- Walking down Broadway is made so much nicer because of all the added “green” spaces that have been built. Without those, I probably would have done it once and then never again.
- Seeing how so many neighborhoods change week over week (and sometimes how little they change) is really nice. You see the same people over and over. You see the same scenes played out with different people in the touristy areas. You see all the public art stuff that’s done in the city all the time.
- And, finally, you get to really see how the place you live is geographically connected to the place that you work and that seven miles isn’t really so far at all.
The one bad thing (if there is one) is that you also realize how uncomfortable people are with seeing a full clothed person covered in sweat. Once I hit Houston, there’s basically no turning back — my back, my front, and some of my pants are soaked with sweat and people definitely give you a stink-eye for that. I guess it’d be different if I were in athletic clothes, but . . . you know, it’s the summer. It’s hot. I sweat. I’m human. What are you?
