Taking it in stride

So I’ve been walking a lot the past three days.  Well, maybe it’s not really a lot.  But considering I spend so much of my life in front of a computer at a desk – even with a regular habit of walking or running at the end of my day – it is a significant increase.

Last night I had a miscommunication with the dealership.  My polite way of saying Kermit is still in the shop.  I had noble intentions of offsetting my lack of the daily run with a walk to pick him up, but the miscommunication meant I was halfway there before I realized there was no point going to Watertown by foot or any means.  So, I took myself back home by foot.  I managed to spend a few more zombified moments on the computer when I calculated the total of my day’s walking to be ten miles.

I used to spend my Saturdays in London doing just that.  I would walk all day and give up at the point my feet couldn’t take it, when I would hop on the train to get home.  I think my best walk was going from my South Kensington flat and walking through Westminster all the way down the Thames to the Tower of London.  That was probably ten miles.  Maybe.  I actually never bothered to really figure it out.  But it was a good walk.  My boon was a bottle of mead that I took home to relish after my meal.

Anyway, I haven’t walked so much since those London days.  Which, in spite of everyone’s prejudice against London’s culinary diet, was probably one of the healthiest times of my life.  I cooked a lot of fresh food.  Good food that I bought on Portobello Road every Saturday.  I walked everywhere.  Not just those lengthy Saturdays.  If I had the time, I would walk to my destination.  So I could see all the layers of that city.  I felt the exhaustion sometimes.  But mostly it was the satisfaction of using my limbs and not letting them sit in atrophy in front of a desk or television set.

I will confess I was annoyed when I woke up this morning and didn’t have the luxury of driving to work today.  It was cold this morning.  My body hurt from those ten miles after the muscles retracted overnight.  And the stairs up to my office were just agony. 

Poor me.

Seriously, this isn’t going to be a week.  It isn’t permanent by any means.  I am going to do my best to determine to do this once or twice a week so I get the walking in.  But it still isn’t a necessity.  And then I come to my office and sit all day long – pretty much.  I do have reasons to go up and down those stairs again.  But… really… not that bad.

Doesn’t this show what a product of my generation I’ve become?  How lazy and spoiled I am by the fact I have a car?  And live in a world of elevators and desk jobs?  God forbid I should actually have to use my legs.  How many generations had to walk the same distance and then climb up the stairs to stand on their feet for ten hours in a factory job?  Only to walk home and sleep a few hours to come back and do it again?  And why do I think that it is in the past?  There are still lots of people who have to walk to work and stand on their feet all day long in a factory to make stuff that I buy cheap at Target – to which I drive my car to get.

These past few days of walking haven’t just opened my eyes to the footpaths I don’t see in my little happy bubble.  It makes me realize what a luxury it is to be lazy.  And how ridiculous it is that I live in a generation and culture that has to force itself to make the body work.

Now I will post this and sit in front of my database until lunchtime.