Walking in the City
The cord on my headphones was starting to wear and the copper wire began to poke through. Not being in the United States and able to avail myself of an Internet repair request, transported by the good folks at UPS, I had to look for a more archaic solution. So I headed to the Sennheiser website, found their one service provider in Buenos Aires, and made a phone call (so 1999). I looked at the map, but had no idea where this place was at. Since there were no corresponding buses from my neighborhood and I was too cheap to take a taxi, I figured, “Why not walk there and see a new neighborhood?” That was a bit nuts.
I knew it would be a long trek and at 10.59 miles round trip, according to my pedometer, I was right. Walking at a decent clip, it was still 90 minutes each way. There were a few decent photo shots on the way home as I wandered through Belgrano “R”. But man when I got home, my feet were tired!
Anyone that has lived in a large city will tell you the same thing. Big city life allows (forces, depending on point of view) you to do a great deal of walking. It really is amazing how your perspective on time and distance changes. Were I at home in the Midwest, it would never enter my mind to travel by foot anywhere outside of a half mile or 8 minute radius. But now I walk half a mile just to get to the bus stop. Almost every day I walk at least 1.5 miles in 23 minutes to and/or from the subway station. While today was definitely a much longer journey than normal, it not uncommon to tally up 3-5 miles a day getting from point A to point B, even with public transportation involved. And with the beautiful spring weather, it’s nice to be outside and free rather than cooped up in a noisy bus. It also gives me a chance to see people out and about in the streets and in front of their homes. I guess now I can tell my kids, “When I was your age, I walked…both ways to school.” Man, am I getting old.
