Browsed by
Category: walking

Just My Line

Just My Line

Comments 0 Comment

You can have your lefts and rights, your ups and downs, your diameters and perimeters. Give me the diagonal every time.

There’s nothing like a diagonal route for cutting corners, for shaving minutes off a stroll. Even these birds like it — though they hardly need it, seeing as they can get anywhere they want as the crow flies.
I was thinking of diagonals today as I walked to work, how I hold the destination in my mind and figure out ways to make it closer, as if I could leap there in a few steps instead of a hundred. 
It’s an impatient line, the diagonal is. That’s why it’s perfect for me.
New Walk, Continued

New Walk, Continued

Comments 0 Comment

The new walk is becoming a habit, the perfect way to unwind at the end of the day. I jump off the bus at one Metro stop, but walk two more stops up the road before boarding a train. The key word is “up.”

It’s about a mile from Rosslyn Metro to Clarendon Metro, but that doesn’t include the elevation gain, a number I’ve yet to locate but which feels mighty big when you’re hoofing it with a laptop at the end of a long workday.

One might be tempted to lag behind, like this little guy. But this little guy does not realize that Le Pain Quotidien is only a few blocks away — and that their crusty baguettes can be gone by 5:45. Nothing like a little French bread to put a skip in your step.

Though I fantasize about townhouses I pass along the way (so cute, so close in!), my walk leads not to a quaint bungalow — but a subway platform.  Not always as crowded as this one, I’m happy to say. But a subway platform just the same.

The Shutdown Walk

The Shutdown Walk

Comments 0 Comment

It’s hard to live in our nation’s capital without drinking our nation’s Kool-Aid. And right now, the flavor is shutdown. The will-it-happen, won’t-it-happen discussion has given way to talk of how it will happen. Shutting down the government is not unlike steering a huge ocean liner. One doesn’t start or stop quickly.

Since there’s one government employee and one dependent-on-government employee in this house — to say nothing of a government-employee daughter a few miles away — this matters in an immediate way.

During the last shutdown, in 2013, Congress authorized back pay for furloughed workers. We might not be as lucky this time. In addition to lapsed income, there’s also the uncertainty of the situation, the disruption.

Time for some perspective, which for me means … a stroll. I’m calling it the Shutdown Walk.

Frozen Solid

Frozen Solid

Comments 0 Comment

Footfall thunderous, thudding. No give in the ground. Crunching through frozen mud and thin white ice that begs to be broken.

This is what I’ve been walking on this winter when I venture off road to stroll on trail or berm. It’s a strange sensation, expecting give where you don’t find it.

Not unlike returning to a scenic spot of once-great beauty to find it befouled with new houses and fences.

The ground I knew — soft, fragrant, pliable — has become another rough element, something that doesn’t move with me but against me. It’s ground that may as well be … pavement.

TC in the Suburbs

TC in the Suburbs

Comments 0 Comment

Late-day walk with Copper, who was begging, pleading with his big brown eyes, not letting me out of his sight. OK, little guy. And so … we were on.

I knew we’d have a fun time of it when I saw a neighbor and her dog (with whom Copper has scrapped more than once) sauntering down to the bus stop. We’d inadvertently timed our stroll with the Folkstone rush hour: 15 minutes of nonstop bus and car traffic back from Crossfield School.

I hadn’t even reached Fox Mill Road before the first text came. That required I remove my gloves and send a return text, followed by a return email. While I was doing this, a sweet-faced boy of 7 or 8 approached us. Copper lunged at him before I realized what was happening. “He bites,” I said to the child, whose expression was suddenly frozen in horror. “I’m sorry, but you don’t want to pet him.”

We finally reached the halfway point, then turned toward home. On the way back, I received a call, a voice mail and another email.

Total elapsed time: 25 minutes.

This is what happens when walking in the suburbs meets telecommuting in the suburbs. Not exactly a walk in the park … but better than the alternative.

(Copper in his autumn bandana. That’s two Copper pix in one week. No more for a while!)

New Walk in Town

New Walk in Town

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday after work I jumped off the bus at Rosslyn, as I always do, but instead of transferring to Metro, I walked up Clarendon Boulevard, past Court House Metro on to Fairfax Boulevard and all the way to Ballston.

It was getting dark, lights coming on, the Christmas decorations still up in some stores and windows. There were dogs and their owners, children and their parents, millennials and their yoga mats.

This is a new route for me, many uphill stretches and some unknown areas that had me a bit turned around last night. But it’s a route I look forward to learning as the days lengthen. It’s the new walk in town.


(Pictures of another sunset walk; the new walk in town is not yet photographed!)

Auto Pilot

Auto Pilot

Comments 0 Comment

It’s below freezing here with a sky that means business (snow business). Birds flit from feeder to roost, keeping warm, I imagine. That’s what I’d do if I were a bird.

Instead, I sit in a warm room observing my feathered friends, trying to work up the enthusiasm for a morning walk. Will the temperature rise past 32? That might trigger some movement on my part. Otherwise, I may have to sit a while longer, have another cup of tea.
Absent from the blogosphere for two days, I notice that the entry I thought I’d posted on Christmas Eve never published. Because I scheduled it for December 24, though, its time stamp makes it appear as if I published it on that day.
It’s a vote against auto-pilot … but a vote in favor of time travel. About which more will be said … in the future. 
Mind Walking

Mind Walking

Comments 0 Comment

For the last two days, my walks have consisted only of trips from the house to the car, the car to the Metro platform, the Metro platform to the bus stop, the bus stop to the office, the office to the bus stop, the bus stop to the Metro platform, and, well … you get the picture.

It’s a picture of a walk-starved person, someone who draws strength from movement but who isn’t moving much these days. 
This will be remedied soon. In the meantime, I’m letting my mind do the walking. It’s taking me down a white sand beach in Florida, along a slick brick sidewalk in Bangladesh and through a canopy of trees in a woods near my house.
Ahhhh …. I’m feeling better already. 
Alone and Together

Alone and Together

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday’s walk took us to Long Bridge park, where we could see the Washington Monument, planes taking off and landing, a red helicopter whirring toward the river, and a freight train lumbering along the tracks. We paused for a group shot, our fine and motley crew, then strolled back chattering about our work, our lives, our plans for the future.

A far different stroll happened last night. I left the H Street Country Club a few minutes before 8 and walked the 10 blocks to Union Station by myself. The H Street corridor has the grittiness of the newly gentrified neighborhood. Start-up boutiques, dark side streets, coffee shops with attitude, and panhandlers aplenty. It also has … a streetcar, though I didn’t see one heading west until I was almost at Union Station.

It was past 8:30 when I caught the first of two Metros, close to 10 when I got home. The walk made the day a little longer, but I’m so glad I took it. I needed to process Day One and prepare for Day Two. Walking: it’s good together … but it’s better alone.

Houston Delivers

Houston Delivers

Comments 0 Comment

To riff for a moment on a city defined by a sentence amplified by a movie— “Houston, we have a problem” — let me just say Houston had far fewer problems than I expected to see.

While there was evidence of Hurricane Harvey — a boarded-up motel and piles of refuse in neighborhoods (the latter viewed by other wedding-goers, not me) — the city, on the whole, glittered and gleamed.

From the Johnson Space Center to the funky soul food breakfast joint my sister-in-law found to a host of museums on everything from medicine to bicycles — Houston delivered.

The best part was walking through the parks, past fountains and waving pink grasses and through the studied stillness of the Japanese garden. Dogs and families, girls in ballgowns for their quinceaneras, even a tightrope-walker — everyone out to savor the cool breeze and sparkling low-humidity day.