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Category: walking

Clarity at Clarendon

Clarity at Clarendon

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It’s been a strange winter — cold scouring winds that hurl sticks and limbs onto frozen ground followed by one-day warm-ups that leave us longing for spring.

When the weather cooperates, as it did yesterday, I take my new walk through Arlington on the way home.

And last night, for the first time, I found my way with no backtracking. This seems like something I should have been able to do first time around, but after Clarendon, three streets come together in a strange intersection, and the middle of the three, the one I needed to find, looks more like a parking lot than an avenue. There are plenty of directional errors waiting to happen in that neighborhood — even with phone directions in tow — and each time I got turned around I would make a new mistake.

But yesterday, it was light enough that I found the street I needed. And it was as I had imagined it: the way that had been muddled was suddenly made clear. I love it when that happens.

A Walker in Afghanistan

A Walker in Afghanistan

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If I lived in a war zone I would probably walk, crunch and use the elliptical. The stress relief would be worth the tedium, or even the danger.  So I get why people wear their fitbits when they’re in harm’s way, especially if they’re gadget geeks who want to measure their workouts.

But I don’t get why they share their data with a fitness sharing app called Strava, which then posted the whereabouts and movements of their customers in a heat map available for all to see. So by clicking on a route called Sniper Alley outside the American base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, you could find the names and hometowns of those who use it. Combine this with some basic Googling and you have a trove of information.

I first read about this oversight yesterday, how it was discovered almost by accident by a college student in Australia. Why didn’t someone realize sooner that this technology could be used to reveal troop movements, the identifies of agents and so much more sensitive information?

Sharing data is a way to personalize technology, to humanize it.  But whatever is shared can be abused.

I hate to admit it, but in a world of smart cars, smart appliances and smart houses … we’re going to have to start reading, really reading, those privacy statements. And companies who collect sensitive data must do a better job of telling us how and when they use it.

Otherwise we may find ourselves walking in Afghanistan — with sniper guns trained on us.

(Photo: Washington Post)

A Walker at Pemberley

A Walker at Pemberley

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Over the weekend I watched one of my mainstays, the Pride and Prejudice miniseries that debuted in 1995 and never grows old.

What struck me this time around is how much time Miss Elizabeth Bennett spends traipsing around the countryside. She walks in all weathers and all terrains. She walks in the cold and the rain. She dirties her petticoat and muddies her shoes. She walks around the estate at Pemberley, where she runs into its owner, Mr. Darcy, fresh out of the lake and dripping wet.  It’s a scene to thrill every female English major’s heart!

Later, in dry clothes, Darcy escorts Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle around the estate, along crushed stone paths, through copses of trees. This all could have been mine, Elizabeth said to herself on an earlier tour of the house, having second thoughts about spurning Darcy’s proposal as she reevaluates his character — and his property!

But the quiet walk the couple shares bodes well for the future. And as the camera pans out, we see the placid beauty of the English countryside. I saved the last two episodes for another night. But I know this: One day Miss Elizabeth Bennett will be a walker at Pemberley.

(Lyme Park, Cheshire, where the lake scene was filmed.)

Frosted Fields

Frosted Fields

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Woke up this morning to whitened grass and blue birds flocking to the feeder, to the black-and-white-striped, red-headed downy woodpecker pecking at the suet block. It’s not walking weather, not yet.

A few more hours so the temperature rises past 19, so my breath won’t blind me. A few hours of mental exercise before the physical.

In the meantime I sit here in the dining alcove, as close to the backyard as I can be and not yet in it, itching to be outside.

Just My Line

Just My Line

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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!)