When I walk, I like to do about 2 to 3 miles. That's about all my boredom meter can tolerate, so I make sure I mix up my routes a lot. Sometimes they criss-cross over each other, and sometimes they're just loops.
Today I'm planning on doing my neighborhood loop, a steady but slow uphill, followed by a straightaway, then a steep downhill, then a short but decent upgrade back to my starting point. Sometimes I jog and run in with my walk, but today I notice too much activity on my route: people leaving church (on a Saturday?), a U-Haul with seven men of varying ages loading up furniture, a bicyclist walking her bike up the sidewalk, dog walkers... I decide this route is too busy to make an ass of myself jogging and running, so as I make the second loop, I turn and head uptown.
I don't want to wander too far because my water is strategically placed along the fence of my driveway. I cut across a side street and head back toward town, swing by the park (nothing happening there), angle down by the stores, cross Main Street, and head back down by the moving van again. I decide that the moving van and the movers are blocking my sidewalk. At this dangerous five-way intersection where sometimes someone might yield if we're all very lucky, I probably shouldn't risk walking in the street. At 2+ miles, though, I'm not certain I want to go back uphill.
I head across the train tracks and aim for the nearby Whole Foods Market. It's a reasonably flat route, and it's a good landmark to choose as a turn-around point. But I get distracted by the factory that was converted to apartments years and years ago. For some reason, today I decide to turn on the sidewalk into the complex. Maybe they have walking trails along the river, I think to myself.
Turns out there are no trails, so that's a bust. However, I discover several other things: an American flag flying proudly against a blue sky, an old factory piece imbedded in the ground like art, and a mysterious building remnant that I check out only to find it's full of weeds and some old benches (what an incredible waste of a goldmine outdoor space).
After snapping some photos with my phone, I head back and take a slight sidestep, walking past the current youth center. The new youth center is the building project that is destroying the nearby track I used to walk and jog, the one from the junior high I attended when I first moved to town -- progress that makes me happy and sad at the same time, so I snap a picture of the front porch of the temporary youth center.
