But it actually WAS uphill both ways

[carlotta]

Brooding over my youthful resentments, I revisited one of my most bitter....the fact that I had to walk to school. I have always been certain that this was more than a mile.

So I google mapped it to prove the unconscionable distance a small child was expected to traverse in the cruel cruel seventies before the inalienable right of children to be driven everywhere had been discovered....

it was 7/10ths of a mile. On the map, no matter how much I zoom in, it seems just the shortest little walk.


But seriously, even though it was Virginia, it did sometimes snow, and there really were VERY STEEP hills in both directions!

[BMalion]

luxury.

[Zebra]

riding the bus to school is worse than walking.

I did have to go over a hill to get to my school so I had to go up (and down) hill both ways.

[Dangerosa]

Mine was .7 miles too. But it was uphill both ways. And it does snow in Minnesota. More importantly, most of the walk was next to the lake and the wind would whip over that lake - on a cold February day it was really cold.

The year after I left elementary school, our street got a bus.

[Giles]

Even though it was more than 50 years ago, back in the last century, my walk to and from primary school was flat, since it was along an old railway line (which went right next to the block of flats that my family lived in, and separated my school from the school playground). And it was less than half a mile. For those worried about the infant Giles being struck down by an express train, the line went to two disused coal mines, and I only saw a locomotive on it once or twice.

(But I if was lucky enough to pick up a lump of coal on that railway line, we used to huddle around it all winter to keep warm).

[Thorium Indium Potassium]

My middle school was .3 miles away and we weren't allowed to walk. I actually got yelled at one day for attempting to walk despite the warnings (I was quite the rebel...).

[Ephemera]

I lived right next to my elementary school the first two years and then a block away the other four. I did once walk home from high school, though, and it was probably a mile or more along two of the busiest streets in my non-pedestrian-friendly city. No sidewalks at all.

[Mongo Ponton]

If we missed the bus we had to walk. It was probably a mile and a half and it sucked.

On the same note I went by my elementary school today for the first time in years. When I was in first grade I thought that must have been the biggest goddamn building in the world!

Now I see houses approaching that size.

[thirdwarning]

Seriously, half a mile?! I would have sworn it was at least three quarters, and I've been there in the past few years. Must have been my short little legs. Not to mention the cold wind on the lower half of those legs, since my mom wouldn't let me wear slacks.

[kunilou]

It was .5 miles, although if I cut through the woods behind my house I could cut that by half.

But they were woods. And it was really muddy when it rained. AND it was uphill.

[GorillaMan]

My high school was half-a-mile away. But the really annoying thing was that that all roads didn't lead there. Checking it on a map, I know I wasn't mad in thinking it was over a mile of actual walking through the zig-zag of suburbia. Each way. No wonder I found it boring.

[brujaja]

When I was in junior high school, we weren't allowed to wear pants until the rules changed when I was in 7th grade. Public school, California, and not even all that long ago. (was it?)

[E-Sabbath]

It was .25 miles to my bus stop. I was the only child at that stop, most years. The bus had to drive past my house to reach the stop, turn around, then go back the way it came from, and pass my house again.

[Rick]

Just checked Google maps.
My elementary school was .7 of a mile, and it was uphill in both directions (more so coming home) thanks to one big assed hill I had to go up and down to get there.
My junior high was 2.1 miles and was only uphill coming home.

[matt_mcl]

My elementary school was 400 metres away. Even so, I was often driven home from school when I was little, as Mom or Dad would pick us up (from after-school daycare) after driving across town from work; although we walked to school. We didn't consider it far, but I sometimes rode my bike.

When we started going to a different school across town, we took the bus. The first year or two, our bus ride was an hour and a half long :eek: ; we were at the beginning of the route in the morning, and then the bus went all the way out to the western suburbs then all the way back, to cover the whole west end of town. More than once, my poor nine-year-old bladder was sorely tested :o When they finally split the route into two, our ride fell to a half-hour (about 11 km). In unusual circumstances we had to take the city bus, which took about an hour.

In Montreal, my high school was down the block about 500 metres away; but the Big Walk came when I started going to cégep, which was about 2 km away up the mountain. It did me good, though, in that I lost about 20 pounds of baby fat in my first semester.

[NinjaChick]

riding the bus to school is worse than walking.
Word. I took the bus all through elementary and middle school (Elementary and first grade were about two miles away; eighth grade was at a magnet school about eight miles away). I was thrilled when I got to high school, just over a mile from home, and could walk and/or bum rides off my/my sister's friends.

There were only two times when my parents had any sympathy: One was first semester senior year, when I had a 'period 0' starting at 7 AM. The other was on senior skip day. My mother assumed that her dropping me off directly in front of the school meant I would in fact be in school that day. And I was, for the thirty seconds it took me to walk through the school to the student parking lot and get in my friend's waiting car.

[Joey P]

riding the bus to school is worse than walking.

I did have to go over a hill to get to my school so I had to go up (and down) hill both ways.
The school that a friend of my dad went to (grade school) required all students to take the bus. His friend lived within one block of the school and still was not allowed to walk. To add injury to insult, the way the bus route was set up, he was first to be picked up and last to be dropped off. So even though school went from (about) 8-3 he had to get picked up at 6 and get dropped off at 5.

[Tikki]

My elementary school was also roughly .7 miles from our house but there were no hills. However, I had problems with my legs that made the walk somewhat more difficult than for the average kid. I remember my mom telling me that she tried to get the school to send out a bus for me but no dice. Since she didn't drive and Dad was at work by then, I had no choice but to walk it. Sixth grade, we'd moved and the new school was probably less than a quarter mile from home but it was all uphill on the way back.

Junior high and high school were right next to each other and were probably about three quarters of a mile away. There was one short hilly spot and a dirt bank about 30 or 40 feet high with a path trampled into to it to be scaled or descended depending on which direction one was headed.

[Marienee]

Eldest (who is 8) rides his bike 1.86 miles to school and back (according to Google Maps; the actual route is shorter I think because of cut throughs). Youngest (who is 6) gets to decide whether he wants to take his own bike or ride behind me on my bike. From about January through about March they may also choose to take the city bus as there is no school bus. Thanks to global warming we only rarely have to deal with snow.

Since I don't have a Dutch driver's license, they have no choice. But I suppose they may take comfort in the fact that there are no hills in Holland to speak of.

[JoseB]

My elementary school (which I attended until the age of 13) was literally across the street from the flat where I lived.

My high school (from the age of 13 onwards) was farther away, but not much. About 10-15 minutes' walk.

All that time, both for elementary and high school, I always walked to my school.

When I entered university, it was a different proposition: The place was some 6 kilometres away (roughly 4 miles), and it was so absolutely brand new that there were no buses for us first-year students. So, a couple of days I even walked an hour or so to get to it. The rest of the time I mooched a ride with some of the guys who had a car (I only got my driver's licence at the age of 33) or hitch-hiked.

Just my 2 eurocent!

JoseB

[SomeUserName]

I had to walk to school from kindergarten to sixth grade, bus for 7th and 8th, and back to walking until I got my first car in eleventh grade.

I remember my mother trying to get the school to supply a bus ride for me as I had to cross a five way intersection. No deal. It was a .7 mile walk and uphill about half of the way.

Six years later some little girls moved in next door and the parents bitched and got a bus for them. :mad:

The walk to high school was 1.3 miles, uphill about 90% of the way.

I remember one time in seventh grade I was not feeling well and went to the nurse. They called my mom but she said she could not come right then, she was busy at work, but if I wanted to start walking home I could and she would keep an eye out and pick me up. She never picked me up. I walked two and half miles home. At least it was downhill.

[Aspidistra]

When I started high school, my parents bought me a bus pass so I could get to school. It was two buses away.

After a while, I got bored with waiting for the second bus every morning, and started to walk rather than wait for it. Then I figured out that if I walked the first bus route as well, I could get rid of the bus pass altogether. I made a deal with my parents that they'd just give me half the bus pass money if I walked every day (I thought I got ripped. It should have been ALL the bus pass money. But I digress...)

Google Maps tells me it was 2.4 miles. I love walking...

[ASAKMOTSD]

I had to check on this one.

Elementary - 0.2 miles (seemed shorter than that even)
Middle / Jr. High - 1.7 miles (that was a really long walk in the winter - arrived covered in ice quite often)
High School - 1.2 miles (that was a long walk as well until I discovered friends who could drive!)

[Hanna]

I checked = Elementary school was only about .4 miles. I walked that all the time, fairly flat.

Jr High - 1.2 miles, it was uphill both ways. I lived in a valley town; my parent's house was on one side, school was on the other side of the valley. Snow? Minnesota. I also played violin, so I dragged that everyday, too. I remember the kids that lived across the street could take the bus so the cutoff was probably right around 1.2 miles. I snuck on the bus like I belonged a few times, but it was so crowded the driver would only allow kids who were on the list on it.

At least I had shoes.

[Jurph]

The school that a friend of my dad went to (grade school) required all students to take the bus. His friend lived within one block of the school and still was not allowed to walk. To add injury to insult, the way the bus route was set up, he was first to be picked up and last to be dropped off. So even though school went from (about) 8-3 he had to get picked up at 6 and get dropped off at 5.

I think I'd "miss the bus" pretty frequently if I were in his place. "Oops, missed the bus - oh well, can't be truant. Luckily, school's right there!"

[BMalion]

My elementry school was across the street.

My middle school was 1.63 miles away. However, it was nine acres of woods was part of that.

My high school was maybe 2, just checked, 1.30 miles away, a better walk because it passed the Sparkle Market where I could buy my Bazooka Joe for the day. Good times.

[Napier]

1 km here. But, what the hell is up with the way they space bus stops now? I get stuck behind the bus and see that the stops are so close together that people waiting at different stops are talking with each other. Sometimes they're so close the bus almost overlaps its stopping locations. Are they trying to save physical activity for gym class, so they can cancel it to save money?

[Winston Smith]

At least you had school. We were marched to the boat yard and forced to scrape barnacles for 12 hours a day. The only food we were given was what we could pry off the hulls. The only water: puddles.

[StinkyBurrito]

...passed the Sparkle Market...A blast from the past!

I never walked to school. Elementary was only 1.4 miles, but it was a street that I wouldn't walk even now as an adult. We has several neighbor kids that we carpooled with. I would ride my bike sometimes when I got a little older, but it involved going way out of the way to avoid the traffic and find some sidewalks. Middle school was beyond walking distance, and high school was a half hour drive.

[Sunrazor]

When I was a little kid, I rode the bus until I was in third grade, then I walked one block to school. When I was in fourth grade, we moved, and I had to walk or ride my bike roughly a mile to school. The high school was even further, about 1.5 miles from our house, and I usually walked to and from school. We moved to a different town between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, and I continued to walk to school all through high school. It was exactly one mile from our front door to the high school. It wasn't uncommon for me to walk home for lunch in my senior year, since I had one of those "senior schedules" that allowed more than two hours in the middle of the day.

My senior year I also worked at a local radio station. We had only one car, and I had to go to work at 5 a.m. on Sundays, so I had to hoof it. Google tells me it was about 2.5 miles one way to the radio station.

Weather simply wasn't a consideration -- that's what coats, gloves and hats were for.

[Shamozzle]

My high school was almost exactly a mile away according to Google Earth. A mile is no big deal, except when it is -35C and you are improperly dressed because you are trying to be one of the cool kids.

Anyway, we were poor and our parents were forced to buy us the cheapest runners which happened to be made of plastic, essentially. My friend stepped off the curb and flexed the shoe in such a way that the toe box basically exploded and shattered in to a dozen pieces. He had to walk the rest of the way to school with his toes hanging out. Pretty funny.

[Hypno-Toad]

I just checked and it was .44 mile for me if I stuck to the sidewalk, .41 if I did the big cut-through across the back ball field.

[TroubleAgain]

I had to ride the bus home, which took about an hour, we were so far out in the country. Then we had to walk a quarter of a mile carrying 50 pounds (it felt like) of books (or in my brother's case, a baritone sax), in the Florida heat.

[Mahna Mahna]

I didn't walk to my elementary school. It was a fenced-in compound in the middle of one of the worst parts of town... as it was, we got a great view of the hookers standing outside the strip joint in the middle of the day as we were bussed in and out, and it wasn't unusual to find crumpled up tubes of modelling glue and the odd used condom in the schoolyard.

It was many years later that I realised that they didn't want us lying down in the grass at recess because there might have been syringes lurking on the ground. Gulp.

After that, the 2 mile walk to high school was a breeze no matter how bad the weather got or how uphill the route was. :)

[Harmonious Discord]

In kindergarten and first grade I was supposed to walk to and from school according to the city. We lived on a highway with no sidewalks and only a couple houses near us. It was miles to the school. School buses passed the house on the way to school. After two years of mother attending meetings the city allowed the bus to pick me up, but mother had to send a check every week for the driver or I couldn't ride. I had to walk 7 blocks from a babysitter's house for 5 years. The days I had band were the worst. I had to carry my fully loaded book bag, the lunch box, the coronet case, and the music stand. Does that sound over loaded. It was, and in winter I traveled by skating the instrument in front of me like I was curling. The lunch box and book bag did the same thing. I don't think any kid should be in either of those two situations.

[Antinor01]

It was 30 feet, give or take a few. Being homeschooled had some nice advantages.

[Tikki]

That reminds me of when my parents forced my brother to take up violin in the sixth grade. He used to complain about having to lug it to and from school. (.7 miles and no hills, mind you.) Back then, we didn't have much else to carry other than the occasional text book and our Pee-Chee, which is a folder for your papers, in case you don't know.

Now that I think of it, my brother and his friends surely took a shortcut that I either wasn't allowed to take or didn't know about at the time. Probably shaved that .7 mile in half. Still, while carrying a violin, it must have been an awful slog! :p

[RealityChuck]

My father dropped me off at school (it was on his way to work) and I walked back. Google Maps gives it as 0.43 miles. I always thought it was less than that. No hills, though.

[Spoons]

Looks like it was about 0.7 miles for me too. There were a couple of hills through a park, and being in Toronto it did get wintry, but the combination of hills + winter meant that we could turn the hills into ice slides and at least have a little fun as we trudged back and forth.

[Oredigger77]

I was bussed when I lived in Korea but it was about a mile walk to the bus stop and in first grade, a motorcycle actually ran over me and broke my foot. After that, I was walked to the bus station. Once I was back in the states, I continued to ride the bus, for about 4 months, until the bus driver kicked me off for being disorderly. At that point I rode my bike to school, about 2 miles, but it was still faster then the bus and I was able to deliver papers on my way to school and earn extra money. So I kept riding my bike to junior high, 3 miles. Unfortunately, the high school was too far away especially after football or track practice so I was dropped off on my dad's way to or from work until I got my own car.

[svrider]

I rode my bike 5.3 km each way, before checking with google maps I could have sworn it was more than 10km.

[The Scrivener]

My elementary school walk was just down the street and three blocks down, but one of those blocks was around a the corner where lived a man who fed the pigeons two loaves of bread every morning, and my walk took me under the power lines where the pigeons sat.

What's really funny was that the pigeon feeder's next-door neighbor was a gun enthusiast (and yes, a Vietnam Vet) who was as fastidious a groundskeeper as his neighbor was lax, and who enjoyed shooting those pigeons on occasion. Seriously... it was like an ongoing Guano War between those two.

In five years of walking that gauntlet, I never sustained a direct hit (by the birds or anything else), but there were a few close calls with the poop splats!

[D_Odds]

My walk to high school was 1.4 miles, as clocked by several cars' odometers. When I was in school, the bus was provided to anyone living more than 1.5 miles away. Today, they'll bus to the middle school if you ask, which was about 4 blocks away.

No big hills, but no matter how you walked, there were inclines both ways. Having had very long hair back then, and being too cool and cocky to wear a hat, there were quite a few February mornings where my hair froze.

The beach was 8 miles away (again, clocked by odometer), and in the summer we would bike it often (2-3 times per week). We were young and full of energy. That was uphill both ways, as there was a sizable hill just before the beach's entrance. Having biked to the beach and fooling around all day (not that type of fooling around - get your minds out of the gutter), the first thing that would face our tired, thirsty teenage bodies on the trip home was the steeper side of the hill leaving the beach. Fortunately, once crested, 7-11 was there and cheap Slurpees gave our next-to-broke bodies the sugar it needed to complete the trek home.

My son, who lives with his mother in suburbia, has no concept of going anyplace my 'manual' transport. My daughter, raised in Queens, is much better about using her two legs to get her where she wants to go.

[E-Sabbath]

Aw, I used to walk _home_ from school all the time. Usually while reading. Three to five miles, depending on the school.

[Mister Rik]

After years of using a bicycle as my primary form of transportation, I became convinced that my entire city is uphill both ways. When I got a job in the restaurant on the top floor of a nine-story hotel, I found out I was correct. Two of the main avenues through downtown are one-way streets, and a lot of my bicycling has been done on those two streets (they're safer for biking than the two-way main drag). While gazing out the hotel restaurant windows at a panoramic view of the city, I looked at these one-way streets.

Sure enough, northbound Mission Street slopes gently uphill to the north, and southbound Chelan Avenue slopes gently uphill to the south. As these two streets are only a block apart, I'm not sure how the city planners managed this feat.

[DianaG]

My elementary school was only a couple of blocks away, and although it was only uphill on the way home, it was a steep enough hill that going down was nearly as difficult, especially in inclement weather.

When my daughter first started school, it was only a couple of blocks away. Then my city decided to tear down all the elementary schools and build shiny new K - 8s, only one of which had a gifted program. Naturally, that was the one clear across town. The school bus was only available to students who lived two or more miles away. We lived 1.98 miles away. (They were unswayed by my suggestion that she qualifed if she left by the back door.) So starting at age ten, my daughter had to take a city bus to school. It was... not ideal. The bus stop was only about four blocks away, but she had to cross an extremely busy street to get there, and the bus was notoriously unreliable in bad weather. (Whereas in good weather, it was only annoyingly unreliable. :rolleyes: ) My daughter wound up taking a lot of taxis to school over the next four years.

[Who_me?]

My elementary school was exactly 1 mile from my house on Google maps, and that follows the route I walked most often. When I got to 5th grade we got a bus, but I never rode it. As a matter of fact, my punishment for not riding the bus was being not allowed to ride the bus. I guess it makes some sense in an odd way.

My junior high appears to have been 3.5 miles from my house. Yes, I walked that too. I always enjoyed the trip.

[Baldwin]

Nostalgically interesting thread. I went to nine different public schools in four states. I know the one in California involved at least a two-mile walk, including a big patch of desert where I used to catch lizards and once found a stash of Adam skin mags.

[Dangerosa]

My middle school was .3 miles away and we weren't allowed to walk. I actually got yelled at one day for attempting to walk despite the warnings (I was quite the rebel...).

In Kindergarten I lived in a house where the school yard butted up against my back yard. No streets to cross. You couldn't see the school from our house, there was a small hill there (uphill both ways) and a row of trees (Google maps shows the dead end street was extended and a lot more houses, but there is my house, the row of trees and the school, just like I remember from 35 years ago).

I got in trouble for walking home. One of the neighborhood moms was supposed to pick us up and was late - probably not very late, but I was five. So I walked home - the teacher was there and I remember saying "just tell them I walked."