I walk about 20 - 25 minutes to work each day. City streets, in winter most of them are shoveled.
I know coworkers that live HALF as far from me to work and are absolutely terrified of the thought of having to walk. What? You walk?!
Cold cold cold weather (in the below zero range…) yeah. I’ll get a taxi. But besides that I have a big umbrella and a few heavy winter coats.
Why is it that some people, even in nice weather, just can’t get it through their heads that walking isn’t a bad option?
First off… Its cheap. I don’t own a car so I don’t pay for gas or insurance. I can put that extra COUPLE HUNDRED dollars a month away to do with as I please.
Second off… Its often nice… especially this time of year, to go for a walk. Besides that, healthy.
Also, environment. Not spending lots of money to dump toxins into the world.
People look at me in absolute SHOCK when I tell them I walk. I point out one of the 5th story windows where I work and say “See that church over there? If that wasn’t there you’d see my kitchen window. ITS NOT THAT FAR!”
Lots of people I know live within walking distance of… well… just about everything they need. I can walk to the store, to work, and if I really need to do a large food shop I know several friends who drive and ask them when they’re going… we usually go shopping then I make them lunch so as to not be a user in any way. But lots of people just… well… if its over 3 blocks they ain’t doin’ it. Even in nice weather…
Walking isn’t cool, first of all. Walking is what old fogeys and crazy people do. Bikers have cool gear. What do walkers have? Rockports?
Also, it’s slow. It takes me an hour to walk to work every day and I only live 3.5 miles away. Fortunately for me, I don’t mind using the time to meditate and think. But for other people, that’s just too much time doing nothing.
I see lots of people riding bikes and jogging, but except for dog-walkers, rarely do I see people walking. Which I like, because that just means there’s more sidewalk for me.
I don’t walk nearly as much now as I used to, which is part of the reason I’m in such bad shape. That may change after I move, because at my new location I’ll be only a twenty-minute walk from one of the grocery stores I shop at. Although I am considering getting a bicycle for the longer trips.
It’s not so much laziness as inertia in my case. I’m retired, so I don’t have to go out unless I want to. I keep telling myself I should start the day with a nice walk, and every so often I do, but not nearly as much as I should.
Yeah! Cool is paying $4 a gallon for gas to drive 15 blocks and then circle for 45 minutes looking for parking, then finally give up and pay $12 for a parking garage.
I think so many people are out of shape that they just don’t have the stamina for a 10 block walk. Maybe that will be one positive outcome of the ridiculous high fuel prices, everybody will walk more and drop 20 pounds and the medical costs associated with the treatment of obesity related illness will drop significantly.
For me it’s a matter of comfort. I’m spoiled, and it’s gotten worse as I get older. My comfort range is between 60 and 85 degrees F. Either side of that range, I won’t be outdoors for long. Good thing I’m not married to a farmer.
I’m beginning to think that, too. I always park my car at the far end of my office’s parking lot so I can get a little exercise (I live too far away to walk to work, unfortunately). Every so often one of my coworkers will see me walking to my car at the end of the day and offer me a ride! The hell? It’s less than one-tenth of a mile from the door to my car! I know they mean well, but I’m stunned that none of them can walk that distance.
Just a couple of hours ago I happened to read the following in a Michael Crichton novel: “In the fourteenth century, peasants didn’t think anything about walking twenty miles a day, and sometimes more. Even pilgrims walked twelve or fifteen miles in a day, and those groups included women and old people.”
And kids! In America, the rite of passage is getting a driver’s license, which means now you’re an adult and you never have to walk anywhere again.
I sympathize with this. Walking for an hour every day to get to work seems excessive to me; but then, so does driving for an hour every day. Who wants to spend way more time on something than they have to?
When I was a kid I hated long walks because they were so boring (“too much time doing nothing” indeed!), but fortunately, with MP3 players readily available, they need not be. If I have something I want to listen to, I look forward to a long walk and look for an excuse to take one.
I don’t walk to work because I live 15 miles from my office, would have to walk along two freeways to get there.
If I took a bus, It would take nearly 1 - 2 hours to get to my office. Las Vegas has shitty public transportation.
Also, I have to use my car for company business. I do environmental remediation consulting and I have job-sites all over the valley.
Non work though, I walk to get the mail (cluster mailbox is way down the street), my husband and I take walks for fun and to spend time together. When we get a dog (possibly late this summer), we will go for walks a lot more, because the pupster will need walking.
But then again in the summer here, when it is still 100 F at midnight, cars with the AC are a godsend.
It must be nice to live in cities with fabulous public transportation. Sometimes cars are just a necessity.
At work I’m up and down the elevators between the 1st and 5th and back from 6th to 1st six or seven times each day. At least once a day I see someone take the elevator for one floor… even going down.
And a week ago I was walking just outside of town (was about a 2 mile walk…) to a friend’s place… yeah, if it were winter I’d find other arrangements… but its warm now. I saw a large large yard with a driveway about 50 yards or so long. In the time it took me to walk past the property a guy came out, got on his four wheeler, went to the mailbox to get the mail, and returned to his porch.
Quite a few people in my office in London walk to work when the weather’s nice - distances of four or five miles being about the longest. Walking can be about as fast as taking the Tube at rush hour, and a whole lot more pleasant.
But I don’t think Americans (assuming the OP is American) can be blamed entirely for this laziness. As has been repeatedly pointed out, American towns and cities are not designed with this crazy notion of walking places in mind, and they haven’t been for many years. European cities are, for the most part, pleasantly walkable. Try to walk round an average American town and I get the impression you’ll be hopping over roadside crash barriers, walking along litter-strewn shoulders, etc etc.
I remember reading Bill Bryson’s collection of columns Notes from A Big Country (called I’m a Stranger Here Myself in the US, I think), in which he recounted that when he invited his new next-door neighbours over for dinner not long after moving back to the States, they drove. I don’t know if that was exaggerated or made up for comic effect, but I’m sure it does happen. I think if you live with that mindset long enough, walking becomes seen as an unavoidable inconvenience that must occasionally be relied on to get you from one safely sealed environment to another, preferably no more than a few feet away.
philly is a walking city and many people walk to work. i take the bus if it is raining, or if i am on my feet at work. hours standing at the copier will have me crawling for a seat on the bus.
septa is the transport system here and i try not to give them money if i can help it. it is a horribly mismanaged company.
I love walking and taking the subway everywhere. I have found life without a car to be one of the most wonderful things I have experienced. Lots of people here don’t agree with me though. When I take the stairs at work everyone smiles as if to say, “Silly pbbth avoiding the elevators!” and my roommate actually found a way to walk from the drugstore 3 blocks over downhill both ways and take an elevator to avoid the hills. There is a reason I have lost 50 lbs since I moved here and she has not.
(Is talking about running in a walking thread a hijack?)
If I could, I would run everywhere (I had insomnia the other night and decided to jog for about an hour at 2 a.m. because of how quiet it is outside). My main problem is how impractical running is when you have to carry things. So i guess I could slow down occasionally ;)
My girlfriend lives about five minutes walking distance from the school we go to, and on days when her parents come with us to school functions like plays or recitals they not only don't see why we don't just ride over there with them, they actually get *angry* as if it's only a way to avoid them.
It’s laziness.
Really. I’m very lazy. There was both a gym and a bakery across the street where I used to live and I guess which one I never entered? Both! They were across the street and if I felt odd about driving to the gym, imagine driving to the bakery next to the gym?
It depends on where in the US you go. This far north, with our small town populations, you don’t see the litter and such. But in the cities in addition to litter they have these things, I think they’re called sidewalks? We don’t have those. Any, that is. Not a street in my entire town has one. So it is walking along the sandy shoulder while cars zoom pass at 50-odd miles an hour. I’d like to walk to the library since it’s only a couple of miles away, but the traffic makes that a scary prospect.
Which isn’t to say walking doesn’t happen up here. Where I work they paved us a nice circuit path so people can take walks during breaks. I take 2 fifteen minute walks every day so I can fend off the feeling that I’ll go insane from sitting all day. So it’s us walkers out there every day, and the smokers.
I do miss how much more I was able to walk while a college student, back then we walked 10-20 miles a week besides scurrying about campus for classes. There had been sidewalks there.
If you walk to the store you will be amazed how heavy a couple bags of groceries can get. You need a wheeled conveyance. Stealing a cart is frowned on.
I walk my dogs in the park every day. EVERY DAMN DAY. No peace is possible if they don’ get the walk. But it is easy to go to stores and restaurants by foot. My wife would choose to take a car from the living room to the bathroom if she could.
I usually walk for about an hour and a half every day, most often just for the exercise. This is just around the neighbouring suburbs close to home. If I want to visit the centre of town (four or five miles away), I’ll catch the train one way and walk the other. I have walked both ways on occasion but it’s a bit too time consuming. Work’s too far to walk so I drive, and my job is mostly sedentary. If I get a break for an hour or more at work, I’ll go for a walk there as well.
I find that walking is a good time to think things over. I don’t like to listen to music or anything as I go, it distracts too much from things you really should be listening out for, like cars. Cars are the worst part, really. The noise and fumes. It’s really great, even in the middle of the suburbs, when there’s a rare lull in the traffic and you can’t hear a single car, just the birds and the breeze and your own footsteps.
My (American) small city has a very unusual layout–it is compact, without sprawling suburbs, and has lots and lots of sidewalks and bike paths. More people here walk or bike to work than anywhere else I’ve ever lived, and it makes sense for them to do it.
Unfortunately, I was a dummy and bought a house in a small nearby town. There’s really no way for me to find the time to walk to and from work. Bummer. I often take a long walk with a friend at my lunch hour, though.
Some places lack sidewalks. I live about a 10 minute walk/2 minute drive from school, but for most of the year I’ve been living here, I take the car to the school.
I have/had to be at school (animal hospital) by 6am sometimes, and nobody knew when I would be out. The route from my house to the school lacks sidewalks and has instead ditches and bad lighting, and is notorious for awful drivers going at really high speeds. Not a good thing for a single young female to be walking at odd hours.
If I had to be at school during the day on the weekends I would walk, sometimes bringing my dog for the walk (she likes it). But in those times, the sun was out and the traffic was less.
I had done the walk at night, and is not pleasant, thanks to the lack of sidewalks and lighting. I feel that I may get run over by a stupid driver.
I’ve also walked from school to the bus stops and from my house to the main campus plenty of times. Again, during the day, when there is light outside.
We don’t have those. Any, that is. Not a street in my entire town has one. So it is walking along the sandy shoulder while cars zoom pass at 50-odd miles an hour. I’d like to walk to the library since it’s only a couple of miles away, but the traffic makes that a scary prospect.