Walking the Distance

I am not tremendously fond of walking. I find it a little slow and tedious. However, I am very much in favor of walkable places, which include lots of destinations, good facilities like sidewalks, and friendly drivers-- the kind who understand that an intersection doesn't have to be painted with stripes to be a crosswalk. In fact, I make my living, in part, by trying to convince skeptics that you don't have to give up access to the things you like to do and the people you like to see when you use active travel like walking and bicycling instead of driving.

And who can oppose walking when it looks as cute as this?

As it turns out, I was searching about for my name in Blogger, and I came upon a site on urban planning maintained by Randy Crane, with whom I worked for some time on this subject at Irvine. It is called planningresearch.blogspot.com, random thoughts on, of all things, urban studies. And if you go there, you will find the type of things I often think about, and used to actually know quite a bit about. From there I linked to someplace else, and from there, a third place, until I received the idea of finding what businesses are in my walking shed by using an online directory of sorts, Qwest.

So I did this little exercise to see how much access I have from my house. What's access? It's basically a measure of how easy it is to get the goods and services you want. Of course, I am not counting all the things I can have delivered to my house without making a single trip out the door. I wanted to count how many destinations I can easily walk to. I found out that from my front door, in a 15 minute walk, I can access all of the following business types in various quantities described.

Business & Professional Services Consultants (3)
Engineers (2)
Health Care Dentists (114)
Physicians & Surgeons (M.D. & D.O.) (94)
Legal Attorneys (171)
Manufacturing, Production & Wholesale Manufacturers' Representatives (3)
Restaurants, Food & Beverages Restaurants (166)

Now that's quite a lot of businesses at my foot-tips. In fact, I can walk right past 3 coffee shops to get to my favorite, and still have walked only ten minutes, less time than it would take to drive my car and walk from any but the most ideally located parking space. But if I am not looking for any of those services, (it's all well and good that 171 lawyering businesses are nearby, but they are of no use if what I really want is a plumber), what should I do? Well, call one and get him over here, like Joshua did this morning to avert our most current plumbing crisis. Now if I want a doctor, but none of the ones I want are within a mile, I can still get access by hopping on my bike. It's no secret here in town that I choose my health care providers based on their proximity to my house. This is what allowed me to walk home from the hospital after Riley was born.

Forty... the new Twenty...

Around the girdled earth they roam... only to return back 21 years later for the 20th Dartmouth College Reunion. Much time was spent remarking on how wonderful our boring happy lives are in comparison to various tales of divorces and custody disputes. The food was, in a word, horrible. TG (Capitol T Capitol G) or The Group, gathered at Alison's home in Thetford, which provided much relief from the small talk afforded by acquaintances from our past. The kids hunted for tadpoles while we sipped champagne to celebrate the release of Alison's book Double Eagle. My niece Katherine came with Riley and me, and I had a blast. I hope she did too. We didn't find ourselves old, but did feel quietly un-nerved that our next reunion would be our 25th.

It was very hot. Katherine's car doesn't have AC. Riley complained about being soaked in sweat and being touched by the sun through the window. I was sure we would be spending the real Father's Day in Friendly's eating ice cream and waiting for the sun to go down. But somehow we did it. The drive to New York from Hanover was complete in 4 hours, and we punctuated the end of it with a dip in Ama and Apa's pool and a wonderful barbecue with family. I don't have a picture from the barbecue, so instead I am putting in a picture of our picnic the next day. Riley, Ama and I rode the train down to a little riverside park in Irvington, NY. Apa joined us there. I decided whatever I name next will be called Hudson. I just love that river.

Father's Day a Week Early

Last year Jayda and Joshua ran together
This year she had to settle for me

Yesterday Joshua Jayda Cecil Riley and I jogged over to State St. to run the State Street mile. This is the event Jayda was born to run. She is the best dog out there by far. She stands at the ready while other dogs are sniffing about. She takes off like she has been shot out of the cannon. If only we could get her a better human. She pulled me 10 blocks and then as we approached the finish line, she started to dally. Not to be passed by last year's winner, I dragged her the remaining half-block to finish in 5:50. Good enough for second place dog with female human in tow. This benefit for the Victim's Witness Assistance Program is an annual favorite of ours. Joshua and I trade off who gets to try to keep up with Jayda. Really for me it is a matter of not being pulled so hard that I lose my footing and get dragged along on the asphalt. At the end of the morning, the whole family reassembles and we jog downhill to a finish line filled with muffins, Platinum Performance water bottles, apples and bananas. Today I am extremely sore. And not only because I had four fillings replaced today, but also because I paddled in an outrigger race on Saturday as a warmup for Sunday's big event.
In the afternoon Joshua and I rode down to see An Inconvenient Truth. Be inconvenienced. Do it for Riley. If you can't go see the movie, check out the website: climatecrisis.net. Don't wait.

Don't Wait

Why Footprints?

Footprints symbolize the route between where we've been and where we are. Also, I aspire to have good memories and footprints be the only thing left when I leave where I've been. Maybe it's silly, but this is something I've been reflecting on for a while, and now seems to be the time to start a new way of documenting where we've been every once in a while.

For a while I had a website up. This cost some time and money that weren't terribly well spent. Because if you look there (Riley.smugmug.com) you will see that Riley is still a year old. But no, he's 20 months old tomorrow, and every day, I wish I spent more time documenting him so you could all see how wonderful he is.

Where did we come from to get here today? Riley and I rode my bike down to the Big Dog Parade, Joshua, Riley, Cecil, Jayda and I hung out with some dogs, and then in the afternoon we went to the Human Rights Festival. Only in Santa Barbara.

In our crazy house, our son wakes up from his afternoon nap only long enough to eat dinner, take a bath, get in a few stories and head back to sleep. The cycle is about to repeat itself.