Day 138-Old Mill Days Haiku

Lumberjacks walk by

Bright axes swinging shiny

Don't let it hit me.

Lovely day for a walk in Port Gamble, 

Dani

Day 137-Gas, grass or *ss--no one rides for free.

Okay. I know I seem a little bit obsessed with my bouncy buns, but I promise that I won't discuss my glutes again for at least 48 hours. 

It's just that miraculous and crazy things have been happening to my body since I tuned in to my terribly tight bum muscles and the aftereffects. 

Now, I'm in a constant state of trying to relax my rear structure while letting the rest of my body slide into alignment. It's no easy task, since it seems I'm constantly flexing those muscles. I was at work all day today, standing, which gave me a perfect opportunity to work on this issue. If anyone was watching my fanny---say, for instance, while I was making them an espresso drink, I'm sure they were scratching their heads. Relax. Clench. Relax, dammit! Clench involuntarily...oh, it's a real merry-go-round, this one. 
 
But now that I feel the effects of letting those hiney muscles release and allowing my ribs and pelvis to go into alignment, well, I can't go back. As soon as I relax, my pelvis---which is more important than any of us know and is totally neglected---goes into neutral, the pressure on my coccyx is relieved, my abs actually start working properly, my ribs drop, my quads relax and I hear a funny popping sound in my sacrum and my scalp relaxes. This is a real trip. 

I walked later in the day today, after 8 hours of intentional booty meditation, and noticed that I was able to keep those muscles relaxed for an extended period of time, and while I did, the rest of my muscles seemed to be working harder. Hmmm...

You think that while my caboose is always flexed, it's working OVERTIME, and that gives many other body parts and muscles the chance to be lazy? Yup. You're right!

And if I take away the overworked tuchus, maybe my quads, hip flexors, hamstrings and anterior tibiali will finally realize their full potential? Will it be so?

In closing, while you think about my butt muscles and the huge impact they've had on us all today, I leave you with some lovely images of my hind end. 

Relaxi-Ass

Tight-Ass

In our house, we call this a "Hungry Butt", 'cuz it's trying to eat pants!

Okay, I see the difference, as well as feel the difference. I also see that I wear the least flattering jeans on the planet. OMG! OMG! Time to go shopping. I guess my Men's Levi 501s that I've worn for 20 years need to hit the road! Gee, I never see myself from the rear, so how would I know???

I hope you have sweet dreams tonight, kids. 
Dani
 





 

Day 136- The Whole-Body Jenga Game

Ever play Jenga?

You move, pull and release blocks that are stacked together, or aligned, and as you do, the stack becomes more and more unbalanced, with certain areas bearing loads that they really shouldn't be bearing, until the whole thing collapses in a worthless heap on the ground. 

Do you enjoy my not-very-sly, daily attempts at giving you metaphors to understand why proper alignment is an essential key to warding off pain, disease and general unhappiness?

It's one of my gifts. 

And now, I'm obsessed with my gluteus maximus. And gluteus medius. And piriformis. Oh, and my gluteus minimus. I'm already hard at work, cooking up metaphors that will make you take pause in your busy day and think, "Hmm, that Dani is some sort of genius...I never even would have thought about my ass as a slingshot, but boy, she sure has made THAT happen!"

Not everyone has their butt muscles in a continuous state of flex, butt I do. 

Once I realized it, that day in the tub when I tuned in and just felt my body and its connections, it has become my current focus. In my studies with the Restorative Exercise Institute, I've learned more than a person might think they would want to know about how our bodies actually work, but it's information that every BODY should know. It's been like getting the owner's manual to my machine, and learning how to work it very, very well. 

I have spent the last 48 hours tuned in to my rear and the effect it has ON MY ENTIRE BODY when those muscles tighten (their normal, but unwell state right now) and when I consciously let them go. Pelvis slides in to neutral, ribs drop, breath eases, funny popping noise happens in sacral area that then makes my head feel clearer and the skin on my scalp relax (I kid you not). 

I already look better, huh?

I've not achieved constant, healthy alignment, but during those moments I do, I understand how we can feel, and I will tell you, brothers and sisters:

You can feel really, really good. Just pay attention, and if you need some schooling on the miraculous and practical lever system that is your body, shoot me a line or ring me, and I'll help you start leafing through that owner's manual. 

To think this entire blog post came from my ass...

Luv, 
Dani

Day 135-Yes, I'm a tight*ss.

Early Yom Kippur morning, I was slapped awake by a cramp in my calf. Whoa, I haven't had one of those bad boys since I was preggers! Waking up crying for help is so pathetic, but that's what you do with a leg cramp. You cannot move, since it makes it worse--even the act of taking a deep breath to call for help sets off a tensile explosive reaction that makes blood cover your eyes. So I just started hitting the air, gasping like a fish dropped on deck, and eventually made contact. 

With my little dog, Tootie. Then The Huz. Sorry, baby. It was a necessary punch to the face. 

After we talked my leg down off the ledge, I spent a good deal of the rest of the day (when I wasn't repenting, of course!) taking my leg to counseling sessions, so we wouldn't have another suicidal leg episode again. We talked and talked, spent 2 hours in that fantastic epsom salt/hydrogen peroxide soak I taught you, and tried to figure out what had made my gastrocnemius go bat-shit crazy. 

Turns out, he was being bullied on all sides, and it was too much for him to take---he snapped. See, he was being picked on by my overly tight gluteal muscles. That's right. From waaaayyyy up there, my rear end's uptight nature pushed Mr. Gastrocnemius over da edge. 

For years, I thought I had super-cool-highly developed butt muscles. Turns out, I just have too tight butt muscles. Go ahead, make the tight-ass joke in your head. Better now? 

Okay, while my glutes ARE strong--even stronger now that I walk in neutral shoes--they are too tight. You may think they're too far away from Calfy to do any harm, but honey, you should know it's all connected. Even though I stretch my calves daily (the best way, I'll show you sometime!), I was pretty unaware that I was clenching my fanny minute by minute. This lever-system malfunction was causing a constant pull on Calfy Gastrocnemius, making him edgy and tense. 

The other cause we discovered in our bath tub counseling sessions was that I have a silly, previously unnoticed habit of turning my right foot in as I sit at the computer. This, in turn, shortens the medial head of the gastrocnemius:

making it nervous, wound up and unable to relax completely. 

Look what I accomplished in one day! That doesn't mean I'm cured, oh, no! Now comes the super interesting work of tuning into my gadunkadunk every minute of every day and telling it to take a chill pill. And, I've got to lose the silly habit of turning that foot in while I type. But I can do it.

It's cool, though. Our bodies are amazing, just waiting for us to stop, be still and listen to what they are doing. Chances are, your headache isn't caused by the things you think, and that pain in your back is actually probably related to your front. 

I have to go now, it's time to go take my butt through a guided relaxation meditation. Hah! I'm just kidding. I actually have a new mantra galloping through my head, and I kinda like it: 
Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...Relax da butt MUS-cles...

Ciao, Booty Buddies, 
Dani
 
 

Day 134-Day of Atonement, not of Blogging

Today is Yom Kippur. 

Easy, slow walk, yes.

Blog, no. 


See you tomorrow, 
Dani

Day 133-Dani gets sassy with foot facts

• A human foot & ankle is a strong, mechanical structure that contain 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons & ligaments.
  Respect.
  
• The soles of your feet contain more sweat glands and sensory nerve endings per square centimeter than any other part of the body.
  Hmm, so sweating helps me eliminate waste from my body, but if my feet can't breathe, can those sweat glands do their job or does the waste accumulate in my bod?
• There are approximately 250,000 sweat glands in a pair of feet, and they excrete as much as half a pint of moisture each day.
  Half a pint?! Again, respect.
  
• The 52 bones in your feet make up one quarter of all the bones in your body. When they are out of alignment, so is the rest of your body.
  Der. That's what I've been saying. It only makes sense. Would a building with a wonky foundation stand the test of time? It stands to reason--pun intended!--that your problems start as soon as you are out of alignment. And, no, I'm not talking chiropractic alignment. That's only temporary, which is why you continue going back year after year after year. Work with me and I'll help you achieve lifetime alignment, which results in lifetime wellness.
  
• A 2½-inch high heel can increase the load on the forefoot by 75%.
  One of the dumbest things a person can say: "Ah, these shoes are killing me!"
  
  
  

  

  Nice posture!
  graphic from Katy Bowman's Every Woman's Guide to Foot Pain Relief

  
  
• Women are 4 times more likely to have foot problems than men are, mostly due to footwear.
  Because we wear dumb shoes! Smarten up, gals! You wouldn't let your husband bind your daughter's feet, but if you're wearing stoopid shoes, you're practicing a form of foot mutilation every day. No one but you is telling you to wear those. If you're letting society dictate your daily pain level, well...
  
• The American Podiatric Medical Association states the average person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day, which add up to 115,000 miles in a lifetime – more than 4 times the circumference of the globe.
  Unless you are like the majority of Americans, and then your lifetime of steps might get you to Duluth.
  
• During an average day of walking, the total forces on your feet can total hundreds of tons, equivalent to an average of a fully loaded cement truck.
  Which is why you need better body mechanics and better footwear. Your feet are DESIGNED to bear that load and bear it well. Do you think your creator messed up?
  
• Foot ailments can become your first sign of more serious medical problems. Your feet mirror your general health, so conditions like arthritis, diabetes, nerve and circulatory disorders can show their initial symptoms in your feet.
  Ignore your feet, and you are in a spiral of deterioration.
  
• 75% of Americans will experience foot problems at one time or another in their lives.
  That number is WAY too high. Ridiculous.
  
• About 60% of all foot & ankle injuries aged 17 or older are ankle strains or sprains.
  Yeah, it's about then that we really start in on the moronic shoe choices. Until then, we're slapping around in Keds. Then we start dating, working, searching for mates and our shoe-sense goes right out the window.
  
• About 19% of the US population has an average of 1.4-foot problems each year.
  I'd love to compare that to other countries, other cultures. Oh, to be a gazillionaire and fund such research!
  
• About 60-70% of diabetics will develop some form of diabetic nerve damage, which in severe forms can lead to diabetic lower limb amputation. Approximately 56,000 people a year lose their foot or leg due to diabetes.
  AUGH! AUGH! What's the No. 1-recommended exercise for diabetes prevention and control? Walking! Move your feet, KEEP your feet.
• Walking is the best exercise for your feet. It contributes to your general health by improving circulation and weight control.
  
  That's what I've been saying and doing, boys and girls, and it's made such a tremendous difference in my life and health (aren't they sort of intertwined?) that I am grateful for the very simple act of walking. My legs and feet no longer hurt, my cardio capacity has markedly improved, my butt is way nicer looking, my leg muscles are nicely developed, my feet are kick-*ss strong, my circulation has improved dramatically, I've lost some weight, I'm relaxed and I thrive on the thoughts that bump around in my brain when I stroll.
  What's not to love?
  Dani
  

Day 132-Your Foot Soak

Ever soak your feet at home? 

Last year I learned about a great body detox soak, that wards off colds and leaches the color from bruises, eases sore muscles and just generally feels good. 

If you haven't got time for a full soak, you can just fill up a bucket or dish pan with some of this inexpensive goodness and rest your feet while you read a book and enjoy a nice beverage. 

The proportions are simple: 

-1 cup Epsom Salts to
-1 1/2 cups hydrogen peroxide

If you want to add some softness, you can drop in a little oil, but watch out! You might end up on your ass when you step out of the foot soak, and then that sort of counteracts all the relaxing you just did, no?

If danger isn't your middle name, you can simply massage some lotion in after the soak, while you're sitting safely on your keister in no danger of toppling. 

Coming down with a cold? Quadruple the measurements and soak in the tub. It's pretty amazing, and not so expensive for the results you get. 

My feet stopped hurting months ago, once I began walking every day and began wearing only healthy shoes. However, I still like to take care of the little hoofers, since they are the only ones I got, right?

Try it today!
Dani

 

 

Day 131-Read This Blog Post and Save $14.95 plus shipping and handling!

Our local weekend paper has a USA Today insert tucked inside, and I'm drawn to that thing like an old lady to butterscotch candies. Mostly, I like the silly ads for ugly coats and elastic-waist comfort clothes, but I also like to rail against the ads for anti-pain devices--just look next time you're flipping through one of those things. They pepper the pages with promises of relief from foot pain, knee pain, back pain, arm pain...Gee, we're really in trouble, aren't we?


Here is this week's edition:

I know! 

It's about how walking is awesome! 

Talk about feeling vindicated. Well, not that I was ever persecuted...oh, nevermind. The article goes on to state that you can walk even only 10 minutes a day for benefits. 

I really want you to walk more than that. They're just saying that a completely non-walking, slovenly, sedentary person can benefit from 10 minutes daily. 
10 minutes is better than no minutes. 

So, I'm flipping through to find the article, and I come across this ad:

Yes. Compression socks for your entire leg that promote circulation and reduce swelling in legs and ankles!

They are only $14.95 + shipping and handling! 

On the very next page, the article begins:

 

It's a flimsy article, but hey--it's USA Today. So funny, though, that on page  5 is an ad for something you don't need if you do the natural movement recommended on page 6. 

There. I just saved you $14.95 + S&H. 

You're welcome, 
Dani

Day 130- If I Were a Rich Man, ya-dah-dee-da-dee-da...

A dear friend of mine once asked me:

What would you do, if money were no object?

I thought. I answered. And then she said:

Then perhaps, that's what you should be doing.


((crickets chirping))

"Oh", I finally replied. "I guess?"

It felt silly to counter that, well, money WAS an object and therefore, I could not pursue those things I wanted to pursue. Maybe if I was Richie Rich, I could do whatever the hell I wanted, but until then, one could only dream. So I nodded like I got it, and spouted like I got it. But I don't think I really got it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That was 3 years ago. I've thought a lot about that question, and the resulting thought process. And I think I'm actually getting really close to believing her. To getting it.

No, I have not won the lottery. I think to win it, you actually have to buy tickets. Maybe I could do that more, but until then:

Every day, I have been asking myself that question that she asked me years ago. And my internal arguments about time, money, kids, other stuff, etc., have grown pretty pithy. 

What's it all really about? Sit in a quiet place, breathe, and ask yourself this question:


What would I do, if money were no object?

Listen closely and honestly to the answer.

You don't have to jump up, rub your eyes like a former blind man at a tent revival, and run out and do it. Well, if you do, COOL! Write or call sometime and let me know how it's working out for you. 

But if you open your eyes, and ponder that answer you gave yourself, you just might have the answer to a lot of things in your life. And as long as you're thinking about it now, you may just get on it later.

May the day bring something new your way, 
Dani

Day 129-The Crisis in American Walking--Part 1

Blogger's note: The following is a complete reprint of a Slate Magazine article authored by Tom Vanderbilt in April 2012. I will reprint the other parts when I have nothing to say, like today. Enjoy!

 ************

A few years ago, at a highway safety conference in Savannah, Ga., I drifted into a conference room where a sign told me a “Pedestrian Safety” panel was being held.

The speaker was Michael Ronkin, a French-born, Swiss-raised, Oregon-based transportation planner whose firm, as his website notes, “specializes in creating walkable and bikeable streets.” Ronkin began with a simple observation that has stayed with me since. Taking stock of the event—one of the few focused on walking, which gets scant attention at traffic safety conferences—he wondered about that inescapable word: pedestrian. If we were to find ourselves out hiking on a forest trail and spied someone approaching at a distance, he wanted to know, would we think to ourselves, “Here comes a pedestrian”?

Of course we wouldn’t. That approaching figure would simply be a person. Pedestrian is a word born from opposition to other modes of travel; the Latin pedester, on foot, gained currency by its semantic tension with equester, on horse. But there is an implied—indeed, synonymous—pejorative. This dates from Ancient Greece. As the Oxford English Dictionary notes, the Greek πεζός meant “prosaic, plain, commonplace, uninspired (sometimes contrasted with the winged flight of Pegasus).” Or, in the Latin, pedester could refer to foot soldiers (e.g, peons), “rather than cavalry.”

In other words, not to be on a horse, flying or otherwise, was to be utterly unremarkable and mundane. To this day, Ronkin was intimating, the word pedestrian bears not only that slightly alien whiff, but the scars of condescension. This became clear as we walked later that evening through the historic center of Savannah. As we moved through the squares, our rambling trajectory matched by our expansive conversation, we were simply people doing that most human of things, walking. But every once in a while, we would encounter a busy thoroughfare, and we became pedestrians. We lurked under ridiculously large retroreflective signs, built not at our scale, but to be seen by those moving at a distance and at speed. Other signs reinforced the message, starkly announcing: “Stop for Pedestrians.” I thought, “Wait, who’s a pedestrian? Is that me?”

Pedestrian in Nashville, Tenn. in 2010Photograph by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos.

Simply by going out for a walk, I had become a strange being, studied by engineers, inhabiting environments whose physical features are determined by a rulebook-enshrined average 3 foot-per-second walking speed, my rights codified by signs. (Why not just write: “Stop for People”?) On those same signs in Savannah were often attached additional signs, advising drivers not to give to panhandlers (and to call 911 if physically intimidated), subtly equating walking with being exposed to an urban menace—or perhaps being the menace. Having taken all this information in, we would gingerly step into the marked crosswalk, that declaration of rights in paint, and try to gauge whether approaching vehicles would yield. They typically did not. Even in one of America’s most “pedestrian-friendly” cities—a seemingly innocent phrase that itself suddenly seemed strange to me—one was always in danger of being relegated to a footnote.

Which is what walking in America has become: An act dwelling in the margins, an almost hidden narrative running beneath the main vehicular text. Indeed, the semantics of the term pedestrian would be a mere curiosity, but for one fact: America is a country that has forgotten how to walk. Witness, for example, the existence of “Everybody Walk!,” the “Campaign to Get America Walking” (one of a number of such initiatives). While its aims are entirely legitimate, its motives no doubt earnest, the idea that that we, this species that first hoisted itself into the world of bipedalism nearly 4 million years ago—for reasons that are still debated—should now need “walking tips,” have to make “walking plans” or use a “mobile app” to “discover” walking trails near us or build our “walking histories,” strikes me as a world-historical tragedy.

For walking is the ultimate “mobile app.” Here are just some of the benefits, physical, cognitive and otherwise, that it bestows: Walking six miles a week was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s (and I’m not just talking about walking in the “Walk to End Alzheimers”); walking can help improve your child’s academic performance; make you smarter; reduce depression; lower blood pressure; even raise one’s self-esteem.” And, most important, though perhaps least appreciated in the modern age, walking is the only travel mode that gets you from Point A to Point B on your own steam, with no additional equipment or fuel required, from the wobbly threshold of toddlerhood to the wobbly cusp of senility.

Despite these upsides, in an America enraptured by the cultural prosthesis that is the automobile, walking has become a lost mode, perceived as not a legitimate way to travel but a necessary adjunct to one’s car journey, a hobby, or something that people without cars—those pitiable “vulnerable road users,” as they are called with charitable condescension—do. To decry these facts—to examine, as I will in this series, how Americans might start walking more again— may seem like a hopelessly retrograde, romantic exercise: nostalgia for Thoreau’s woodland ambles. But the need is urgent. The decline of walking has become a full-blown public health nightmare.

***

The United States walks the least of any industrialized nation. Studies employing pedometers have found that where the average Australian takes 9,695 steps per day (just a few shy of the supposedly ideal “10,000 steps” plateau, itself the product, ironically, of a Japanese pedometer company’s campaign in the 1960s), the average Japanese 7,168, and the average Swiss 9,650, the average American manages only 5,117 steps. Where a child in Britain, according to one study, takes 12,000 to 16,000 steps per day, a similar U.S. study found a range between 11,000 and 13,000.

Why do we walk so comparatively little? The first answer is one that applies virtually everywhere in the modern world: As with many forms of physical activity, walking has been engineered out of existence. With an eye toward the proverbial grandfather who regales us with tales of walking five miles to school in the snow, this makes instinctive sense. But how do we know how much people used to walk? There were no 18^th-century pedometer studies.

There are, however, proxies. One could, for example, study a group “whose lifestyle has not changed markedly in the last 150 years,” which is precisely what David Bassett and colleagues did, in a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise. Equipping a Canadian group of Old Order Amish—who work in labor-intensive farming—with pedometers, the researchers found walking levels on the order of 18,000 steps per day (not to mention comparatively low obesity rates). And a study by Gary Egger, et al., in The Medical Journal of Australia compared the walking habits people who worked as actors portraying Australian settlers at a historical theme park near Sydney to those of a group of office workers. The re-enactors were 1.6 to 2.3 times more active than the cubicle dwellers. To your pitchforks!

Carlin Robinson, 12, walks from her grandmother's car to the school bus in Manchester, Ky. Her house can be seen in the background. A study published in 2010, investigating high obesity rates in the town found that residents used cars to minimize walking distance, to the detriment of their health.Photograph by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post via Getty Images.

If walking is a casualty of modern life the world over—the historian Joe Moran estimates, for instance, that in the last quarter century in the U.K., the amount of walking has declined by 25 percent—why then do Americans walk even less than people in other countries? Here we need to look not at pedometers, but at the odometer: We drive more than anyone else in the world. (Hence a joke: In America a pedestrian is someone who has just parked their car.) Statistics on walking are more elusive than those on driving, but from the latter one might infer the former: The National Household Travel Survey shows that the number of vehicle trips a person took and the miles they traveled per day rose from 2.32 trips and 20.64 miles in 1969 to 3.35 and 32.73 in 2001. More time spent driving means less time spent on other activities, including walking. And part of the reason we are driving more is that we are living farther from the places we need to go; to take just one measure, in1969, roughly half of all children lived a mile or more from their school; by 2001 three out of four did. During that same period, unsurprisingly, the rates of children walking to school dropped from roughly half to approximately 13 percent.

And since our uncommon commitment to the car is at least in part to blame for the new American inability to put one foot in front of the other, the transportation engineering profession’s historical disdain for the pedestrian is all that much more pernicious. In modern traffic engineering the word has become institutionalized, by engineers who shorten pedestrian to the somehow even more condescending “peds”; who for years have peppered their literature with phrases like “pedestrian impedance” (meaning people getting in the way of vehicle flow). In early versions of traffic modeling software, pedestrians were not included as a default, and even today, as one report notes, modeling software tends to treat them not as actual actors, but as a mere “statistical distribution”, or as implicit “vehicular delay.” At traffic conferences like the one in Savannah, meanwhile, people doing “ped projects” tend to be a small and insular, if well meaning, clique.

Another problem: Almost everyone walks. In this ubiquity, paradoxically, lies a weakness: The very act is so common that we tend to forget about it, to remember that it is something that needs to be nurtured, protected, encouraged. Save for charity drives and recreational enthusiasts, there are few organized groups of self-identified walkers. Craig Tackaberry, the associate director of public works in Marin County told me that when the county received a federal grant specifically designed to boost the number of people walking and cycling, they sought to partner with local advocacy groups. “It was difficult to find any pedestrian advocacy groups,” he says. Cyclists have elaborate equipment, they have passion, they have group rides and races—and they have political organizations. As Scott Bricker, director of the nonprofit organization America Walks told me, without a trace of irony in his voice, “Walking’s not something that people rally around — it’s very pedestrian.”

Perhaps as a result, walking is a pastime that’s not well studied. Walking in America is a bit like sex: Everybody’s doing it, but nobody knows how much. Bricker, of America Walks, adds that the “collection of information around walking is quite poor and inconsistent.” There are the problems of self-reporting—who can really remember, sans pedometer, how much one has walked, and who wants to admit on a survey that they never walk? There’s also little agreement, he says, on what, statistically, constitutes a walking trip. “Is walking down the hall to the bathroom a walking trip? Do you have to leave the house? Is walking to the park with your dog a walking trip? Is walking to and from the bus a walking trip? None of those things are counted.” The most accurate source of information we have comes from the U.S. Census, in the so-called “Journey to Work” questions. But these only inquire about commuting trips. What’s more, as researchers have noted, because the Census emphasizes the mode of transportation taken most often, and for the longest part of the total journey, any number of walking trips may be obscured. People who take train transit, for example, have been shown in pedometer studies to walk much more than those who drive.

This focus on work trips rather misses the point in a country where very few people could walk to work, even if they wanted. Commuting (by any method) accounts for less than 15 percent of all trips. What’s more at stake is so-called “discretionary travel,” the trips to the grocery store, to soccer practice, to the bank, and these are where we logged our greatest increases in driving. “It’s not just about how many people walk to work,” says Bricker. “It’s how many are willing to walk out the front door for any reason.” Where walking has been lost is in these short trips of a mile or less—28 percent of all trips in America—the majority of which are now taken in a car. “Let’s take that stroll,” says Bricker. “It’s missing from the cultural mindset.”

***

In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes, “walking still covers the ground between cars and buildings and the short distances within the latter, but walking as a cultural activity, as a pleasure, as travel, as a way of getting around, is fading, and with it goes an ancient and profound relationship between body, world, and imagination.” There is at once a loss, and a hunger. Look on online travelers forums and you’ll see one of the most common threads is people on the verge of visiting Europe (or New York City), embarking on a panicked quest for “walking shoes”—as if they were taking up some exotic new sport, procuring strange equipment. For these people, one must assume, walking is as foreign as the place they are visiting. (N.B.: I have lived in New York City, the most-walked city in the U.S., for more than two decades and have never owned a pair of Merrells.)

Blaine walking club, 1910
Photograph courtesy Bain News Service/Library of Congress.

Walking has become a boutique pastime: There is frantic weekend power-walking (making up for the week’s lack of locomotion); there is the ostentatiously lo-fi commute (observes Geoff Manaugh: “people now think the very act of walking around makes them a kind of psychogeographic avant-garde”); there is walking-centric conceptual art; and there are stylized, idealized, walkable “lifestyle centers” which themselves must be driven to (if you’re lucky, you’ll find one with an indoor “panoramic walking track”), where walking itself is as vaguely antique as the iron lamp-posts and cobble-stones. The writer Will Self, a dedicated walker, well captured the sense that the pedestrian life is one so removed from daily consciousness that to participate in it implies some higher purpose. “Whenever I tell people I’m going to walk somewhere utilitarian—like an airport; or even a long distance walk that seems quite prosaic to me, they always ask: ‘Is it for charity?’ ”

This question—what is walking for—is one of the many I will be exploring this week. There is a dual pedagogical imperative here: I aim to explore not only how people on foot behave as a class, but also how America lost its knack for walking, only now taking some stumbling steps in the right direction. The newspapers have been filled of late, from coast to coast, from suburban Arizona to the Midwest to rural Mississippi, with a strikingly uniform narrative, couched in words like “sustainability” and “accessibility” but revolving around a simple appeal: Residents asking that their towns be made more walkable. The almost Onion-worthy headline of one story, “Columbus residents see potential benefits of sidewalks,” with that poisonous modifier “potential,” hints at how far off the trail of common sense America has wandered in its headlong pursuit of the automotive life.

Along the way, I will walk the streets of New York City with pedestrian experts, explore the curious patterns of mass pedestrian behavior, travel to the Seattle offices of “Walk Score,” a Web startup that is quantifying “walkability,” and then look at what happened to walking in America—and how we can put our right foot forward.

 *******************

Enjoy your Friday, Walkers, 

Dani

 

Day 128-What's Your Walk Score?

Walk Score is a website that takes a physical address—enter yours here—and computes, using proprietary algorithms and various data streams, a measure of its walkability. More recently it’s started tracking how transit-friendly neighborhoods are too. What drives the score is choice and proximity—the more amenities (restaurants, movie theaters, schools) you have around you, and the closer they are, the higher your Walk Score.

Based in Seattle, the Walk Score team's software is used by hundreds of sites, thousands of realtors, and home and apartment seekers. Of course, the developers aren't planners, they're software creators. So, they can tell you the Walk Score is at a condo in downtown Houston, but they can't take into account the walk score of the little old gal who walks her dog down a country road, and has a great plum tree nearby that she stops at and picks plums for breakfast. 

So, it's not really YOUR walk score, it's the score of where you live. For example, where I live rates 3 out of 100, since there are no amenities nearby. BUT, that doesn't mean I can't walk all over my 'hood. It just means it would take me 2 hours to walk to the dry cleaner. If I went to a dry cleaner. However, I'd have to say MY walk score is closer to 85, since I walk at least 30 minutes every day, hit over my 10,000 step goal and always park as far as possible in any parking lot.

But it does help you look up amenities and their distances from your shack. I had no idea there was a brewery 4.48 miles away from my house? Huh. 

It also helps you compare the walkability of where you live versus your friends, family and area neighbors. Walk Score can even help you locate a better house or apartment if you want to live somewhere with a high walk score (I wish I did!), and can even rate the street/sidewalk quality, through their Street Smart feature. They can also help you rate your commute and polish your silver. 

Okay, it doesn't really polish the silver, but neither do it, so we're square.

Walk Score is pretty cool. I just found it today and am now pining for a small house in a low-populated town where I can walk to get groceries and see a movie. If I ever move, you bet that I will be using Walk Score to help make the decision of where we land. 

Yes, 
Dani

Day 127- Foggy Goodness

What's cool? 

A 5 AM walk in the fog. In the dark. 

Yeah, it's a little creepy, too, but once you stop remembering every Dean Koontz book you've ever read, then it's rather magical. You can feel it as it lights on your face, as the tiny foggy particles cling to your eyelashes and the moisture envelops your body as you push through something that's definitely there, but offers little resistance.

I walk with a headlamp, sort of like miners wear, instead of holding a flashlight. I like to keep my hands free to swing and to hold the three mutts' leashes who accompany me every day.

The headlamp is great, but the fog was so thick this morning that those foggy particles linked arms and threw my high beam back in my face, blinding me. Sort of like Phil Spector's famous Wall of Sound, except it was quiet and didn't come with a crazy, murderous fallen crackhead-genius. 

I suppose that's good, since I was in the foggy dark. 

Speaking of quiet, walking in fog provides a neato auditory experience, too. The fog muffles any echo, but adds an element of scary by making every single noise sound like it's coming from over your left shoulder. 

It really keeps you on your toes. 

Some foggy facts, from the Farmer's Almanac:

• The foggiest area in the United States is Point Reyes, California. It is in the top two foggiest land areas in the world with over 200 days of fog a year.
  
• There are as many types of fog as there are cloud formations in the sky.
  
• Not all fogs are the same. There’s Radiation fog, Sea fog, Ground fog, Advection fog, Steam fog (also called evaporation fog), Precipitation fog, Upslope fog, Valley fog, Ice fog, Freezing fog and Artificial fog.
  
• Fog generally forms when the relative humidity reaches 100% at ground level.
  

• Long, cool autumn nights cause the air near the ground to chill, causing the formation of fog to be prevalent in fall.

It is autumn, and has been pretty warm in our neck of the woods, so if you live out here in Puget Sound, you might want to take advantage of an early morning fog walk. Or, if you're lucky enough to be in a place that has late morning fog, go for it! 

Just keep an eye out over your left shoulder. 

Best, 
Dani

Day 126-If that's dull, how does a life-sentence in a fatty scooter sound?

pe·des·tri·an/pəˈdestrēən/

Noun: A person walking along a road or in a developed area.

Adjective:  Lacking inspiration or excitement; dull.

Synonyms: Banal, blah, boring, commonplace, dim, dreary, flat, humdrum, inane, mediocre, mundane, ordinary, plodding, stodgy, unimaginative, uninspired, uninteresting.

 

Hmm. How curious! 

Here's what I find banal, blah, boring, commonplace, dim, dreary, flat, humdrum, inane,

mediocre, mundane, ordinary, plodding, stodgy, 

 

and unimaginative, uninspired, uninteresting, and certainly lacking inspiration and dull:

So what genius in the timeline of the English language development decided that pedestrian was synonymous with unimaginative and uninteresting?

Probably someone who sat on his ass all the time and had a sore back. 

Because if he'd been walking, he would've realized that the best brain activity comes while our feets be movin'! 

Walk on, 

Dani

 

Day 125-It's just a jump to the left!

This morning after my walk, I watched the first sunrise of the new year. 

Huh? 

Don't worry, you're not in a time warp. It is September 17, 2012. The first day of the new year. 

Wha?

In the Jewish calendar, our year begins a little differently. It is based on our tradition that the world began 5773 years ago, and our lunar calendar, which changes a bit each year. Nothing ever begins on the same date, so we don't count on the Roman calendar to plan our parties. We confer with the moon, instead.

And, our days actually begin at night, when the sun sets. 

So, I guess it's sort of like being in a time warp, if you're not used to it. 

Like these? They're from Midrash Manicures!

Last night, it was the beginning of the first day of the year 5773 for Members of the Tribe. So this morning, I got to watch the first sunrise of the New Year. 

And it was beautiful. So grateful to be living still, and for being given the chance to learn, do good work and improve on my humanity. 

L'shanah tovah (A Good Year!), 
Dani

PS-Would you like to take a minute to learn a bit about our new year? Check out this quickie explanation from the Huffington Post. 

Day 123 & 124-Do the Puyallup!

15 years ago, my first date with my future husband was at the Puyallup Fair, one of the largest fairs in the Yoonited States. 

Every year since, we keep the tradition and attend. It's always a great day, full of eating terrible food and seriously remarkable people-watching, walking and standing for hours and buying stupid things. 

And sore feet. Man, do your feet hurt after a day walking on pavement! They have these feet vibrating machines stationed everywhere for all the sore hooves clomping around. 

My feet are always on fire halfway through the day, and I end up using these 2-3 times just to keep the burning pain down to a dull roar. 

Want to know how many times I used them yesterday, after 10 hours and 12,000 steps on pavement in flat Converse Chuck Taylor Tennies?

0. 

None, nada, zilch, zero, bupkes. 

My feet are so freakin' strong (and self-supporting, all you "But-I-have-too-high-or-flat-arch-thinkers") after 122 days of walking in neutral heel shoes, and my legs are so strong after that many days of regular, natural daily use, that MY FEET AND LEGS DID NOT HURT AT ALL!

Serious. It was cool. Results, right there, as you like it.  

Today's walk was shorter, just for time's sake, but my legs and feet feel great. I am living proof of the benefits of walking and wearing proper footwear. I weigh basically the same as I have all these years, and don't have any other intense regimen other than regular daily walking and Restorative Exercises, yet I changed the way I use my body and that changed the way my body feels. 

And I am no exception. I believe it is the rule. This is how we were designed (okay, we were NOT designed to eat deep-fried butter, but it happens when you're at a fair) and if we use our body as engineered, it will work as intended at optimal performance and longevity. 

Get your happy on, 
Dani

Day 122-Shiny, spinning people holding hands...

I like hula hoops. Well, I like to hula hoop and I like to teach people to hoop and sometimes I sell folks hoops that I make. 

They are snazzy, and after my early morning walk today I packed up a whole slew of 'em while the sun was still hiding and trucked them on top of my car, Scoobaroo, to Seattle where I set up camp and sold some to some fine Starbucks corporate folk. 

I sell hoops to all sorts of people. 

Once I sold a hoop to a prison guard who wanted to hoop at work to cheer herself up. I imagine her hot-pink-and-silver hoop bumping on her round fanny made the no-goodniks want to reach through the bars and just eat her up. I hope they didn't. She was nice.

When I teach someone to hoop who said five minutes before, "Oh, I could never hoop. No can do!", it makes my day. I can teach anybody, anywhere to hoop. 

It's one of my special skills. You can't hula hoop and be in a pissy mood, and by teaching someone the goodness of the hoop, I'm really giving them a simple way to avoid feeling rotten or blue. 

Like walking...only with spinning, shiny things. 

Love, 
Dani

 

 

 

Day 121-Your First Assignment

We're 1/3 of the way through our walking year, and I'm assigning your first textbook. 

This book should be required reading for anybody who has a brain in their skull. It is for business folk, breathing folk, teachers, people who care for children, athletes, people with blood in their veins, coaches, people with skin, janitors, writers, train engineers and lion tamers. 

It is one of the most eye-opening, revolutionary yet commonsense and absolutely life-changing books I have ever read, and I am still grateful to The Huz for pushing "Buy Book" on his Kindle and then trading with me so he could read the latest Hangman's Daughter novel that resides on my Kindle. I got his Kindle for 2 weeks and his books, and I was hooked from the first page. 

What is this book, you ask impatiently?

What can I say about this book? 

After the first chapter, it changed the way I will forever see the world and myself, for the better. If that doesn't make you want to buy and read it RIGHT NOW then you are one tough customer, but then that also means you really need to read it.   

If I was a billionaire ogre, I would buy everyone in the world their own copy, then using my ogre-ness, I would sit them down with my giant ogre paws and make them stay in one place until they read the book. 

Why, oh why wasn't I born a billionaire ogre??

Please. If you value yourself. Your kids. Your loved ones. Get your hands on this book, read it, and apply the incredibly sensible and simple mindset Dr. Dweck teaches us about. 

I've read a lot of navel-gazing books, self-improvement tomes and the like. This is the only self-improvement book anyone need ever read, as it covers everything you will ever need to know. 

How's THAT for a preposterous claim?? Don't believe me? Good! Go get your copy and read it for yourself. 

I'd love to discuss it with you when you do. 

Yours in Growth MindSet, 
Dani