Would anyone bet me grocery money to walk like this tomorrow? 
 
Okay, so now I feel bad.

I was doing the dishes, thinking about homework and an upcoming date (perhaps not in that particular order), while my roommate was watching TV.   He was watching some sort of environmental show, the kind that has a deep voiced announcer updating us on current world disasters.  It was really sad.  I looked over at the show just in time to see a cute child running through a field. The man being interviewed said, "what will I tell my son?  I'm sure he'll ask me, 'if you knew what was happening, what did you do to stop it?" 

Eeek.  What am I doing to help keep our world clean?  I have been really slacking on this blog/website thing.  I've gotta kick myself in the butt and get going!  I've got to step it up!  I've got some ideas... coming soon, so watch out!

On a separate note, it's cold here in Montreal.  I'm glad I finally got a real winter jacket.  People were starting to comment on my "Canadian tuxedo" (my jean jacket.  I'm still trying to decide if "comment on" is really more like "make fun of") 

Anyways, the other day I was walking home from school and it was storming outside.  A complete whiteout.  It was one of those times where you just bend your head against the wind and scuffle home as quickly as possible. 

Just when I'm in the middle of grumbling about the cold, I hear this Micheal Jackson song coming up from behind me.  I look back to see this younger man in a motorized wheel chair.  This chair, with is super thick wheels, was beating the storm and spitting in it's face by blaring Micheal Jackson at it.  Yeah man! 

I followed that guy for as long as possible.  Winter storm walking is not that bad.  I don't need a car.                   
 
I'm back in Montreal!  Yessss... It sure is nice to be home.  And Montreal is beautiful in the snow!  With all my running around, errand type things, I have to remind myself to look around every once in a while.    

I wanted to share with you a little thing learned in school yesterday.  Think about this the next time you feel like it's taking you forever to walk to your destination:

The Earth is rotating, carrying most people around its axis at more than 1000 km an hour.  That's twice as fast as a regular commercial jet.

The Earth orbits the sun, moving at more than 100,000 km/hr; 100 times faster than a speeding bullet.

Our solar system moves relative to nearby stars at speeds of around 70,000 km/hr.

The Milky Way Galaxy (our galaxy) rotates, carrying our sun around at a speed of about 800,000 km/hr.

And lastly, galaxies move relative to one another; the Milky Way is moving towards the Adromeda Galaxy at about 300,000 km/hr!  


All this speed!  The next time your walking take the time to stop and look at the snow... 
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Remember how I said before that I like to imagine that everyone in my mom's area of town is happily baking ginger cookies?  Well, that's because it distracts me from having nightmares.

My mom's house is in the suburbs.  It's a nice house, in a nice area, in a nice town.  All is right in the world.  Or so it seems...

When I go out for a walk, no one is around.  Not a soul.  I walk along a line of big houses and everything is quiet.  A dog barks and is instantly silenced.  By who?  I am unsure.  House after house, street after street, I see no movement.  Where are the people?  

The sun glints off the rows of plastic garage doors, blinding me for a second.  Did something just move?  I blink and notice a car running in the driveway.  Still, no one is around.  I continue my walk, noticing how similar each house is; plasticy white siding with blue trim, the odd pinky-brown stucco house thrown in for variety.  The sameness of it all makes me shiver.

I finish my loop and head home.  Oh no!  What's that!?  The running car is still running.  I mean, I've been walking for like 15 minutes since I saw it last.  It doesn't need to warm up for that long!  What could have happened to the people who started it?  Did they just get distracted?  Or maybe...

What was that noise?  Maybe someone's in trouble!  Could it be vampires?  Some sort of murderous cult?  Is someone getting their legs pulled off in a gaint underground ritual!?  WHERE IS EVERYONE!!

And so I run back home and hide under my bed.  True story.  Not a bit of exaggeration at all.  You can understand why I like to imagine happy families and ginger cookies.  

     
 
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Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you are all having a great holiday.

Guess what I got for Christmas?  Boots!  They're nice woolen ones with big buttons on them.  I'm a big fan of footwear, although my personal shoe collection is not quite brag worthy.  It's all rather utilitarian: a pair of hiking boots, running shoes, work shoes, and a crappy set of "yah, these look okay, and I'll wear them everyday, but they probably aren't so good for the knees" shoes.  I have a secret wish for red high heels.  

I'm excited because my new boots are going to replace my crappy everyday shoes.  Shoes are important if you are going to walk everywhere.  "You gotta invest in the proper support!" orders my dad.  Back when he was my age, he used to run miles in work boots and now his knees and feet are kicking him in the butt for it.

Hey, if you have any foot related pain, this website looks pretty helpful: http://www.foot-pain-explained.com/shoe_fitting.html 
It even talks about foot odor - important for people who own hiking boots and go into hostels and stink up the entire room so that everyone else can hardly sleep without gagging (It wasn't me!  It was ... yah, it was me).

Goodness!  I bet you didn't expect to hear about foot odor on Christmas!  This is a very un-Christmasy blog entry.  Santa.  Snow.  Blinky lights.  Eggnogg.  Carols.  Jingle bells! 

          
 
So the crazyness that was the end of my first semester is over and I'm back in my hometown of High River.  Did you know that a bunch of Superman 3 was shot in High River?  (That's what I tell people when I try to brag about my town.  I also tell them that it's Joe Clark's hometown and they say "Joe who?"). 

Do you know what else is cool about HR?  There's a cookie factory here; "Anna's Cookies".  Perhaps you've tried them before?  They're gingerbread flavored, super thin cookies.  When I used to walk to work in HR, everything would smell like gingerbread.  It was pretty festive.  I used to imagine that all the houses were filled with happy families, everyone baking gingerbread at the same time.  In Montreal, sometimes the street smells like pee. Or, when it's snowing, exaust. So, Montreal doesn't really compare on that front.

Another thing I noticed when I arrived in Alberta is how open and wide everything is.  When you live in a city, the farthest you can see is across the street.  In Alberta, you can see all the way to the mountains on a clear day.  

I guess in some ways I'm a prairie girl at heart.  But living in HR is difficult when you don't drive and it's minus 25 outside.  But have no fear!  I am still walking.  I walked all around downtown yesterday and I even felt warm because of the workout.           
 
People are starting to visit my site now – which is mega cool – but it's making me feel a bit self-conscious.  Is my site interesting enough?  More importantly, does it look cool?  These are the thoughts that concern me this fine evening...

First off, I'm not sure about the name of this site.  I've called it, hold on to your hats: "A Walking Blog".  Whoa, man, whoa. Now as awesome as that title is, I kind of want something more catchy, funny, and (especially) sexy. Yet for some strange reason, I can not make "walking" seem/sound sexy. 

Why is this? 

You say, "he drives a sports car" and people will picture a man in a sleek suit behind the wheel of a shiny red vehicle.  And of course ladies just love to drape themselves, in a half naked manner, around nice cars. Now say, "he walks everywhere" and people will picture a hippie.  Or perhaps a homeless man.  

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of our largest obstacles.  Walking lacks sex appeal.  We should change this!  I'm thinking that instead of the usual "no car day" we should do a "walking is sexy too day" where everyone gets to walk around in their hottest outfits.  Who wouldn't be up for that?    

Anyways, if any of you have any ideas that would help me pump up my site, I would be happy to hear them.

PS: For the record, I do think hippies are sexy.
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I'm doing some reading for class.  Well, I'm trying to do some reading.  My roommates - yay Craig's list! - are a couple and they're presently working out a disagreement.  Loudly.

So I can't concentrate.  But, this one reading is pretty interesting, and since it mentions walking I thought I'd share it.  It's by my professor, R. W. Morris, and the article is called "Beyond Body-Spirit Dualism" (2001).  Here are a few segments:

"The automobile, which Borgmann (1992) aptly refers to as the 'vehicle of modernism' (p.58), has gone a long way in replacing the bicycle and walking – two modes of transportation that put us in direct contact with our bodies and the outside world.  Walking activates all the senses.  It allows us to slow down long enough to see, hear, smell, touch and sometimes even taste.  The car and its supporting cast of gadgets, furthermore, has rendered the body almost superfluous (Le Breton, 200, p.13)..."

"...Even a mundane technology like the automatic garage door opener radically severs the possibility of an embodied relationship with nature.  The price 'is any real relationship to the physical world.  If you live in a suburban home and commute to a parking garage somewhere, that ten seconds opening the garage door might be nearly the only rain you ever feel' (p. 247).  In northern countries like Canada the growing popularity of the remote car starter means that the ten seconds it takes to walk from your home or place of work to your car might be the only cold you ever feel..."

"...The fitness revolution is largely rooted in our ever-increasing preoccupation with the appearance of our bodies.  Taken at face value, this phenomenon seems to indicate an attitude of wonder and care for the human body.  A closer look, however, reveals a new attempt to escape our moral, corruptible and imperfect bodies.  Here our bodies are objects, 'commodious surfaces', to be altered, enhanced, perfected and make forever youthful.  The body is not a friend but rather an enemy to be defeated."

So, let's make friends with our bodies and take them for a walk! 

As well, if you are interested in the topic of body/mind separation, you should check this out:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
It's a lecture by Ken Robinson about schools killing creativity and educating from the head up "and slightly to one side".  A super good talk, funny too. 

(P.S., TED.com is an awesome site) 

My roommates aren't fighting anymore.  They have the music turned up and one of them is singing loudly.  Off tune.  Save me.        
 
I just finished writing the research essay that never ends never endingly (Martlet, 2008).  If that sentence made sense to you, good.  That's about the level of brilliance I could muster up for that paper.  

I should try to walk out my "essay butt", but it's pretty late.  Instead I'll write about walking, which is really not the same thing at all but I'm too tired to go to bed. 

Also! I really want to answer my first comment.  Bryce wanted to start a conversation about "how towns are set up for the convenience of cars over that of walkers" (Bryce, 2009). 

I totally see where he's coming from. I think this is especially evident during construction when the construction workers take over the sidewalk instead of the road.  Us poor, freezing pedestrians have to wait for a light, cross the street, wait for a light, cross the street, and finally, wait for a light and cross the street. Aww, look at us, being all cold and having to walk more in the wind and rain while the drivers are not inconvenienced at all...

...but, on the upside, think of the hot leg muscles we're developing with all the extra walking! 

Hey, something cool happened to me when I was going to school today.  This random girl gave me a huge pink rose and said "have a nice day".  Then she walked away.  So I carried the rose from class to class, reveling in the fact that all my classmates thought it was my birthday or something. 

Carrying a rose all day without crushing it is a huge responsibility.  You will be happy to know that the rose survived.  When I finally got home, I put it in water in a tall beer glass (I have no vase.  Classy, I know).  It looks very nice on the table (Murphy, 2009).

Take that, car drivers!  I bet you didn't get a random rose on the street!
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Yah, it's true, that's a beer mug. I don't have a real vase to put it in.
 
Sunday was a pretty awful day.  I had to make one of those big questionable, life-changing decisions. I made it and ... I felt shitty.  So I was doing the "I feel shitty" walk, which consists of me walking and walking and walking until I feel better (or get hungry).

I was walking in the hope that something would come along and cheer me up, and Montreal, you did not disappoint! 

I was on Rue Saint Laurent, one of the hip-happenen streets in Montreal, and I hear this dance music.  I'm tempted to call it techno, but I'm not sure.  Whatever it was, it was rock'n stuff and I liked it.  I looked around to see what bar the music was coming from and, to my surprise, I saw that it was coming from a bike!  This bike was totally tricked out.  It was covered in lights and on the back there was a fancy speaker blasting out tunes. 

The best part about it all was that the bike was not being ridden by some hipster kid – no - it was controlled by a very normal looking, older gentleman.  Grinning from ear to ear, he just drifted up and down the street, sharing his love of techno to the world.

I felt better.  

It reminded me of this guy I occasionally see when I walk to school.  He's a tough looking kid with a stereo backpack that pumps out rap music.  Whenever I'm behind him, I can't help but to fantasize about sneaking some Jewel music onto his playlist.  Perhaps a little Sarah McLaughlin.  

This post is getting long, but I just want to say that I'm super excited because I got my very first comment!  Thank you, Bryce, for making my day.  I do have a few thoughts on that issue and I will respond!  Maybe even tomorrow (if I can finish my school essay...sigh...).