Life Across The Pond

Unnecessary Walking

I've started to realize that I do a fair amount of walking in this city. Every weekday, there's the 69 stairs that I walk to get down from my 5th floor apartment, the 2 blocks east and 1 block south to the subway station, two more blocks from the station by work to get to the office, and then the reverse commute home...including the 69 stairs back up. And really, other than the four flights of stairs, it's not all that bad.

However, in the last few days, I've done a good deal of unnecessary walking on top of the regular commute. I always wonder how far it is that I've walked on any one of these unnecessary walks that I take. Thanks to the wonders of Google Local (apparently their new name, so as not to be mistaken for Google Earth I assume) and the Google Maps API, I've found a site that will tell me. So I've mapped out some of my walks and here's what they work out to:

• Movie-night Stroll: After watching Dave Chappelle's Block Party, I felt inspired to pick up some music. So after walking some friends home, I continued on to Virgin Records in Union Square and then went to hunt down the start of the M7 bus line going uptown.
• 2.24 miles - Here's the route

• East to West stroll: My friend threw her back out so rather than make her catch a bus home, I rode with her in a cab back to the Upper East Side with the plan of meeting another friend up there for drinks. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, that friend had already made his way downtown. So instead of catching a cab or bus back, I walked home instead.
• 2.88 miles - Route

posted by Peter @ 2:33 AM