I departed the hospital at 2:04 pm bundled and auto-less. Snow fell lightly. It had been snowing all day. I'll admit I had an uneasy feeling about no transportation. I'm not sure why but I was nervous. It's 4.5 miles from work to home. That's a decent trek. My work partners were dismayed at my reasons for walking. I found this a common reaction. Sara considered me a bit daffy when I told her my plan but was gracious to my madness. I'm ashamed but not surprised to say I'd never walked the route I take to work. I know it doesn't seem strange to most people but I felt it to be very odd that I'd never walked streets I've traveled, by my calculations, well over five thousand times. In consequence I've only had an abstract familiarity with them.
Two blocks later I began to seriously regret my idealism. For starters I have a bone to pick with the shoe manufacturer Simple. If you're reading this you Simple people; you guys are a bunch of worthless, pansy bastards who haven't walked in an inch of snow for the length of your recycled, reused, and reduced lives.
Exhibit A:
This is the very cool looking recycled tire tread on my Simple Ecos sneakers. I'm embarrassed to say that I can feel great with every step in these earth-friendly Ecos sneakers by Simple. Vegan-friendly hemp upper in a casual sneaker style with a round toe. Contour stitching details and a contrasting hemp fabric inlay add modern sporty detail. PET laces and a padded collar and tongue keep fit comfortable. Organic cotton lining and PET cushioning pedbed, latex and cork midsole and recycled bike tire sidewall. Made with water based cements and recycled pulp paper foot forms. Not to mention they're a pile of horse manure in even the smallest amount of snow. Feel good about your impact on the earth. Buy now, slip later.
What, you ask, does this mean? It means I walked closer to 9 miles by taking a half slide back every time I took a full step forward. Regret began to bloom like a hot fire in the small of my back from trying to keep my balance and not fall on my ass. Snow filled in the spaces around my socks. This is my own fault for not bringing real boots for the job. In my defense, my boot shoelaces were broken and it wasn't snowing when I left. Still, in addition to heaping scorn on the Simple, granola, sun-soaking wankers down in California I heap a share of it on my own self for not being prepared. Sack clothe and ashes baby.
I grew accustomed after five or six blocks to the misery of no traction and found myself on a street full of cars. The asphalt was clear and wet. It looked very inviting except for the whine and subsequent rush of automobiles along its surface so I stayed on the jagged, glacial, carapace one assumes is a sidewalk. The sound became supremely obnoxious and the smell rank. I stumbled along for two or three blocks till I walked past an elementary school with rows of running cars parked along the street and grew tired of the fumes and noise and backtracked a block to get to a residential street. The sidewalks were better and clearer, the air quiet and clean, and it seemed that I'd entered into a quasi urban wilderness. I didn't see another human being for five or six blocks till I encountered an old man shoveling his driveway. I didn't say hi.
It was very strange to walk in a city and, for the most part, not see other people around. The sidewalks were devoid of tracks in the fresh snow. I was the first to walk that way for at least a day. I met one other person walking along the whole 4.5 miles. I said hi when we passed and he returned the greeting. I saw him coming about a block and a half out. For five minutes I anticipated our meeting and then it happened and he was gone along the way I had just come. I followed his footsteps for a while till they turned aside and the sidewalk was once again a blank white path. I would occasionally encounter footsteps in the snow and they would become an instant fascination till they disappeared again around the next corner.
I have to say that walking in this city is a certain kind of hell. Nine out of ten sidewalks weren't shoveled. Multiple times the sidewalk would just disappear into a two foot high snow drift that stretched for a quarter mile and I'd have to cross the street to find someplace to walk or just walk in the middle of the road. The plows had piled up snow at intersections that had to be traversed. The shoes made all this much more agonizing, but I slowly gained a cadence and felt more at ease as the city passed. I studied a hundred different houses and pissed off a few dozen dogs and heard the eerie sound of carnival music at the Catholic church. The city reluctantly allowed me to pass through instead of flying over it. My nose dripped, my head grew hot, then cold, and then hot, then cold and my legs ached. If the goal had been to understand the physical limits and reality of space then I did. If it had been enjoyment then I only moderately succeeded. There were moments of enjoyment: passing that single, fellow walker, being alone, gaining perspective and thought, being in the physical world and feeling alive and then finally arriving home tired, wet and cold and being greeted by family and warmth and familiarity.
I have to say that that was the best part. I arrived at our back door at 3:29. The trek took 1 hour, 25 minutes. With better shoes I could have probably shaved off ten minutes. To walk to work and back would require an extra 2 1/2 hours a day. I don't have that. I'm going to have to find a different solution. As soon as the ice clears up I'll try riding a bike and see how that goes. I hear you can buy or make studded ice tires for them. Sounds like an adventure to me. I'd like to do something different but this is not a city conducive to anything but four wheels and a combustion engine. The public bus drives by our house once an hour starting at 6ish. Just taking the bus would add a couple hours to my day. It's a crock to be sure.
This is perhaps the most difficult issue I'll face. Automobiles in our state are our life blood. There is no other form of transportation to be had and we're dealing with vast empty spaces. I don't want to go off the deep end here because I want to be in my place and I have to deal with its nature as well as my limitations of family and time. I'd like to just simplify a bit. How am I going to do that? Well I'd say to start out, if you want to be simple; buy complicated shoes.
I would ride my bike to work more often (but certainly not in the damnable winter), but there are not showers available for most employees and I don't feel like going to meetings and interacting with people when I'm a sweaty, stinky mess.
ReplyDeleteWe definitely need to push the city to improve the buses around here. I would really like to take the bus to work regularly, but it doesn't run enough to be convenient for me. Who do we need to start sending letters to here in Billings to get this improved?
Letters need to be sent to your fellow citizens. You see, the bus system already operates at a net loss, so adding buses, routes, and frequency is a matter of economics. Get more consumers to utilize the bus system and we'll get a better bus system in Billings.
ReplyDeletehonest question:
ReplyDeletehow would walking to work 'simplify' your life?
there is a reasonably decent book called 'your money or your life' (note, there is also an excellant book called 'your money or your life', but im currently refering the more mainstream secular one). i think you would do well to check that book out with a berrion mindset. parmly has a copy of it, but it is often checked out.
So you walk 4.5 miles through town in the dead of winter and write about how much it sucks? I guess you should try everything once.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, it is difficult to have viable public transit in a town of this size, especially when your population is not eager to use it. Kind of a catch 22 as Jeromy described.
It is a Catch-22, because if it's already offering subpar performance, what incentive is there for people to ride it with the hope that it will improve in the future? I think the city needs to beef up the system a little, put up a huge advertising campaign, and partner up with some of the larger businesses (like the hospitals, Wal-Mart, etc) to offer discounts to their employees. Then if that doesn't work, scrap the whole damn thing 'cause we won't deserve a better transit system.
ReplyDeleteLarge employers I think could offer some sort of incentive. Perhaps you and I should start working where we're at Mr Noble to see if this is possible. If there is a place we could make a difference then this may be one of them. I know our hospital has massive parking problems and should be interested. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteSayer: Yes there is a time for all things. Being miserable is one of them. Though it may not have been for the sake of misery, it was the misery that makes one understand the limits of yourself. Hence the joy of the mountains. They destroy your hubris.
Kyle: Your right. Walking doesn't simplify my life. I found that out right quick. It does change my perspective. Automobiles are nearly impossible to detach from without loosing connectedness so there you have it. I'll check out that book but I'm not sure if you would prefer I look at the mediocre or the excellent one.
I'll quote Berry, "I have not been able to see, for example, how people living in the country, where there is no public transportation, can give up their automobiles without becoming less useful to each other. And this is because, owing largely to the influence of the automobile, we live too far from each other, and from the things we need, to be able to get about by any other means. Of course, you could do without an autombile, but to do so you would have to disconnect yourself from many obligations. Nothing I have so far been able to think about this problem has satisfied me."
This would be our state.
I do remember our administrators raising the possibility a few years ago of partnering with Met to offer discounted passes to employees assuming enough employees were willing to sign up. Since I never heard more, I'm guessing it went nowhere.
ReplyDeleteWhat about just drafting a simple proposal for something similar - what it would look like, what the benefits would be for staff and for the hospital, benefits for the environment (St. V's has really been pushing green initiatives).