Walking Abroad

We recently returned from nearly three weeks in Europe, and for the past few days I’ve been holed up trying to wade through three weeks’ worth of newspapers and answer accumulated email and newsgroup posts. Although I dressed to go to “the gym” yesterday, my husband returned reporting that it was unusable because of broken AC and noxious, possibly even toxic, fumes, so when I hit the street for a walk this morning, it was the first real exercise I’d gotten since our return on Tuesday.

Although I didn’t attempt anything resembling my standard 2.1-mile fitness walk while we were abroad, that’s not to say I didn’t do any walking! Since our daughter doesn’t have a car or drive in England (her husband drives their car to work), anywhere we went in their town, we went on foot. We did walk into and around town several times, and once we accompanied her on a longish trek to a nearby (in motorist terms) school to have her baby weighed.

In addition, we:

• Thoroughly covered the ground at the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth (much of it in the rain).
• Traipsed around Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath for several days.
• Saw every nook and cranny of Hampton Court Palace (much of it more than once, as we kept getting lost) and some of its gardens.
• Climbed all over Kenilworth Castle (many flights of steps).
• Explored Cambridge and Greenwich (one day each).
• Tramped around miscellaneous portions of London, becoming intimately familiar with the geography between St. Pancras and King’s Cross stations and the nearby hotel where we stayed before and after our day trip to Paris.
• Climbed down the Eiffel Tower (luckily we’d gone up in the elevator).
• Trekked through the Jardin des Tuileries from the Musée du Louvre to the Place de la Concorde and back, a distance of well over a mile (and that doesn’t even count the amount of walking we did trying to find our way out of the Louvre from our group’s meeting point in the Carrousel shopping mall). This would have been a pleasant stroll in milder weather, but as we were leaving Paris in late afternoon, we passed a bank time-temperature display showing 33° C. (91° F.), so it was a pretty sweaty walk, especially given the limited time we had available.

And of course we were mostly on our feet throughout the time we were visiting various museums (such as the Churchill Museum and Imperial War Museum in London and the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich). The one actual walk that was planned, a tramp from the Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water to the picturesque Slaughters (Upper and Lower), was rained out, and there was at least one “free day” when I didn’t budge from my daughter’s house, but we did make up for it in other ways. For example, the day we flew home, which might have been expected to be largely sedentary, met expectations between Gatwick and Atlanta, but when we arrived in Atlanta, we found that our flight to Mobile had been canceled, and the comedy of errors that ensued (rebooking, getting on standby lists) had us shuttling between two concourses several times before we settled down. By the time we finally got home, many hours later than planned, we felt like we’d had plenty of exercise!

Walking and Listening

This post has been gestating for an entire month, since Mother’s Day (May 10), when I made an impulse purchase that has had repercussions related to my walking experience. The fact that the purchase was made specifically for walking only makes the situation more complicated, and it’s taken me a while to process the results.

Many of the walkers I encounter are clearly listening to something. That is, they have headphones on or (more commonly) earbuds in their ears. They speak or wave distractedly, obviously lost in their own self-contained world. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to join that insular population.

On the other hand, it often happens that, when the time is right for me to hit the street, I’m engrossed in something on the radio. This is especially likely on Saturdays, when I may be listening to Bob Edwards Weekend. It had therefore often occurred to me that it would be nice if I had some kind of small portable radio that I could take with me when I went out walking.

My husband succumbed to an iPod last June and has recently finally gotten around to getting it set up, ripping his entire CD collection and storing most of it on the device. Although somewhat late to the party, he is a rabid iPod fan and can’t get over how cool it is. He got an adapter so he can play it through the tape deck in his car and a cable so he can play it through our Bose Wave Radio/CD (thus eliminating the stacks of CDs on the floor, which can now theoretically be stored elsewhere).

Although I can readily see the coolness factor of all this, if I want music, I’m pretty much willing to take whatever happens to be on the radio. A friend of mine who is a member of the 100 Mile Club at the Christian Life Center where I’ve been using the “fitness center” showed me her tiny clip-on MP3 player (I believe it was an iPod Shuffle—I’m no expert on these things). She said her daughter had put a lot of bouncy Broadway show tunes on it that really punched up her walking speed. I could see that, too. Still, I wasn’t sold. What I really wanted was a radio.

Enter the Sansa Clip. On Mother’s Day, my husband offered to take me out to lunch, and we chose a restaurant near Office Depot, since he also had business there. As we walked into Office Depot, I was arrested by a display, on a clearance table, of small MP3 players. I guess what must have caught my eye was the information that the player incorporated an FM tuner. Aha! A radio!

The device was marked down to a price that seemed like a reasonable amount to venture ($29.99), so I took the plunge. I won’t go into all the ins and outs of installation. Suffice it to say that nothing computer-related is ever simple. The mini-CD that contained the (as far as I can tell largely irrelevant) software had a folder that was supposed to contain the documentation, but it was completely empty. I did find the manual online, along with a discussion forum from which I learned that the reason I couldn’t charge the device and Windows couldn’t see it was that I needed to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11. After that, things went pretty smoothly.

Then came the realization that the earbuds that came with it were just not going to work for me (they won’t stay in my ears). It took a couple of tries to find some headphones that were satisfactory (by which time I’d doubled my initial expenditure). Finally everything came together and I was able to really test it out, both on the street and at the CLC. Although there have been some setbacks (low battery, etc.), I have reached several conclusions:

• Any distraction makes the elliptical machine easier to bear. I can’t really read while using it, so listening to the radio helps.
• No matter what I’m listening to, I can still hear the TV in the fitness center if someone has it on.
• I prefer reading over music when on the treadmill.
• Unless there’s a program I especially want to listen to, when I’m walking outside, I prefer the company of my own thoughts and the sounds of nature to radio or recorded music.

I also decided, since I listen to a classical radio station, that it might be helpful to put some of my own music on the device, since I can’t count on WHIL’s offerings to be the right tempo. It took me a while to get around to that, but I found that WMP 11 makes it dead simple, and I now have four CDs’ worth of music (Paul Simon and the soundtrack from The Big Chill) on the player. Presumably I’ll eventually add more, though I don’t feel any particular urgency about it. (The capacity of the device is just 2 GB, so I won’t be adding much, anyway.)

Saturday morning when I went out to get the paper, it was surprisingly cool and pleasant, and I was tempted to just walk outside, but I’d made up my mind I was going to go to the fitness center and try out my recorded music. When I discovered that the Clip’s battery was a little low, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take the time to recharge it: after all, the fitness center would be the same temperature all day. So instead of leaving at 8:30 a.m., I was out the door at 10:30—and home again ten minutes later. I had found a sign on the door of the CLC saying it was closed till June 13 for Vacation Bible School! Although the door was open and the place seemed deserted (no sign of VBS), there was no one at the reception desk, which was dark, so I came home and walked (sans music) in air that was almost ten degrees warmer!

So I’m still figuring all this out, but I’m hoping that in fact the device will (eventually) enrich my experience and offer added incentive to exercise.

Walking vs. Treading

A few months ago, a nearby church (the one with the chimes) opened a new Christian Life Center that houses a wide variety of meeting and recreational facilities. Among these are a walking track (on the second floor above a gymnasium with a full-size basketball court) and a fitness center. Both are free and open to the public, and the church is eagerly pursuing greater awareness and use of the facility by the community.

It had occurred to me that this might be a useful alternative to walking on rainy days, as well as those when it is “too hot” or “too cold” to walk. The walking track does not appeal to me. It is, in effect, a featureless circular corridor, and I would have to make 35 laps around it to equal the 2.1-mile scenic route I traverse daily. It’s hard to imagine anything more mind-numbing.

The fitness center, on the other hand, intrigued me. One of my friends recently lost a substantial amount of weight at least in part by exercising on elliptical machines. The fitness center has this type of equipment, as well as treadmills, stationary bicycles, a stair climber, and a variety of weight machines. So I visited recently to check it out and fill out an application/registration to use it. Since then I’ve been back a several times to try it out.

On these visits I’ve learned a number of things, and I’ve had a chance to think about the differences between using “exercise equipment” and just walking outside.

After my first visit, I had these comparisons between walking on streets and sidewalks and walking on a treadmill:

• The treadmill makes it easier to maintain a steady walking pace. You can set a specific speed for the treadmill. Although I can manage 3.5 mph, I get shin splints pretty quickly. About 3.4 mph seems comfortable (though even this is faster than I walk naturally).
• When I’m walking outside, I may be forced to stop (by traffic at an intersection, by a motorist asking for directions), but ordinarily I don’t stop for any reason. On a treadmill, I can stop the machine to catch my breath (not a good idea, though, I’ve found, as even “pausing” it seems to require resetting the speed control when I restart).
• When I walk on the treadmill, I can see how many calories I’m (theoretically) burning. This is actually rather discouraging.
• When I walk on the treadmill, I can be doing something else, namely, reading. Having concluded on my first visit that this would be possible, on my second visit, I took a magazine. I found that (a) the print in Newsweek is too small to focus on, and (b) the economy is not the best thing to try to concentrate on while walking. On my third visit I took a novel with larger print, and that worked out pretty well. There are two TV screens in the fitness room, but, as long as no one else is there, I can turn the TV off.
• When I walk on the treadmill, I can stop any time. In practice, I’ve ended up walking till I hit 100 calories, which turns out to be about 1.2 miles. When I walk outside, I can’t stop till I get back home. On rare occasions, if it starts pouring rain, I might cut my route short, but ordinarily, once I’m out, I have to walk the whole 2.1 miles. Sometimes I don’t really want to walk that far, but I do; so far I’ve never managed that distance on the treadmill, partly because it wears me out faster and partly because it’s boring.
• When I walk outside, I start from my house and return there; I don’t have to drive somewhere else to do it. Although the church is just a couple of minutes away, I do seem to end up spending more time on the whole exercise and less time actually exercising. Moreover, it feels even more strange to be going out without jewelry or makeup.
• Any number of people can walk (or run or ride a bicycle) on the streets at the same time; they mostly don’t get in each other’s way, and they don’t have to be sociable. In the fitness room, there are two treadmills, one of them currently out of order (parts have been ordered, according to a sign on the machine), so if I arrive and someone else is already using it, I have to wait or do something else (admittedly, there’s plenty else to do).
• When I “work out” in the fitness room, as long as there’s no one else there, I can make a fool of myself in private; if there is someone else there, then I’m much more conscious of their presence than of the curious eyes I sometimes imagine behind the windows of the houses I pass when I walk outside.

In addition to the treadmill, whose controls I believe I have more or less mastered, I have tried out most of the other equipment as well. I realized today that the reason the stationary bicycles can be placed anywhere (some are out in the corridor) is that they are pedal-powered (they don’t have to be plugged in). They have an electronic display and controls, but these are not activated until you start pedaling. I haven’t entirely figured out the best way to use the bicycle, but I think that should be a component of my workout. The weight machines (seated biceps curl machine, standing triceps press, and a vertical chest press) are fairly straightforward but probably more targeted toward guys. I’ve tried a few reps on each, using the lightest weights. The Stairmaster is missing its controls and therefore I assume is nonfunctional (I could be wrong), so I haven’t tried it; we have two flights of stairs at home if I want to climb stairs.

The elliptical machine, though, is the goal to which I aspire. So far I have never managed to last more than ten minutes on it (some of that stationary), and I have not begun to master its intricate controls. It is the only one that really makes me break a sweat, though, so I assume it is the one I should be concentrating on.

At any rate, it seems likely that the thoughts I might have while using this type of equipment will be different from those I have while walking. So far, they mostly seem to be along the lines of “Will this never end?” If I ever achieve anything more revelatory, be assured that I will report it here!

Running with Scissors

Microsoft Word 6.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 95 had a “Tip of the Day” feature that could be configured to display a tip about Word features every time you started the application. Someone with a sense of humor (there are more of these at Microsoft than you might imagine) had included a number of “tips” designed to make users smile. One of these was “You can hurt yourself if you run with scissors.” Just as our mothers always told us!

I thought about this today as I was walking, thinking that “walking in traffic” is another dangerous activity. This is the weekend of Fairhope’s annual Arts & Crafts Festival, which started today, and my walking route takes me through much of the vast parking lot that the side streets become at this time. The parked cars were just an obstacle; the moving ones were a downright hazard. And today is mild compared to what it will be like tomorrow, as thousands of people hunt for parking spaces (we can be sure that at least two of them will park in our front yard, since we’ve given up on trying to block it off, but with any luck they won’t block our driveway—not that we can get anywhere from here, anyway).

Admittedly, I was walking rather late today (around noon), but walking earlier is not necessarily the answer, either—at least not tomorrow morning, when our neighborhood becomes the scene of the Spring Fever Chase 10K and Fun Run.

Still, I am determined to get out and walk insofar as possible. The weather is absolutely glorious, and I have been balked of walking for too long. About a month ago, I reported being laid low with a cold. Although it (thank goodness) did not settle in my chest, it did hang on for quite a while, making air travel rather a trial (my ears are still popping occasionally). After we got home from the Pacific Northwest on March 5, I spent the next week catching up on mail, email, newspapers, newsgroups—oh, yes, and work (luckily not too much of the last). Still, I did manage to get in three walking days before last weekend, when it started raining; we got four inches over the next three days, and the rain never let up long enough to suggest that it would be possible to squeeze in a 40-minute walk.

The bottom line is that this morning’s walk was only my fifth so far this month, and one day out of four is not a very good track record. I will try to do better in the future.

As for thinking, the way things have been going lately, you would not want to know my thoughts, which have been somewhat blistering at times. But I did see something amusing this morning: several of the downtown streets are blocked off for the Arts & Crafts Festival, and a sign in the middle of one of the semi-closed ones said “NO THUR STREET.”

Hitting the Ground (Not) Running

After the exhilarating experience of actually managing to run short distances on Sunday, it was frustrating not to be able to get out at all on Monday.

I had every intention of doing so, but to begin with I overslept and so got a late start, and then I spent all morning in email, it seemed, fighting the various fires ignited by the messages I’d received, and at 11:55 a.m., I was still in my nightgown.

I’d suggested to my husband that we have lunch out (at a “square table” restaurant that serves generous portions of plain “home-cooked” meat and vegetables) so we could just have a sandwich for supper (I could see how the day was going and knew there wouldn’t be time to spend on cooking supper, much less getting out to the grocery for more food). But he had a client meeting in Mobile at 3, so we would have to leave for lunch no later than 1 p.m. He was headed out for a run and figured he would just barely have time, but it was obvious I wouldn’t (since I wasn’t ready to leave the computer yet, anyway).

So I not only didn’t try running again, I didn’t even get out for a walk. Yesterday I had ballet, so I wouldn’t have gone out anyway, but I got up with the kind of chest congestion that augurs weeks of asthmatic bronchitis and felt punk all day, not to mention that it was another nonstop day—there wouldn’t have been time.

This morning my chest seemed clear, but my head was stuffy instead, with a sinus headache that promised another unpleasant day. To my surprise, though, even after I’d dawdled every way I could think of, I still ended up with plenty of time for a walk before getting ready for Rotary. Given my iffy state of health, I thought better of trying to run again, but, again to my surprise, I found myself strangely energized and walking much faster than usual. I ended up finishing my route only a minute slower than on Sunday, when I ran (and four minutes faster than usual)!

It didn’t hurt that it was a gorgeous morning—temperature close to 70° F. and sunny at least to start, though it was completely overcast by the time I got home and did actually rain later in the day, as forecast (and now is turning much colder).

It has been another nonstop day, but at least this time I felt more in control—not as if my To Do list were overwhelming me—and I think that is at least partly attributable to the sense of satisfaction I felt in getting in a really brisk walk this morning. I hope I can remember that the next time I have “too much to do” and am tempted to slack off and skip the walk.

Trying to Run

I was tempted to title this post “Wanting to Die.” At least that’s the way I felt at times during this morning’s walk, during parts of which I attempted to run, succeeding in a sort of mild lope.

I didn’t set out with the idea of running. Whenever I’ve attempted it before, my arthritic knees have quickly let me know that running was out of the question. But lately in my ballet class we’ve been warming up by skipping, and this always feels so good to me that I feel like I could keep it up all day, though actually I’m out of breath and more than ready to stop after a couple of laps around the studio. At any rate, I thought that, even if I couldn’t run, perhaps I could skip for at least part of my walking route and thus get a more aerobic workout and more cardiovascular benefit.

I was raring to go. I was well and thoroughly rained out yesterday—nearly five inches of rain over the course of the evening, night, and early morning—but this morning, while still wet, didn’t look too threatening, and in fact the sun was beginning to come out by the time I got home. The temperature was very pleasant—in the low 60s, with a fresh breeze—so conditions were ideal.

Well, almost ideal. While it is not at all unusual to see people running and walking, you basically don’t ever see anyone (at least not anyone my age) skipping, so I felt a little self-conscious about starting. The hardest part of moving from walking to doing anything else is changing gait to begin with, but I’d made up my mind I’d get down to the corner and then start skipping on the part of my route that runs along the bluff overlooking the bay, where there are houses on only one side, on broad lots and several of them unoccupied, so there would be few potential observers. So naturally, as soon as I got to the corner, there was an explosion of vehicular traffic. Where were all these cars coming from? (Some of them from Mississippi, to judge by their tags.)

Finally, the last car in sight turned a corner, and I started trying to skip. Bad idea. I don’t know whether it was the road surface, the shoes, or just the general ambiance, but it simply wasn’t working. So instead I tried the knees-bent jazz run we also do in class. To my surprise, this actually worked out pretty well (no knee pain).

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t keep it up for long, but I did manage to get in several stints (of a block or two or three) of “running,” interspersed with longer stretches of catching my breath. Perhaps it was the effect of the increased heart rate, but I found that even when I dropped down to a walk, I was walking faster. The bottom line was that I shaved better than five minutes off my total time and presumably got a better workout, so I guess I’ll try to keep it up, even if at times it does seem entirely likely that I’ll drop dead in my tracks.

Pedestrians: An Endangered Species?

A fellow Microsoft MVP posted a link to a walking-related YouTube video that had been picked up by another blog that is actually about driving. If the instructions given by WordPress for embedding YouTube videos work, you’ll see it below.

I do like the deadpan tone of the film, which was created by B. C. Brown.

Thinking about Walking

I was tempted to title this post “Yes, I Am Still Alive!” A more accurate title would be “Feeling Guilty about Not Walking.” A run of very cold weather (really! below freezing—honest! with wind chill out the gazoo) and general busyness (lots of “formations” and other time commitments that have run me off my feet) have conspired to prevent me (or at least deter me) from walking for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been out for a walk only five times so far this month (most of those early in the month when the highs were in the 70s).

When my husband deems it too cold to run, he climbs stairs. Not for me, thanks, but I do sometimes find other worthwhile projects to qualify as “exercise.” Yesterday’s project (which had been on my To Do list for several days) was to clear out my part of our shared closet. Although this did entail weeding out the clothes and shoes that, viewed with unflinching realism, I knew I would never wear again, my primary object was to clear out some cartons and plastic milk crates of assorted material on the shelves and floor.

For example, I knew that a large part of the contents of one of the milk crates, which had been gathering dust since my daughter was in school (that is, for nearly fifteen years), was a collection of Latin textbooks. They had been sent by their publishers to the school for evaluation; since the school doesn’t offer Latin, someone at the school, knowing I was a former Latin teacher, offered them to me. Since I no longer have any expectation of ever teaching again, not to mention that I still have the textbooks I taught out of, it seemed like a no-brainer to get rid of these books. Alas! when I mentioned it to my husband, he said, “I’ve been running across so many Latin phrases lately that I’ve been thinking I ought to brush up on my Latin.” By “brush up” he meant “learn for the first time,” since he’d never studied the subject. Anyway, he agreed to put them in one of his bookcases, so they’re out of my way.

The rest of the contents of the milk crates primarily related to dollhouse miniatures (my daughter has a very elaborate dollhouse that I furnished). Those were also relatively easy to deal with. One of the boxes was labeled “Antique Clothing,” and I opened it with anticipation and viewed the contents with pleasure and relief. When my father died, most of the contents of his house were sold in an estate sale. We happened to be bringing boxes down from the attic one day when the woman who was organizing the sale came by. When she saw the boxes of old clothes, she pounced, saying she had a customer for them who happened to be in town, and she would be able to sell them right away. They got away from me a little faster than I really wanted, and I wished later that I’d been firmer about holding onto them till I could assess them.

So now I was glad to see that I still had some of the lace-trimmed petticoats that had belonged to my great-grandmother, as well as one complete striped chambray (two-piece) dress. Among the other odds and ends in the box (a lace fan with mother-of-pearl sticks, a lace-trimmed black mask) were several lace shawls and mantillas my great-grandfather had sent my great-grandmother from “Porto Rico” when he was posted there during the Spanish-American War.

Another box, very heavy, seemed likely to contain books, and I rather thought perhaps it was the box of children’s books I am saving for my grandchild(ren). In fact I found it contained my collection of ancient fashion magazines, some dating back to the 1860s. Though I have stowed it away again for the nonce, I do want to peruse the contents again at leisure (and I will have a few things to add to it).

The greatest surprise, though, was a box that I had vaguely thought contained the notes and drafts of my master’s thesis (no telling where those actually are). Instead, it proved to be a treasure trove of memorabilia. The first things I pulled out were mine—miscellaneous snapshots (summer camp, a visit to Mount Vernon), undated (ca. 1956) literature from some IBM exhibit somewhere (“I AM AN IBM 305 RAMAC”), several programs from our church’s sesquicentennial celebration, newspaper and magazine clippings about the Challenger disaster—but most of the contents seem to have been souvenirs my grandmother had saved: a printed biography of her father, a Class Bulletin of the Class of 1884 (his class) at the United States Military Academy (West Point), a box of ornate and sentimental valentines from the turn of the (twentieth) century, handwritten and typed drafts of her autobiography.

Also in the box were an adorable baby book Grandmother had kept for me (one of several devoted to my adorable self) and an album of pictures of adorable me, bound between wooden covers adorned with the word “SNAPS” and a pinecone design carved (or perhaps burned) into the wood and hand-colored. It is a toss-up whether my mother or I was the most photographed baby who ever lived, but there are certainly enough photograph albums to make it difficult to decide.

All of these items are fascinating, to be sure, but none of them is much different in nature or quality from the mounds of other memorabilia I’ve accumulated elsewhere (even the photos are widely duplicated). But the box does contain several pièces de résistance that I don’t recall ever seeing before. One of these is The Ladies Birthday Almanac for the year 1944 (my birth year) published by Black-Draught (“for All the Family”) and Cardui (“for Women”). This newsprint booklet is a congeries of astrological projections, weather predictions, and actual factual information, such as the phases of the moon and times for sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset. And of course on every other page an advertisement for Black-Draught or Cardui.

Another remarkable find is Our Patriotic President: His Life in Pictures, with Famous Words & Maxims, Anecdotes, and Biography (copyright 1904). The “patriotic president” in question was Teddy Roosevelt; the Publisher’s Preface explains:

Few of our former Presidential candidates have ever engaged the attention of the country so much as Theodore Roosevelt. Although he has been in the people’s eye for more than twenty years, the American public, magnetically attracted by his patriotic and picturesque personality, is solicitous of still closer acquaintance with our popular President’s affairs; his past, present and future; his principles and opinions; his home life and recreations. But in our days of strenuous life and nervous temperament few people have the time and patience to wade through ponderous volumes, dull documents of state and bulky biographies. We even want the information about our Presidents in tabloids. To fill this want this book has been carefully compiled with a view to give at a glance, “all about Theodore Roosevelt.”

The “days of strenuous life and nervous temperament” could be a description of our own impatient Google-spoiled times!

Even more intriguing is the “Souvenir Program of the G.A.R. Encampment, Boston, August 15 to 20, including The Charles River Carnival, August 17th, 1904″ (Price, Ten Cents). The G.A.R. (for non-USians) is the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of veterans of the Union Army in the Civil War, formed in 1866. The encampment was a sort of reunion or convention of these veterans, held annually in various places around the country. This one in Boston was the thirty-eighth annual encampment. At that time, G.A.R. membership was 247,340 (down from a high in 1890 of 409,489). An official program of the thirty-sixth encampment (in Washington, D.C.) can be seen at the Library of Congress Web site.

There is no clue to how my grandmother came by this document. Her father’s family was from Massachusetts, and in August 1904 she had just moved to live with an aunt in Springfield; perhaps this encampment (or the Seventh Grand Charles River Carnival) was such an attraction that they attended, or perhaps they happened on it on their way from Fort DuPont, Delaware, her father’s previous post. In any case, the program is a priceless relic and probably holds more interest than anything I would see on my walks.

I won’t be walking tomorrow; we’ll be leaving for church before it is warm enough to consider walking farther than the car and spending the afternoon, I hope, at the Saenger Theatre in Mobile for a concert by the Mobile Symphony Orchestra. I may be able to walk Monday but will certainly not walk Tuesday. Unfortunately, I will not be glued to the television along with the rest of the country, as I have a conflict. But I will continue to think about walking!

Plodding

Today (like the several previous days) was a very inviting one: in the low 70s, with a light breeze. Will power seemed to be required only to tear myself away from the puzzle our daughter had given us for Christmas.

Until I hit the street. Then I suddenly realized how stiff I was. Usually when I’m feeling a bit arthritic, it wears off after the first five or ten minutes, and I hit my stride. Not today. I did my usual 2.1 miles in 47 minutes instead of the usual 40 or less. It wasn’t even walking—just plodding. And it was torture. It took will power just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Worse still, for the first half hour or so, I kept yawning uncontrollably.

Still, it was a beautiful day, and I won’t complain if we have another week of this weather (it will greatly improve our utility bill as well).

No Will Power Required

When I got up Monday morning, it was 31°. Although the temperature eventually rose to 50°, I got so bogged down in Christmas preparations that I never did quite make it out for a walk. Yesterday it was 42° when I got up and 59° when I went out walking in midafternoon (later than planned). By that time, the sun had gone in, and the breeze had picked up, so it was a bit nippy. This morning when I got up it was 69° and fairly clear—just a few fluffy clouds. Now it is 72° and completely overcast, and I still haven’t gone out walking. Why? Certainly it is a great day for it (if I can beat the rain), but another task took priority.

Today being Christmas Eve, it is the day I bake a pumpkin pie. In theory, this could be done anytime during the day, but I have an established tradition of doing it while listening to the BBC broadcast of “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” from King’s College, Cambridge, which begins here at 9 a.m. Sure enough, as the selected chorister tremblingly began, “Once in royal David’s city…,” I was getting out my mixing bowl and spices, and as I write this, the pie is in the oven, and I am listening to the last of the service.

The pumpkin pie (as well as its creation) is one of the most immutable traditions of our Christmas. Some of the other trappings can be dispensed with (and many have been or will be this year), but we must have the pie! It is made from a traditional family recipe, and I receive compliments whenever I serve it, but every year as I make it, I wonder whether it is really better than the one printed on the label of the can of Libby’s pumpkin. It is certainly an inconvenient recipe, as it uses only 8 ounces of a 12-ounce can of evaporated milk, leaving a remainder that never gets used up before it spoils, but it is traditional!

For those who may be interested in the recipe, here it is as I received it:

Honey Pumpkin Pie

⅓ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon cloves
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ cup strained honey
2 cups cooked or canned pumpkin
1 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs

Mix sugar, salt, and spices. Stir in honey and pumpkin. Heat milk (to about 180°) and add with eggs. Beat well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 425° for 10 minutes; reduce heat to 375° and continue to bake 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. The filling will not be firm but will continue to cook while cooling.

I usually find the mixture easier to stir (especially on cold days) if I add the pumpkin before the honey, and I beat the eggs slightly and add them before the heated milk, which I add a little at a time. Heating the milk seems to give the pie a head start that allows it to bake in a somewhat shorter time than indicated in the Libby’s recipe. I like to think that the honey adds something (and of course if you use something other than ordinary clover honey, you will get a distinctive taste).

Now the service is over, my pie is out of the oven, and it’s not raining yet, so I guess I can go for a walk!