No Excuses

I really had every intention of taking at least a test walk yesterday but got embroiled in other activities until it was so late in the day that I begged off. Today, though, despite spinning my wheels for at least an hour trying to track down a quotation in the book I just finished, I was determined to hit the street.

It wasn’t bad. Not by any means my best time on this course, but not bad. I’d figured I’d start with the northern portion of the loop and come on home if I didn’t feel up to the rest, but in fact I felt fine, so I persevered and finished the course. Interestingly the GPS track (zoomed in) even shows where I sidestepped to pluck dead wood out of the shrubbery beside Mershon Court (on Summit Street between Magnolia and Fairhope Avenues) and throw it to the curb.

I noticed a lot of houses with newly posted For Sale signs, which seems a hopeful sign that recovery from the Great Recession may be just around the corner—or at least these homeowners are betting on it.

Tomorrow: Back to the gym!

Hiatus

On Tuesday, October 23, my husband flew to Kansas City on business. Someone on the flight was coughing. By Thursday morning, so was he. By Sunday afternoon, when he returned, he was working on what turned into a really nasty cold.

Like all the other goodies he picks up in his travels, he generously shared this with me. On Wednesday, October 31, I got up with a sore throat, and it’s been all downhill from there.

My husband, who has more willpower than I, has been walking and running again for several days. As for me, every time I toy with the idea of returning to the gym, a paroxysm of coughing suggests that this would not be prudent.

The result is that the reading with which I went to some pains to stock my Kindle is still untouched. But I have not been without resources. In addition to catching up with various periodicals, I have made further headway in The Dead Witness, a collection of Victorian detective stories that I started in Portland in early September and have been dipping back into at intervals ever since. And yesterday I picked up from the library, where I had put it on hold some weeks ago, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel, by Robin Sloan. As I’m only halfway through, it’s too soon to render a final verdict, but so far I am enjoying it very much and would recommend it to fellow geeks.

I have to say that this cold, though at times more than a little annoying, has actually come at a fairly convenient time and has provided a welcome vacation. Having given myself permission to slack off on exercise and work in general, I’ve been able to devote hours every day to transcribing my father’s letters from Italy during World War II, which, together with the research they often entail, has often provided more interesting reading than anything else on hand.

Exploring

Last Sunday’s walk was very pleasant and successful as a walk, exploring new territory, but a disaster from the standpoint of further testing the heart rate monitor of the Garmin Forerunner 405CX. I had experimented with using the HRM in my ballet class but found that, although the watch detected the monitor, I couldn’t get it to display the training page. Subsequent tests have shown that, although it is possible to get the HR page even when the GPS is off, the problem is that, if the watch does not detect activity (movement, as reported by the GPS), then the watch goes into Power Save mode. So that was a nonstarter.

Last week, however, all conditions should have been right for the HRM, as the GPS was on, and I was moving. The watch detected the monitor at least occasionally but couldn’t get a consistent enough signal to give reliable results. I wasted a lot of time just checking on the watch to see whether it was behaving, adjusting its position on my wrist, adjusting the position of the monitor strap, etc., before throwing in the towel and deciding to just enjoy the walk and the new views.

Today, however, I had a specific plan. I have arranged, finally (I hope), to have a table refinished. I can date the start of this project to July 2004, when I took photos of the table to show to a proposed refinisher, who gave me an estimate and arranged to come pick up the table. He never showed and didn’t respond to phone messages, and presently his place of business was closed. Other prospects have proved similarly evanescent, but I think I now have a live one. The address he gave me, however (457 S. Mobile Street), is different from the one listed in the phone book (which he said was just a mailing address), and I wanted to check it out. I’m still a bit dubious: the location appears residential and has no sign, but there is a sort of shop in the back yard, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt. At least I did get a complete name, and I have a working phone number!

My wandering path again today took me through the part of Fairhope called “the fruit and nut district.” Although this appellation is derived from the street names—Kumquat, Satsuma, Pomelo, Orange, Fig, Pecan—it is often said that the term could equally well apply to the residents. Like most older neighborhoods, it is a mixture of older and newer homes. Many of the older ones are quite grand, but most look like obvious candidates for demolition. The newest ones have almost certainly been built on lots where such smaller cottages were once located, but I was surprised to find quite a few vacant lots as well, including three lots at the southeast corner of Bay Breeze Lane (an alley) and Pecan Avenue, which seem to have been maintained as a sort of pocket park.

The walk was a success from the standpoint of distance traveled, calories burned, and new sights viewed (not to mention that it was a glorious day to be out), but in particular it was a success because the heart rate monitor performed like a champ. I had begun to wonder whether it was necessary to get rained on to achieve this (and in fact I did encounter a brief shower), but today I wet a Kleenex and swabbed my chest before putting the monitor on, and that seems to have done the trick. It recorded (apparently accurately) from beginning to end (and then some, as I left it on to try to see how long it would take me to return to my resting heart rate). So now I just have to plan my next adventure!

Today’s Experiment

It rained off and on all day yesterday, but I was really hoping for dry weather today because my plan was to take the next step in getting to know my GPS watch. The Garmin Forerunner 405CX package includes a wireless heart rate monitor that uses ANT+ technology (similar to Bluetooth) to send data to the watch. Last night, I read the manual carefully, tried on the HRM strap, and paired it with the watch. I was all set!

Rain continued through the night, and it was 10 AM before I felt safe in venturing out. It was still overcast but appeared to have stopped raining. By the time I actually hit the street, it was drizzling a little, but I decided to tough it out. I had chosen to walk my usual route so that I could come home after the northern leg of the loop if the rain picked up.

As can be seen from the trace of today’s walk, the GPS did not find a satellite for some time. I was aware of this and frustrated by it, but, since the HRM seemed to be working, I resolved to continue. As can be seen from the heart rate chart, even the HRM connection was not perfect. Occasionally when I raised my arm to look at the watch, the face was blank, and then an unrealistic rate (52!) would register as I brought my wrist closer to my chest. In fact, although I was unaware of it at the time, the GPS seems to have kicked in before the monitor stabilized. Still, by the time I started heading south on Summit (which is an uphill grade), my heart rate had soared to 140 and I saw that my distance was being tracked.

When I reached Oak Street, it was still just drizzling, and everything seemed to be working fine, so I passed Oak and headed into the southern leg of the loop. About the time I reached St. James Avenue, it started to rain in earnest, and it persisted for the rest of the walk. By the time I got home, I was soaked to the skin, my feet squelching in my shoes and my hat a pathetic mass of sodden duck. Eager to get under cover, I bungled turning off the timer (which accounts for splits 3 and 4).

All in all, I was pleased with the experiment. What I will have to figure out next is how to set up heart rate targets in my profile in order to get the screen that shows what HR zone I’m in. That can be an exercise for next Sunday.

Or not. It appears that it should be possible to use the HRM independently of the GPS. The equipment (elliptical, NordicTrack treadmill) that I use at the gym is all used, donated to the church, and, although most of the machines seem to have connections for HRMs, none (as far as I know) are provided. But I don’t see why I couldn’t use the Garmin for this purpose, and perhaps I will try it.

Today’s Adventure

Last Sunday, I reported on walking down to the American Legion, south of town. Today I decided to head in the other direction, north on Section Street to St. James Episcopal Church (formerly St. James’—it lost the apostrophe when it moved to its current location). This is a longer walk—over three miles—but I figured I needed it because a morning meeting yesterday had precluded a trip to the gym (and culminated in a hypercaloric lunch).

The route was almost entirely shady, and it was relatively cool (the sign in front of Fairhope Elementary School, in full sun, reported 81  at 9:50 a.m.), and there was a nice breeze most of the time, so it was really quite pleasant and not at all exhausting. But it is also quite hilly, so my Virtual Partner was ahead of me the entire way.

The map shows a slight diversion early on: contemplating the glaring sun on the sidewalk on both sides of Oak Avenue between Church Street and Section Street, I decided to detour through the Colony Cemetery. Impressively, the GPS trace on the map clearly shows how I started down the sidewalk, then backtracked to enter the cemetery gate. The second small jag was when I veered off the road to quickly view a glass-fronted display board containing a map showing the layout of the cemetery and location of all the graves. This may well have been the first time I had visited the cemetery since the early 1980s when my fellow den leader and I took our Cub Scouts there to make rubbings of the gravestones. Many improvements have since been made, and this was a reminder that I need to return and explore more fully.

Both this route and last week’s are part of the Eastern Shore Trail, a paved walking/running/cycling path that, when completed, will extend from the USS Alabama on Battleship Parkway (the causeway across Mobile Bay from Mobile to the Eastern Shore) to Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in south Baldwin County. Although there are occasional gripes about money being spent for sidewalks that no one uses, some portions of the trail are quite heavily trafficked: on my way to and from Baytreat yesterday, I saw bumper-to-bumper (as it were) cyclists, runners, and walkers along that portion of the path. This morning, although a few cyclists passed me (in the street—not on the path), I encountered only one other walker.

As I was headed down past the gully north of the Eastern Shore Art Center, I spotted a young woman who appeared to be wearing an oddly shaped backpack. It flared up around her head in such a way that I thought it might be the backrest of some kind of baby carrier. As she approached, however, I saw that she had a guitar over her shoulder. I speculated on whether she was coming from a gig somewhere—perhaps the Coffee Loft—or headed somewhere—perhaps a church—to play. On my return, meeting her again in front of the Summit gas station at Gayfer Avenue, I asked, “How did it go?” She started to say something, then asked, “How did what go—the walk or the [unintelligible]?” I said I thought she might have been going somewhere to play, and she said, “Oh, I was, but it was just on the grass somewhere, and I decided it was really too hot.” She did look pretty bedraggled, and I felt that the way I’d spent the time—mostly in the shade—had been pleasanter.

Farther Afield

Today I made good on my promise to myself to take advantage of my new GPS watch (which keeps track of where I go and tells me how far I’ve walked—not to mention my speed, elevation change, number of calories burned, etc.) to walk a different route. Since I’d been out of town the previous two Sundays, this was my first opportunity since the initial outing with the watch on August 26.

I got a later start than planned because the watch needed to be recharged first. This was a bit of a surprise, as the last time I looked it had still had 30+% of battery life, but obviously I hadn’t been paying attention, and I certainly can’t complain: I’ve had the watch since August 22, and its initial charge has lasted this long (although the manual promises only two weeks in power save mode). Considering that the SPOT watches it replaced were down to needing a charge every six days or less even with the radio receiver turned off, this is a great improvement!

The later start naturally meant more sun and higher temperatures, but I stood by my decision to head south along the bay to the American Legion, which is a common and convenient destination or waypoint. The results can be viewed here. It’s a route that’s primarily downhill outbound and uphill returning, and the last quarter mile was pretty grueling. Next time I’ll take a bottle of water. Also wear sunscreen: somehow I had thought that the path through the bayfront park would be mostly shady, but I found out otherwise. Still, I was ahead of my “virtual partner” (paced at 17 minutes a mile) most of the way, so I was not just strolling. The 188 calories I ostensibly used (I’m a bit skeptical about some of the stats) wiped out perhaps half my breakfast, and I did come home a pound lighter (all that sweat!).

I’m still learning to use the watch. The first thing I had to do was come back inside and consult the manual to find out how to unlock the bezel. I don’t know whether I had locked it inadvertently or it became locked as a result of charging the watch, but at least I’ve learned one more useful trick. I’ve also learned that a single tap will switch between the Virtual Partner display and the elapsed time/pace/distance display (though neither of those displays shows the time of day, which would be useful).

I did use the watch twice during our trip. We walked a closed loop in Chicago, but the map shows a gap because, in the midst of so many tall buildings, it took the watch forever to acquire a satellite. Although we walked a good bit in Portland, most of the walking was to, from, and between MAX stops, and I didn’t figure the watch would do too well on mass transit (or in the Lloyd Center, for that matter), so the only route I tracked was a casual walk to the Mississippi Avenue shopping district.

New Toy

When I started walking for exercise in September 2003, I timed myself with an ordinary wristwatch. In May 2005, attending a Microsoft MVP “Engagement Tour” event in the Atlanta area, I received, courtesy of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program, a Suunto n3 SPOT watch (later supplemented by a Suunto n3i, also free).

For those of you unfamiliar with SPOT (Smart Personal Object Technology), the bottom line was that it allowed the watch to receive time signals and other information via radio. Users who subscribed to the MSN Direct service could choose to get weather information, stock market quotes, news, and other information downloaded to their watches; for an additional fee, they could sync their watches with Outlook’s Calendar to store appointments. Most of the features were gimmicks that, when the novelty wore off, were useful only for impressing people to whom you demonstrated your cool (but very clunky) watch.

What the watch did have, though, that I found valuable, was a good stopwatch function, and that’s how I used it for my walks. But when the MSN Direct service was discontinued on December 31, 2011, the watch became considerably less useful. I’d counted on it to always have exactly the right time, frequently updated. Now, even with the radio receiver turned off, the watch still had to be recharged more than once a week (its seven-year-old battery gradually failing), and if it completely lost its charge, it also lost the time and reverted to its creation date. Way more trouble than it was worth. Given that the strap was also about to give up the ghost, I finally threw in the towel and yielded to temptation and ordered a Garmin Forerunner 405cx GPS watch.

I’m still figuring out how to use it (there’s a 56-page manual), but the huge advantage it will have is that I can vary my walking route. Previously I walked some variation of the same route every day because I had clocked the distance (2.1 miles) in the car. Now I can go anywhere, and the watch will keep track of time, speed, and distance. It even has a Virtual Partner I can pace myself against. Partly because of my failure to understand how to set the Virtual Partner, I ended up walking unusually fast today, finishing my route in 35 minutes (usually 38–40 minutes). I also learned that my route is actually 2.08 miles.

And when I finish my walk, I can wirelessly upload the watch data to my computer, which sends it to a Garmin site online that generates and displays worlds of information about speed, distance, pace, elevation, etc. Not to mention the following map:

Because the watch gets GPS data, it also has the correct time (still an important factor), but another great feature is that it can actually be used for navigation. If I want to wander around a strange city, I don’t have to worry about getting lost because I can just ask the watch to direct me back to my starting location.

This watch also has to be charged fairly frequently, but the manual claims that a full charge will last two weeks in Power Save mode and with GPS turned off. With GPS turned on, it is supposed to last eight hours in actual use. I received the watch in the mail Wednesday and immediately charged it. After more than three and a half days mostly in Power Save mode, plus one 35-minute walk with the GPS on, the battery is till at 75%, which I think is a good sign.

Manhole or Wormhole?

My sun hat has a tendency to flop forward, forcing me to look more down than straight ahead. As a result, walking this morning in stifling heat (I really should have gotten out a couple of hours earlier) and looking down at the street, I saw something I had never noticed before.

It was a manhole cover. Certainly there is nothing startling about a manhole, but this one was different. Every other manhole cover on my walk (because of course at that point I started noticing) was so generic that no one has even posted a picture of one online. It has a star in the center, and the rest is covered with small crosses, and written around the edge are the words SANITARY SEWER.

In contrast, the manhole cover that first drew my attention was labeled CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SANITARY. This provides a basis for speculation. Is the City of Fairhope buying secondhand manhole covers? Or, given that Birmingham is some 250 miles away, perhaps the manhole is actually the portal to a very, very long underground passage!

Shank’s Mare

My great-great-grandfather’s obituary says: “That Justin Benton came of stock noted for its longevity is shown by the fact that his grandfather lived to be nearly 100 years old, and in his 90th year walked from Tolland to this city and back again.” Tolland, Connecticut, was Jonathan Benton’s hometown, and “this city” was Springfield, Massachusetts, some 22 miles away. Presumably he was walking to visit his son Elisha, who lived there.

I walk for exercise or recreation. Occasionally, but not often, I walk to get from Point A to Point B. My husband does the latter much more frequently, but neither of us would consider walking 20 miles just to get somewhere—at least not by choice.

A century and a half ago, however, many people had no choice. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Louisa May Alcott was living in Concord, Massachusetts, about 20 miles from Boston. Yet she visited Boston frequently. Although stagecoaches and later a rail line (the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad) connected the two cities, it’s unlikely that the Alcotts, always scraping by in relative penury in those days, could have afforded coach or rail fare as a matter of course.

We have evidence in her own words that Louisa did cover this distance on foot, though perhaps the fact that she thought it worth noting indicates that it was not usual. Her journal for May 1859 records: “Walked from C. to B. one day, twenty miles, in five hours, and went to a party in the evening. Not very tired. Well done for a vegetable production!” (This last is a reference to her family’s diet; the Alcotts were vegans before the term was invented.)

Well done indeed! Twenty miles in five hours is 4 mph, while I do well to walk for 40 minutes or so at 3½ mph. Of course, Louisa, who was very tall, would have had a longer stride, and, at 26, she was also much younger! Still, it’s quite a notable accomplishment.

Alcott’s journal for May 1861 records that “Nan and John [her sister Anna and husband John Pratt] walked up from Cambridge for a day, and we all walked back.” This was a distance of about 15 miles. This again suggests that walking such distances was literally taken in stride.

In 1862, Louisa was asked to start a private kindergarten in Boston. “Don’t like to teach,” she wrote in her journal, “but take what comes.” Because her school “did not bring enough to pay board and the assistant I was made to have, though I did n’t want her,” she was “visiting about,” staying with various friends, but she soon became “very tired of this wandering life,” especially the uncomfortable position it put her in, and by April she recorded that she “Went to and from C. every day that I might be at home. Forty miles a day is dull work; but I have my dear people at night and am not a beggar.”

Although it beggars belief that she would actually have made a 40-mile round trip on foot every day, I don’t believe she would have described it as “dull work” if she’d been taking a coach or train.

In May of that year she attended a reception for celebrated authoress Rebecca Harding Davis. Davis records that Louisa, before introducing herself, said, “These people may say pleasant things to you,…but not one of them would have gone to Concord and back to see you, as I did today. I went for this gown. It’s the only decent one I have. I’m very poor.” Davis describes this as “sacrificing a whole day to a tedious work which was to give me pleasure.”

This to me is the crucial point: walking is so time-consuming. When I drive instead of walking, it’s not always out of laziness. In some cases, nearby destinations are just stopping points on my way to a much farther one, and almost always there will be burdens to be carried part of the distance. But often, even for short distances, I just don’t feel I can spare the time to walk, especially if there’s a chance the trip will be unproductive.

This was the case recently when I walked up to City Hall for a meeting of the newly formed Street and Traffic Control Committee, which was to discuss placement of crosswalks and crossing signs on newly resurfaced streets. When I arrived at the meeting room, I found it empty. Ultimately a City employee arrived to post a notice that the meeting had been canceled. So I walked home. I hadn’t intended to count that as my exercise for the day (a round-trip of less than half a mile), but it was certainly an exercise in futility!

Canine Couture Snob

As I was coming down the home stretch of my walk today, I met a woman in a black tracksuit accompanied by a stunning pure-white standard poodle. The dog would have been beautiful in its natural state, but its appearance had been enhanced with the traditional poodle clip. I would have complimented the woman on her gorgeous dog, but she was talking on her cell phone (or listening, at least).

As we passed, the dog edged over closer to her, giving me a wide berth. One could argue that the dog was merely well trained to share the sidewalk, but it seemed to me that its sidelong glance clearly said, “Where did you get that outfit?”