Saturday, September 04, 2004
We must walk more
The TigerHawk family has for several years listened to books on tape or CD during long holiday drives. After suffering three years of non-stop Harry Potter to satisfy our squeakiest wheel, we have exploited the stunning maturation of our children and moved to more grown-up (we can no longer say "adult") material. For the last couple of weeks we have been listening to Bill Bryson's wonderful book A Walk In The Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.
The book is fodder for numerous blog posts pro and con, but buried in the middle Bryson detours into a very interesting discussion of America's aversion to walking. According to Bryson -- and a quick Google search powered over Adirondack phone lines could not confirm the claim -- Americans walk an average of 1.4 miles per week, or about 300 yards per day. This is walking of all sorts, including to and from the car in the parking lot or around the mall or back and forth to the bagel shop at the strip mall next door. If true, this is an astonishingly small number. Considering all the people in Manhattan, San Francisco and college towns around the country who walk that much every day, imagine how sedentary everybody else must be.
Our aversion to walking, Bryson says, goes far beyond the familiar structural impediments -- no sidewalks in many places, huge lot sizes that spread homes over vast areas, and long distances between retail businesses. He writes of an acquaintance in his home town of Hanover, New Hampshire who complained that there was very little parking at the gym where she went to walk on the treadmill. Bryson pointed out that the gym was less than 1/2 mile away, so why, he asked, didn't she walk to and from the gym and just spend less time on the treadmill. Oh, she replied, the treadmill calculates elapsed time, energy deployed and calories burned.
Meanwhile, our war against Al Qaeda is infinitely more difficult because our elected officials, and those who would displace them, believe that it is essential to keep the price of gasoline low. Well, we could reduce the consumption of gasoline, the price of gasoline, and the leverage of Al Qaeda, the mullahs of Tehran and the House of Saud, all by walking a bit more. Walk more, and fight Al Qaeda and your waistline all at the same time.
The book is fodder for numerous blog posts pro and con, but buried in the middle Bryson detours into a very interesting discussion of America's aversion to walking. According to Bryson -- and a quick Google search powered over Adirondack phone lines could not confirm the claim -- Americans walk an average of 1.4 miles per week, or about 300 yards per day. This is walking of all sorts, including to and from the car in the parking lot or around the mall or back and forth to the bagel shop at the strip mall next door. If true, this is an astonishingly small number. Considering all the people in Manhattan, San Francisco and college towns around the country who walk that much every day, imagine how sedentary everybody else must be.
Our aversion to walking, Bryson says, goes far beyond the familiar structural impediments -- no sidewalks in many places, huge lot sizes that spread homes over vast areas, and long distances between retail businesses. He writes of an acquaintance in his home town of Hanover, New Hampshire who complained that there was very little parking at the gym where she went to walk on the treadmill. Bryson pointed out that the gym was less than 1/2 mile away, so why, he asked, didn't she walk to and from the gym and just spend less time on the treadmill. Oh, she replied, the treadmill calculates elapsed time, energy deployed and calories burned.
Meanwhile, our war against Al Qaeda is infinitely more difficult because our elected officials, and those who would displace them, believe that it is essential to keep the price of gasoline low. Well, we could reduce the consumption of gasoline, the price of gasoline, and the leverage of Al Qaeda, the mullahs of Tehran and the House of Saud, all by walking a bit more. Walk more, and fight Al Qaeda and your waistline all at the same time.
0 Comments:
