Dallas is not a walkable city. There are three reasons for this. 1. The streets are designed to be driven, not walked. 2. There's nothing to see. Downtown is just a bunch of big buildings stuffed togetther. Why would you want to walk it anyway? 3. It's too damn hot. Even if you did want to walk, you would melt into the pavement.
I've always thought it would be really neat to live near a walkable city. Not that I want or intend to move. I just wish Dallas would suddenly sprout a lot of interesting shops downtown and the weather would suddenly do a massive cool down. Not that impossible, right? Okay, it is. Moving on.
New York, San Francisco (where I am currently), Seattle, Chicago. Now those, are walkable. Except now, I must add a caveat. They are walkable as long as you are wearing COMFORTABLE SHOES. I got in a little unexpected walking last night, and one could was I was less than prepared for it. Let me first start off by saying, the experience was completely my fault, so I'm not really bitching. You'll see.
So anyway, I've been hanging out the past two days in a medical office building doing interviews from 7 am to 7pm. The building doesn't open until 7 am and although it is technically open until 7 pm, everyone goes home around 4:30 or 5:00 exept the cleaning crew. The first evening, I came out of the building and lucked out. As I was looking around trying to determine my escape plan back to my hotel, my eyes connected with a taxi driver's (oh yeah, guess I should mention I wasn't allowed a rental car for this trip - parking down here is cuh-razy) and he slammed on his brakes to pick me up.
Last night, however, I had no such luck. There was no one inside the building to call a cab for me, and I would have been unable to get back in even if there had been. I suppose I could have used my phone to look up a cab company, but that would have been way too easy of a solution.
So there I was, business suit, pointy toed heels, lugging a 20 pound laptop bag (you think I'm kidding, right? You try carrying the sucker around and see how much you think it weighs.) and my purse. The street was empty of all taxis. I somewhat knew the direction of my hotel, so I started walking down the hill thinking one would surely drift by soon. It didn't. After walking a few blocks, it dawned on me that I should perhaps have a little more direction in mind. You know, in case a taxi didn't come along soon to rescue me.
Thank goodness our BlackBerrys have Google maps and GPS. I entered in the location of my hotel and it automatically pinpointed my corresponding location on the map. I remembered mapping it before I ever left Dallas - roughly a mile from the medical office building to my hotel. If no taxi showed up, I could surely make that. Heck, I sometimes walk four miles on the weekend without batting an eye.
BlackBerry in hand to make certain I didn't get lost, I continued my treck down the hill. And then up a hill. And then back down a hill. Followed by a left turn.
Whew! Surely I must be getting close now! Nope. I wasn't. I checked the phone and saw that the little blue blinking dot representing me was nowhere near the hotel. I kept walking with the occasional hopeful glance toward the street in case a taxi miraculously appeared.
While I was trekking, I did notice a lot of other folks out and about. It is San Fran after all - a great city for walking. Especially if you want exercise (Puff Puff - Woohoo! Another hill!). Some were even wearing their suits and presumably heading for happy hour to top off their day - of course, they were wearing sensible shoes and not toting a laptop with them.
As I finally reached my next turn, I saw a herd (literally) of taxis come zooming through. I glanced again at the phone. I was way too close at this point to hail a cab since I had no interest in listening to the bitching about how close it was. (The cabbie that had dropped me off yesterday morning had complained about the distance only being a few blocks. I thought about shoving one of my pointy toes in his rear and seeing what he thought about that since he was being so vocal and sharing and all.) So, I cowgirl'd up and teetered the rest of the way back to my hotel. All in all, my little stroll took me about 30 minutes. 2 miles per hour. On a normal day, you know - when I'm in more comfortable circumstances - I hit closer to 4 mph.
The funny thing was, other than my throbbing feet and shoulder, I felt great. I find that even the smallest amount of exercise makes me feel good these days. I was so energized that I briefly thought about tossing on some different clothes and more appropriate shoes and going for a little walking expedition to find dinner. Than I realized that would TOTALLY be outside of my character for work travel. So, I stuffed myself into my jammies, ordered room service and booted up the old computer. Antisocial? Check. PackRat on screen? Check. Now that's normal.
All in all, not a bad night but I have no future plans to include stilettos in any of my workouts. They slow me down way too much.
