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There are 19 numbers in this post

Sometimes thoughts just drift in from nowhere. Like today: How many people have I lived with in my lifetime? I started counting them up, from birth onwards, and I think there were about 48. It’s hard to say exactly because there was a period in my teens when I lived in a 6-bedroom house on McLeod Street with a bunch of other people, and people were always moving in or out. Rent was only $58 a month each, plus utilities. I loved living there. The landlord lived in Toronto – we never actually met him at the time. But this summer I met him at a house-renovating/beam-raising event, and I learned that he spent some time in prison for hiding in a closet and then bursting out of the closet and throwing a corrosive substance on his wife’s lover’s more sensitive exposed bits.

Anyway. My mind wanders, eh?

So I’ve lived with about 48 people. Not bad for an introvert. And then I wondered how many addresses I’ve had. I think it’s 32. Almost all of them – since adulthood anyway – were within walking distance of downtown Ottawa. That’s because I’m a creature of habit. An introverted creature of habit. A non-driving introverted creature of habit.

I’m still a bit out of my element in Carlington. It’s about 8km to downtown Ottawa. I walk to work every morning, probably just to convince myself I’m still within walking distance of downtown Ottawa, and therefore Everything is Still Okay.

But that’s not the only reason I walk to work. I like it. It takes awhile – about an hour and fifteen minutes – but I like it. Here are my top 10 5 reasons for walking to work:

1. I like the speed the world goes by when I’m walking. I see all kinds of things I’d never see from a car or a bus. I’ve trained myself to be more observant by carrying a camera at all times.

2. I think I start meditating or something after about half an hour of walking. Maybe it’s not meditation, but it’s auto-pilot free-form, stream-of-consciousness thinking. I like it.

3. Walking is an excellent transition between home and work.

4. It takes me 75 minutes to walk to work. It would take me 40 minutes to take the bus to work. 75-40=35. For an investment of 35 minutes, I get 75 minutes worth of exercise.

5. It saves me money: $40 a month for bus tickets, plus about $45 a month for a gym membership.

Yesterday I was reminded again of the subjectiveness of reality. One of my coworkers is leaving to take a job with the government. At the office she’s moving to, there’s a waiting list for parking, but there’s a parking lot eight blocks away.

“Oh,” I said, “so you’ve got parking nearby, that’s great.”

“Nearby?!” she said, “It’s eight blocks away!”

“That’s nearby,” I said, “It’s just like walking around the block twice.”

“It’s at least 10 minutes each way,” she said, “So that’s 20 minutes out of my day, and my day already doesn’t have enough minutes in it.”

And then she started adding on the minutes waiting for the light to change, and the fact that it’s uphill one way, and factoring in the winter weather delays and so on. Those eight blocks seemed quite insurmountable to her.

I think my walk to work is about 62 blocks. I can practically smell the coffee once I get within eight blocks, so I just couldn’t relate to her distant parking lot angst. But it did make me remember that everything is relative.

Okay, that was a numerically rich and rambling blog post, wasn’t it?

9 comments to There are 19 numbers in this post

  • Gillian

    That’s a good attitude!. Could I see you Monday night at the Mac mtg? I generally bring my knitting.

  • boo

    i love numbers. ok, math major *total geek*

  • I thought I’d lived in a lot of places! I can only think of about 17, which pales besides your adventures. I’m sick of moving at this point. I may move one more time, and then I want to stay put for a long time. I guess I could say I’ve lived in more places than 17, because I didn’t count the months I lived in Hong Kong and Bangkok. But travelling seems separate, somehow.
    I like walking too. Good for you on your regime. Lots of people won’t walk 8 blocks, but I think it’s their loss…

  • Numbers, numbers. You can even chart (and measure) your course with Google at bikely.com

    Of course, you’d save time if you biked. Tuesday night I biked to the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee meeting which was held in Orleans, for once. 16k each way – about 40 minutes. You notice the hills biking.

    But less contemplation, fewer pix.

    tOM

  • Deb

    You are double me with moves…but I way surpassed you if you only take the last 11 yrs into account. I am 24 total (that I can remember) but since ’96, I have moved 8 times…I remember Billy saying to me, when I bought the third last house in 2004, “Mom, can we stay there for awhile? We have lived in 5 houses since I started high school”. I stayed until he quit high school. I could have lived there forever, but loves makes you do things for the other person…not that I regret the move to the country. This new house that we get next week, is in my opinion, the last until we retire to a lakefront home.

  • Gillian, I’ll look for you at October’s meeting. :)

    Boo, I wasn’t a math major, but I do like numbers and number puzzles. They should have Scrabble with numbers…hmmm…I wonder how that would work.

    Harmony, Bangkok and Hong Kong? I’d count those places if you were there long enough to rent a place. The funny thing is, I don’t actually move that often…I’m not sure how I ended up living in so many different places.

    tOM, I just went and played on bikely.com for a bit – cool site – and discovered my commute isn’t as far as I said it was. It’s exactly 4 miles or 6.5 km. Biking would be more expedient for sure. Maybe for a good bike driver (which, sadly, I’m not) biking might be just as fast as a car. Do you bike all year round?

    Deb, yeah, you move a LOT more often than I do. I don’t know how I ended up with so many addresses, considering I was on Rochester Street for 8 years (2 different places though) and Irving Avenue for 5 years. I hardly ever move anymore.

  • Interesting post, thanks. When I lived In London (UK) for a year, I walked across that city a lot. I started keeping track of all the streets I walked on and would try to walk a different route as much as I could. It took me about 2 hours to walk from where I rented a room to my classes at the various buildings of the University of London (they are scattered around the “downtown” which is pretty spread out itself). That is where I discovered that the only way to really see a city is by walking. And I agree – you surely get a lot of thinking done on the way. I bike of course, especially when I want to get somewhere about four times faster than walking – chores and shopping and stuff. There was a story in the paper a while ago about some folks donating bikes to African kids so they could get to school. They said they worked on the 2-3-4 principle: that with a bike you could carry twice the load, go three times as far and four times as fast. Or something like that – I went to look it up and don’t know where it is now. I think the bike is one of the best inventions ever made.

    (I don’t know if this is the group, but they sound pretty good in any event:
    http://www.bicycles-for-humanity.org/ )

  • Bicycles for Humanity announces Bike Collection Day, September 29th

    Bicycles collected will be packed into a shipping container and transported to Rundu, Namibia, to benefit a community of volunteers who run “the House of Love for Orphans and Vulnerable Children”.

    A bicycle, one of the simplest transport technologies, is affordable and can be maintained anywhere in the world with minimal tools and spare parts. Yet for the world’s poorest people, living on $1 per day, even bicycles are beyond their reach. Meanwhile, in the western world we discard thousands of bicycles each year. Simply put – unused bicycles in garages or basements can make an incredible difference to those in need of transportation to receive or provide healthcare, to get to work, or to attend school. Such bicycles represent a terrific opportunity to change the lives of those less fortunate.

    Donors are asked to bring adult/youth mountain and hybrid bikes in working condition, as these are most suitable for use on Namibia’s unpaved roads. To maximize the number of suitable bicycles we can send, we cannot accept bicycles with thin tires, such as 10-speeds or racing bikes, children’s bikes, or frames without wheels. Donations of soccer equipment and backpacks are also welcome.

    To donate a bike, bring it to 100 Constellation Crescent, Parking Lot “L” between 9:00am and 2:00pm. Volunteers will be on hand to receive donated bicycles, prepare them for transport, and load them into the shipping container.

    Bicycles for Humanity Ottawa is grateful for the enthusiastic support from the many supporters and sponsors who have donated funds, facilities and services and to the volunteers who have given their time and energy towards this initiative.

    About Bicycles for Humanity:Bicycles for Humanity is a grass-roots initiative which aims to empower disadvantaged communities in developing countries through the provision of sustainable transport. Bicycles for Humanity is entirely volunteer run, with 100% of donations going toward the transportation costs of Bicycle Empowerment Centers.

    For more information, visit http://www.bicycles-for-humanity.org/ottawa. Please contact Seb Oran at seb@bicycles-for-humanity.org or 613-799-7985 for all media enquiries.

  • Julia, I’d love to do that – just go live and study and walk in an interesting new city for a year. It sounds like the ideal way to get to know a place. When did you do that?

    That sounds like a worthwhile project, Bicycles for Humanity. I’d never heard of it before. My mother is very active in access-to-education issues in Africa – I wonder if she’s heard of it. From what she tells me, kids are far more motivated to get an education there than they are here, but there are overwhelming obstacles for most of them. For instance, tuition in Kenya for high school students is about $400 a year (which is also about the average annual income for a family). I hadn’t even thought of the transportation obstacle.