Locomotor weekend
The transition to the pedestrian world is going to be bumpy.
On Saturday, my 16 year old daughter arose from bed at a healthy hour, somewhat just past noon, stretched a limb or two and asked me if I would drive her to a nearby (2 km) city park so that she could participate in a walkathon to support the people of northern Uganda. A lovely cause and a lovely way for her to spend her day, but the idea of driving to the site seemed a bit odd, especially given my reflections on Friday. I quizzed her about the exact meeting up point and, convinced that we could walk to it in about 15 minutes, I suggested that she and I do just that. We arrived at the park expecting that once we got close enough, we'd see some signs directing us. This was not to be. Daughter's cell phone rang. It was her friend and walking companion, wondering where she was (we were a minute or two late). It turned out that we were on entirely the wrong side of the park. Now, it's not Central Park or anything, but it is big enough that this would mean an extra ten minutes or so. We asked phone-a-friend to tell us where she was. "Sure. Just drive past the gas station on the west entrance to the park and you'll see a sign." We explained that we were on foot. Long pause. "Oh." We asked her to describe her surroundings. She was completely unable to help us. Luckily, after hanging up, we stumbled across another group of walkers looking for the same thing as us. Together, we narrowed down the likely possibilities and found the crowd of walkers in less than five minutes. The whole enterprise ended up taking about 30 minutes longer than I had expected and involving me in about a 5 km round trip instead of a 4 km trip. The inconvenience was no big deal compared to the lessons learned. What for a driver might mean nothing more than a few seconds of searching might mean substantial chunks of hours for someone on foot. More interestingly, two travelers on two different spatial scales had a very difficult time communicating with one another. This mixing of scales is new and interesting.
Today, I've just walked to my office. I only have about 3 hours of work time today, and I decided to use about 35% of that time in the walking to and from my office, rather than the total of about12% that it would have cost me to have jumped into the car. But here's what happened on the walk here:
1. I managed to think some rational thoughts about a fear that had gripped me at 5 am this morning -- the realization that I have published far too few empirical papers in the last 3 years to have any optimism at all that my grant will be renewed in 2009. The rational thoughts being that with some prudent and systematic expenditure of time now, I can probably salvage my self-respect and, if not, what it really means is that I'm ready to ditch that particular funding source -- if someone like me with stable, long-term funding loses it, it usually either means they've gone crazy or that they aren't willing to put in the moderate amount of time required to look after it because their interests have migrated elsewhere. I know the first isn't true, and so if the second is then so be it -- it has to be faced.
2. I came upon a tall, leafless tree that was filled with about a hundred young blackbirds making a wonderful cacophonous sound. I entered the sound, let it wrap itself around my mind, and noticed that it rose and fell in regular fashion, almost like some kind of resonance. I wondered whether it was resonance or whether it was being brought out by some kind of external stimulus (like a cat prowling around at the base of the tree). Then I stopped wondering and just listened, especially when I noticed how the sound combined with the chatter of water in a small creek I crossed.
3. I became disoriented momentarily when I decided to diverge from my usual path to see whether I could find one that allowed me to use less road and more trail on the way to my office. There was a point when I realized that I was not where I had expected to be and I had to re-orient myself my remembering my route, peering around the horizon for landmarks, listening to the traffic for clues, and making a guess based on a sense of direction. All of this came together to send me in a direction that ended up being an even better pinpoint shortcut from woods and fields to my office door than the one I had been looking for. I felt connected....as though for once I knew where I was.
4. As I entered the building, I noticed that I was unusually tired, perspiring, breathless and that I had a funny metallic taste in my mouth. This led me to realize that I must be on the brink of the same nasty cold that my dear wife has suffered with this weekend.
That's a lot of experience that would have been missed if I'd jumped in the car, done the usual 12 minute drive, peering out the window at red lights to wonder what it was like out, how the air felt, how the rain felt, what sounds I was missing.
Now I've just spent a few more precious minutes writing about all of this rather than preparing my class tomorrow, which means there will be no time left over to begin organizing those empirical findings that I will need to publish soon to avoid having my funding cut. I think I see what's going on here.
On Saturday, my 16 year old daughter arose from bed at a healthy hour, somewhat just past noon, stretched a limb or two and asked me if I would drive her to a nearby (2 km) city park so that she could participate in a walkathon to support the people of northern Uganda. A lovely cause and a lovely way for her to spend her day, but the idea of driving to the site seemed a bit odd, especially given my reflections on Friday. I quizzed her about the exact meeting up point and, convinced that we could walk to it in about 15 minutes, I suggested that she and I do just that. We arrived at the park expecting that once we got close enough, we'd see some signs directing us. This was not to be. Daughter's cell phone rang. It was her friend and walking companion, wondering where she was (we were a minute or two late). It turned out that we were on entirely the wrong side of the park. Now, it's not Central Park or anything, but it is big enough that this would mean an extra ten minutes or so. We asked phone-a-friend to tell us where she was. "Sure. Just drive past the gas station on the west entrance to the park and you'll see a sign." We explained that we were on foot. Long pause. "Oh." We asked her to describe her surroundings. She was completely unable to help us. Luckily, after hanging up, we stumbled across another group of walkers looking for the same thing as us. Together, we narrowed down the likely possibilities and found the crowd of walkers in less than five minutes. The whole enterprise ended up taking about 30 minutes longer than I had expected and involving me in about a 5 km round trip instead of a 4 km trip. The inconvenience was no big deal compared to the lessons learned. What for a driver might mean nothing more than a few seconds of searching might mean substantial chunks of hours for someone on foot. More interestingly, two travelers on two different spatial scales had a very difficult time communicating with one another. This mixing of scales is new and interesting.
Today, I've just walked to my office. I only have about 3 hours of work time today, and I decided to use about 35% of that time in the walking to and from my office, rather than the total of about12% that it would have cost me to have jumped into the car. But here's what happened on the walk here:
1. I managed to think some rational thoughts about a fear that had gripped me at 5 am this morning -- the realization that I have published far too few empirical papers in the last 3 years to have any optimism at all that my grant will be renewed in 2009. The rational thoughts being that with some prudent and systematic expenditure of time now, I can probably salvage my self-respect and, if not, what it really means is that I'm ready to ditch that particular funding source -- if someone like me with stable, long-term funding loses it, it usually either means they've gone crazy or that they aren't willing to put in the moderate amount of time required to look after it because their interests have migrated elsewhere. I know the first isn't true, and so if the second is then so be it -- it has to be faced.
2. I came upon a tall, leafless tree that was filled with about a hundred young blackbirds making a wonderful cacophonous sound. I entered the sound, let it wrap itself around my mind, and noticed that it rose and fell in regular fashion, almost like some kind of resonance. I wondered whether it was resonance or whether it was being brought out by some kind of external stimulus (like a cat prowling around at the base of the tree). Then I stopped wondering and just listened, especially when I noticed how the sound combined with the chatter of water in a small creek I crossed.
3. I became disoriented momentarily when I decided to diverge from my usual path to see whether I could find one that allowed me to use less road and more trail on the way to my office. There was a point when I realized that I was not where I had expected to be and I had to re-orient myself my remembering my route, peering around the horizon for landmarks, listening to the traffic for clues, and making a guess based on a sense of direction. All of this came together to send me in a direction that ended up being an even better pinpoint shortcut from woods and fields to my office door than the one I had been looking for. I felt connected....as though for once I knew where I was.
4. As I entered the building, I noticed that I was unusually tired, perspiring, breathless and that I had a funny metallic taste in my mouth. This led me to realize that I must be on the brink of the same nasty cold that my dear wife has suffered with this weekend.
That's a lot of experience that would have been missed if I'd jumped in the car, done the usual 12 minute drive, peering out the window at red lights to wonder what it was like out, how the air felt, how the rain felt, what sounds I was missing.
Now I've just spent a few more precious minutes writing about all of this rather than preparing my class tomorrow, which means there will be no time left over to begin organizing those empirical findings that I will need to publish soon to avoid having my funding cut. I think I see what's going on here.
posted by Colin at 1:56 PM
1 Comments:
Hows the locomotion coming along? Cool thing you're doing.....
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