

The Evening Walk - WadeF
http://joel.is/post/41028577733/the-evening-walk

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PakG1
I wonder what people in unsafe neighbourhoods can do. My family didn't live in
an unsafe neighbourhood. But one night, when going out on a walk with my dad,
we got attacked by a bunch of kids with mace. It was totally set up. We walked
by a kid, he yelled, "don't push me!" Then a bunch of his friends and him came
to us and said, "hey, this guy says you pushed him." They surrounded us. One
kid hit the back of my head, my dad saw that he was about to do something and
yelled at him, then that kid sprayed my dad's face. I've never seen someone in
so much agony. It was like my dad had lost all sense of reasoning.

This is a benefit of living in a nice area and should not be taken for
granted.

The weirdest experience about all of that? Just a bunch of high school kids, I
was bigger than all of them. If we came to blows, I'm pretty sure I could have
taken them. But my mind was processing everything in super slow motion. I'm
not sure if it was panic; maybe more like incredulous shock - I can't believe
this is actually happening, deer in headlights kind of thing. And it was dark,
so during the session when we were trying to identify the kids from photos the
next day at the police station, I actually couldn't recognize anyone in the
photos. Weird, because I thought I should have been able to do so.

~~~
YZF
That sucks. This slow motion perception is a typical fight or flight response.
If you are interested in gaining more control over these sorts of situations
(and I hope you won't need to) I would recommend taking up a martial art. You
can do that with your dad!

~~~
PakG1
Well, it was a few years ago, and I'm not at home anymore. As well, like I
said, it's a safe neighbourhood in general. Yeah, I can see how a martial art
will help. I bet it develops mental focus in that type of situation, as well
as muscle memory as to what to do.

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mfincham
I wrote this random walk generator a while ago:

<http://hotplate.co.nz/files/walk/>

I should publish the code properly at some point, but it's all client side and
not very complex, so if anyone wants to run their own local copy that is fine
by me.

Accuracy or usefulness not guaranteed but it works well for the suburb where I
live :)

I'd like to add a loop generator (find the endpoint, plot another random path
back) but for the time being it assumes you walk to a place then walk directly
back.

You can also specify the starting address in the URL, for making bookmarks or
shortcuts for different starting addresses, e.g:

<http://hotplate.co.nz/files/walk/#location=foo>

To automatically plot a route from "foo".

~~~
n0cturne
Nice tool! I can see myself using this to plot new walks around the city.

But this walk from downtown Seattle is priceless :-)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/a7z4aybpv6kjldx/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/a7z4aybpv6kjldx/Screen%20Shot%202013-02-03%20at%205.28.04%20PM.png)

Walk to the ferry terminal, board the ferry, jump off midway across!

~~~
mfincham
Yeah I just noticed. When I wrote this I lived a substantial distance from the
ocean, however now running it against my current address (which is across the
road from a marina) it advises I ought to take a ferry sometimes.

Not sure what I can do about this. I have a vague idea you might be able to
flag the Google Maps API to avoid ferries.

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arbuge
My wife is Chinese; I'm Mediterranean. We do this every day as we always did
before we met each other - it was an interesting meeting point of both our
cultures.

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rytis
Cycle to work, if at all possible.

For me it's an hour each way, but apart from the obvious health benefit it
also serves as some sort of day markers. In the morning it's really good way
to get you up to speed (increase heart rate, get some extra oxygen in), and in
the evening it's perfect to finish and leave all the "work stuff" behind.

Added bonus - money saved on public transport, and no gym subscription
required.

~~~
trumbitta2
How do you manage the sweat from a 1hr long bike ride?

~~~
veidr
I bike to work in Japan, where we still have lame archaic office dress code
requirements (the best I can do is Brooks Brothers chino pants and a tucked-in
open-collar dress shirt with a belt).

It's an uphill ride to work, so I bought a mountain bike with one of those
electric assist motors to help with the sweat thing. It makes riding up a
moderate hill no more taxing than riding a regular bike on flat ground.

I thought it would be kinda lame for regular bike purposes, but it actually
works out well. The law here says the motor has to cut out at 25kph (16mph).
And when that happens, because it is _really_ heavy with the huge battery and
motor, it becomes extremely taxing to coax any more speed out of it. But
riding around at max speed feels still gets my breathing and pulse up.

So the upshot is that I still get a lot of moderate exercise from the bike,
and I can locomote around Tokyo at a pretty much constant 25kph, using either
the road or the sidewalk depending on traffic/pedestrian conditions.

And, because I can take a pretty direct route to work, I get there in half the
time it takes on the subway.

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Cherian_Abraham
I blog and whenever I hit a lull, I find that a walk or run is what gets me
back on track. The chaos in a normal work week, the number of meetings, the
constant context-switching all leads to little chance of forming coherent
string of thoughts that can be used to construct a blog post.

Walks and runs also help in uncovering new ways to look at things, asking new
questions that previously lay just beneath the surface, and letting your mind
wander till they serendipitously uncover these nuances - those are the reasons
I find time to do it. Everyone needs those quiet hours - when your mind could
be free of clutter, and you could take a strand of thought and examine it more
closely than you could have - when there are a hundred things vying for your
attention.

~~~
yareally
Walking or running definitely helps to take your mind off of things long
enough for it to realign itself on track. Semi related, but it also peaked my
curiosity for nature and I started taking more note of different species I
would see while walking or running, such as birds, insects and mammals.

Now, I end up walking partially because I'm always looking forward to what
surprise I might see while doing it. Granted, not everyone has access to parks
or land farther outside of a city, but when you do, there's lots of small
details one misses out on if not looking for them (either up in the trees or
near the ground). I still walk and run to refresh my brain, but it also
spurred my interest in learning something new at the same time. As a side
effect, I end up googling all those random things I run across, so beware of
that if one wants to avoid time killers.

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jmcdonald-ut
Before I was studying CS I worked in a call center for customer support (I now
have an internship, thank God). People are relentless thanks to the anonymous
nature of the phone. I learned pretty quickly that if I took a walk on my
breaks* that my mood would always improve.

To this day I now walk to school and work, and I like to think it's helped
make me more creative and introspective. As always, I know that it helps keep
my mood up. I really urge people to try to get outside and walk around a bit
daily, it works wonders!

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erik757
I got a dog largely because I wanted an excuse to go on long, mind-clearing
walks for no reason. It's worked out really well.

(Note that you should probably already want a dog if you're going this route -
I did).

~~~
Xylakant
Did the same and it's working out quite well. Still, having a dog implies more
responsibilities than just a walk in the evening.

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xijuan
I like to go running at night. The night is so beautiful and peaceful. It
allows me to reflect upon many things.

~~~
swah
On the streets? Where I run, its too dark at night, but the temperature is
perfect.

~~~
xijuan
Yes on a busy street.

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FigmentEngine
In a completely unrelated way I have found that a walk is a great way to work
technical/business issues through. So rather than sitting in a office with a
co-founder trying to talk through problems I have found we have more success
doing it whilst walking...

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ojbyrne
I usually try to step out of the office and walk a few blocks around 3pm every
day. It's maximum drowsiness time, and fresh air and a change of scenery does
wonders for productivity. Obviously much easier to do in California.

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roeybr
I don't do this everyday, I do this when I get the blues, and it usually
cheers me up. I like to walk in an unfamiliar road, go to a place I've never
been before.

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tjbiddle
I think this is what I like about running - although as walking would be less
physically demanding I'm sure your thoughts may wander a bit more (That being
the goal here).

