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I don't drive. I walk everywhere (combined with public transport for longer distances). I don't think it's a super power as such, but it does keep me relatively

• amelius 6y ago
  Same here. The only downside is people openly pitying you when you tell them you have to walk to X now. This still makes me feel a loser sometimes for not owning a car. It's stupid, I know.
  • WhompingWindows 6y ago
    Can you reframe their "pity" as an expression of sympathy? Or is it the way you're telling them "OH, well I HAVE to walk now." Instead, say "Well, I get to walk now, see ya!", show them you're happy with the decision.
    • amelius 6y ago
      It could be a combination of both. Usually it starts like: "I have to leave a bit earlier because I have to walk". From then there is pitying/sympathy.
  • ck425 6y ago
    I always interpreted that as them being selfish or idiotic. When I see people drive somewhere that's less than 2 miles away it blows my mind.
    • avalys 6y ago
      It takes 30-40 minutes to walk 2 miles. If I have to go to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner, do you really think I should spend an extra 60 minutes walking there and back vs. driving?
      • mzzter 6y ago
        Depending on one’s pace of life, 60 minutes is not very long, and also gives enough time to enjoy the travel to the store.
      • ck425 6y ago
        I'm admittedly biased as I'm tall and have walked everywhere all my life. 2 miles only takes me 25 min. In that case the whole journey is really 4 miles. I was thinking in terms of a continuous or largely continuous journey (such as walking to the shops and back) being 2 miles. That said longer journeys can be treated as exercise. Why go to gym for an hour each day when instead you can spend that hour going to places you're going to go anyway.
        • WanderPanda 6y ago
          Working out at the gym and walking to the grocery store are very different exercises considering heart rates involved etc. Also in many cases the air will not be very good on the way to the grocery store vs. when you go for a run on a track that you specially chose for running.
          • balfirevic 6y ago
            Also, you can do actual strength training in the gym.
          • foldr 6y ago
            That's true if you take the gym seriously. A lot of people would probably get more health benefits from putting that energy into walking more and doing some simple isometrics from time to time. Most people are just spending way too much time sitting on their butts, and a few sessions at the gym isn't really counteracting many of the effects of that.
      • ChuckMcM 6y ago
        Would it be weird for you if I told you yes? My guess is that if you spent those 60 minutes a day walking back and forth to the grocery you would see tremendous benefit in your life in many areas. If you have a headset for your phone. Call someone. You're interpersonal relationships get stronger. If you're working through a issues, spend the time thinking about different alternative approaches. If you're learning a new subject, review in your head what you've been learning. If you're preparing a talk, dictate different ways of presenting it to a voice recorder. If you're stressed out about the world, spend the walk finding things you are grateful for. If you're in a relationship, compose a poem or two for your partner.
  • tjmaglio 6y ago
    Would you pity someone who was manipulating data by hand or an accountant calculating taxes all by hand without software or at least a calculator to help them? What about someone manually trying to translate some text instead of using a translation service? The other side of some manual work is that it exercises you in some way- but if there are things that'll speed up whatever it is you want to do and they are generally available, you will be pitied!
    • xnyan 6y ago
      In the US I pity people who walk (outside of NY, sanfran and a few other places) because it's dangerous and slow by design. I love to walk. I hate owning a car. In most of the US, there is no good way to get to most places other than by car. Really wish it was otherwise.
  • lisper 6y ago
    I'm a big fan of walking but there is one more downside for me: in warm weather, I often arrive at my destination a sweaty mess.
    • solstice 6y ago
      Make a water-cooled undershirt like those for astronauts and get one of those fan attachments for baseball caps. (Slightly wacky suggestion but this is hacker news after all.)
      • lisper 6y ago
        That's a crazy idea. Have an upvote :-)
    • WorldMaker 6y ago
      Another silly option is wear multiple layered suits like it is the early 20th Century again. While all the layers will contribute to overheating and the sweating problem, a part of the reason for the layers in the first place (especially in the early 20th Century before modern air conditioning) was to keep sweat to less visible layers. Make sure you stay hydrated, of course. Maybe go Steampunk with it and have fun picking a weird style all your own.
      • lisper 6y ago
        Yep, that's a pretty silly option. It's not the cosmetics of the situation that concern me, it's the physical discomfort.
  • Impossible 6y ago
    I love walking and hate driving (even though I've been a car owner for 13 years) and still get this when I choose not to drive. My car was in the shop a year ago and I wasn't working so I walked or took public transit to take my son to daycare (about 1 mile from my home). I had multiple parents offer to give me a ride in a slightly pittying way
    • WorldMaker 6y ago
      I'm similarly a car owner that loves walking and hates driving. I've managed at least a few times to turn that pity on its head, "Seriously? It's like three blocks tops. So much better to just walk it." There's certainly pleasure any time walking directly to a destination is faster than the people taking the time to walk back to their cars, drive them through traffic, and find a parking spot at the destination.
  • rottc0dd 6y ago
    Disclaimer : Kind of tangent-but-not-so-tangent. I do not use smartphones. I do not remember the exact rationale of how it started. But, it generates a lot of free time for your life. Whenever people question it, I would reply, "Well, it is an experiment I am doing". Based on how close the other one is you might get a confused nod to how-stupid-are-you as a reply. The good thing about it is, by default, you do not get to fool around in your free time. The time is only free, if there is do not have other ways to pass it by. P.S.: But, I am not claiming it is better. But, I find it convenient and quite a bit fun.
    • rottc0dd 6y ago
      Edit : If there are not other ways to pass it by. Too late to edit now
• shantara 6y ago
  Same here. Living in a walkable European city helps a lot.
• Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Gives me time to think, to unwind, _sometimes to read_. Uh, sorry, what do you mean by "read"? You're not one of those people who reads books while walking down the sidewalk, are you?
  • balfirevic 6y ago
    I don't care if someone reads while walking, but I wonder if you would have been as downvoted if you instead complained about people staring at their phones while walking.
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I should have phrased the comment better, it probably came across as passive aggressive, which wasn't intended. My brain is not working this morning.
  • yoz-y 6y ago
    Could be audiobooks.
  • mdre 6y ago
    I used to be one of those and loved it. So?
    • noir_lord 6y ago
      Used to do that too and from school after a while you learn to walk around obstacles without breaking your flow. Got me an extra 40m reading time over the day.
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Well, at least in NYC, I tend to narrowly avoid crashing into them on the sidewalk. Perhaps it doesn't apply to you, but I don't think 90% of people who read books while walking are as good at navigating around obstacles as they think they are.
    • dorchadas 6y ago
• hibikir 6y ago
  Walking everywhere is not really much of an individual decision though: It's a collective, city-wide decision, as the city's infrastructure and geography decides whether walking or driving are really alternatives. I was raised in a small city in Spain, population of 180k or so. I walked everywhere, and I still do when I visit: The city has great population density, with an average height of about 6 stories, plenty of pedestrian-only streets, and almost no surface parking. The situation is such that driving would be slower than walking to get most things done, as time to and from the car will often be quite the nuisance. Later I moved to Madrid. It's a very large city by European standards: Too big to just walk everywhere. However, it's also very dense, and it's also not all that well set up for driving in many routes. Driving might be useful at times, but the subway might be faster, and it's hard to find places that are more than 10 minutes away from a subway station. It's not quite as hostile as my hometown, but you at least might have to make choices. Now, however, I am living in a mid-sized metro in the US midwest: far smaller than Madrid in population, but easily 4x the total size. The vast majority of the metro area is single family homes in half acre lots. Even downtown is full of surface parking lots, so even living there you'll mostly be walking past asphalt. One person could possibly move to be in walking distance of their job, but good luck doing that with two people. Public transportation is sparse, and, at the best of times, has buses every half an hour, so your typical trip penalty vs a car might be an hour each way. And on top, temperatures will hit 40C in the summer, and -20C in the winter: Not exactly good walking weather either way. Here, walking is not a mode of transportation, but a completely intentional hobby which, in some cases, might take you past a store or a restaurant, weather permitting. So really, while I am a huge fan of walking, it's not something anyone in my metro area will willingly choose as their primary mode of transportation, and it's the same all over the US: Few of our cities are built for anything but cars, and it's a decisions that is really hard to undo without ripping apart most of the city's construction. Imagine one of our largest buildings: The headquarters of a company you probably know. well over 15 floors, but completely surrounded by surface level parking. Many thousands of spots, one for each worker. you have to walk over half a kilometer before you find any other building: otherwise it's just cars. So no, around here, I couldn't recommend walking to pretty much anyone, and that's because the decision is made for us. It's the city's urban planning department, over many decades, that decides whether people walk or not.
• fakedang 6y ago
  What's better is reading HN and walking. I have been walking around 11km each day the past week, reading HN or some articles for my work/side project on Medium. I usually walk in the early morning, before 7, or in the evening in a park, so being distracted isn't an issue.
  • edmundsauto 6y ago
    Do you use tts, or have your eyes on your phone?
    • fakedang 6y ago
      Eyes on the phone, I don't go through busy routes.