Walkabout with Bob Dole

Since quitting my gym membership, my main form of exercise is now going on walks. I’ve always liked walking. You pretty much just have to get up, put on your shoes and whatever gear you need for the weather, and go. Walking is great because you don’t have to talk to anyone or be polite and share equipment or look good or drive anywhere or park or mentally prepare yourself. You just put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking out the door.

I have two walking routes that favor. Both routes are about two miles round-trip. The one I choose is based on two questions: How scrubby is my outfit and is it dark outside? If my outfit is scrubby and it’s light out, then I go the “backway”. This means that I head down the alley, pass Bartell’s, cross 85th and take a right in front of Kumon

(and why does their logo have a picture of a kid that’s not smiling? I guess I wouldn’t be smiling either if I had to go to math tutoring), then I head left up the street past the Buddhist temple and keep going until about 72nd, where I turn around and head back. This route is nice because I like looking at people’s house (everyone seems to be remodeling at the moment) and checking out their yards and flowers. Sometimes, I run into a friendly cat, but that’s rare. They usually run away or hiss at me. I think my movements are too quick, like a little kid, because Aaron never has this problem. Cats love him.

The other route is along Greenwood. Aaron likes this route. If it’s dark and/or I have a presentable outfit on (cute winter hat, sporty jacket, etc). We head up Greenwood on our side, cross over by Ken’s Market and then head back. It’s interesting to check out the windows of shops and have more to look at than just houses.

Aaron listens to his iPod a lot when we walk together. I do sometimes. A lot of times, I like to just enjoy the silence and think. But when I do bring my iPod, I listen to dancey-pop or electronic music (or would it be electro pop? Top 40? Music with a pop sensibility? I could never work for Pitchfork –I’m terrible at classifying music) , like Kylie Minogue, Fergie, The Black Eyed Peas, Crystal Castles and Cut Copy. And when I hear dance music, I likes to dance. So I usually do a little Running Man/Cabbage Patch/Robot Rock medley. At this point, Aaron rolls his eyes so far back in his head that it looks like he has cataracts like the guy that used to play blues music in the tunnel to the tube station by my flat in London.

Then I collapse into a giggling fit and inform him that I’m going to “power walk” the rest of the way. Last time this occurred, Aaron said, “It’s fine if you power walk, but it just looks weird after a while because you keep your left arm bent, but your right arm kind of lags and falls down like your arm is broken.” Huh. This can’t possibly by true. So, I forged on with physical fitness on my mind and my Booty Shaker mix in my ears.

About half-way through the walk, I looked down at my arms. Hmmm. My right arm was kind of hanging down at an odd angle, like my 6th grade computer teacher, Mr. Kleis, who had a dead hand. (It was rumored that he would bang his dead hand on his desk when he was angry, but I never witnessed that.)

So I turned to Aaron, did a little soft shoe, and said, “Hey, Aaron, Bob Dole says hi!” Then Gwen Stefani came on and I reminded everyone within earshot that “I ain’t no Hollaback Girl!”.

It’s no surprise that sometimes he wants to go on walks by himself.