so the day i decide to walk to work it pours

my mom walks four miles a day, takes her about an hour. she’s been doing that for a year now and it’s been tremendously good for her she says.

since my small office in san francisco is exactly 1.9 miles from my home, i decided to walk today. a two way trip should be about as far, and take as long, and a little extra exercise sounds good for me. funny though that the day i decided to try this is one of the rare days when it decide to seriously rain in the city. next quest is if i can easily walk to the gym and then to home, a total of 4.1 miles, and not be too wiped to work out. might have to resort to bicycle on gym days. ok, sorry for the mundane window into my day. but i thought i’d take a break from the meditation theme.

on a related note, the walk to work was littered with a tremendous amount of trash. it makes me want to bring a plastic bag and gloves on my commute and pick up some of it. i wonder if i can get those orange caltrans garbage bags for that purpose. i have a theory that if a place is trashed, then it attracts more trash and more carelessness, even more dangerous or violent behavior. if people see that a space is not cared for, then doesn’t that invite people to be more careless or feel like there’s less accountability there?

i heard that when curtis sliwa started the guardian angels volunteer crime watch group in new york city, they actually first began as a volunteer trash pickup group and bought their own street sweeper. he saw that to clean up the crime in an area, the way to start is by actually cleaning up the area. that makes sense to me.

a lot of the trash looks like it just blew there, and collected along the fence. it might not be so intentionally deposited on the side of the road. but it wouldn’t take that much effort for the community or just a few people each day picking up a few items to make a huge difference.

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