Made For Walkin'

"New York City is the place where they said, 'Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side...'" -- Lou Reed

I love walking, which is a good thing because it's a major part of my daily commute. And thanks to a coworker who introduced me to Gmaps Pedometer, a nifty Google Maps hack that calculates the length of any plotted route to the thousandth of a mile, I can now report EXACTLY how much walking I do.

On an average day, I walk...

0.7572 miles from home to the subway
0.4203 miles from the subway to work
0.8152 miles from work to the subway (because the 6 is too crowded)
+ 0.7572 miles from the subway to home
---------
2.7499 miles, total


This really amuses me, since it means that my most ridiculous method of walking distance estimation is far more accurate than I ever thought possible. I've always described my black pumps with the built-in Nike sneaker technology as having "a two-mile limit" before they start to make my feet hurt. Sure enough, those shoes inevitably start to kill me when I start my final walk home at the end of the day, and if I can't catch a ride on any leg of the journey, I have to pack a pair of flats.

I'm having a lot of fun playing with the Gmaps application -- calculating the distances across random cornfields in Kansas, along my old Riverside Park jogging route, around the entire island of Manhattan -- but, like the true geek I am, I'm thinking scientifically about the possibilities it offers. It may take a few weeks to test-drive my entire collection, but I now possess the technology to put a mileage limit on every pair of high heels I own!