2002–sitting on the FDR, waiting for the July 4 fireworks to begiin

The first time JoAnne and I went to New York, I got up early for weeks before the trip. I walked seven blocks from my house (uphill) and then back the seven blocks (now downhill).

“I’m walking every morning,” I said to JoAnne. “I’m parking the car at the far edges of the parking spaces when I run errands, so I’ll have to walk farther. And I’m making a conscious effort to walk around stores faster, instead of sauntering. I’ll be ready for New York!”

I wasn’t ready.

I’m never ready. I remember, that first trip, getting out of bed one morning (after a very full day of walking and standing) and actually groaning as I walked to the bathroom. “Did I groan like this all night long?” I asked JoAnne.

“No,” she said. “Not until you woke up.”

New York city is full of buses and subways that will take you wherever in the city you want to go. But at either end of those buses and subways is walking. A lot of walking. And I am never ready for it.

And I am always a little surprised to see how unprepared  I am.

So this time, I did better at getting ready.

I know there’s stuff hanging off of it, but I can assure you that it works just fine with stuff hanging off it.

All my doctors say I should walk, so I got a treadmill a couple of years ago. I’m supposed to walk four or five times a week, and most weeks I do. Well, four or five. Or three. A day I work out in the yard, I probably don’t walk. When I do housework all day, I don’t walk. But, doing yard work and doing housework doesn’t do what walking does. Only walking does that. So, I got ready for New York.

I started walking absolutely every day. I moved the speed from 1 mile an hour to 1.3 miles an hour (which may seem like not much of a change, but, trust me, for me, it is). The treadmill is already on a bit of a slant. And I walked for almost 40 minutes. Then, I started walking twice a day. The two weeks before the trip, I began walking three times a day, almost always for 40 minutes each time. And even when I was really weary, I kept on walking, remembering that, if I got tired while walking along the sidewalk next to Central Park, on our way to catch a subway or a bus, nobody was going to want to stop and wait for me to feel ready to move along. They would stop and wait (I’m thinking about family members, not total strangers), but they wouldn’t really want to.

It wasn’t enough. The very first day of the trip, Jeremy and Sarah and I went to church, then went into Manhattan to meet JoAnne’s family at a theater for a play. Then we walked to Bryant Park, where there was a Christmas village and shops and a skating rink. Then we walked to their hotel. On that walk, I asked, a couple of times, “How many more blocks?” In my head, I asked a thousand times, “HOW MANY MORE BLOCKS??? HOW MANY MORE BLOCKS!!! HOW. MANY. MORE. BLOCKS?”

The next morning, Jeremy and I headed out again, back to Manhattan to join JoAnne at the Met, to take pictures for the Reading Club girls. On the subway, I had a typical subway rider experience, but one I had not prepared for–standing on the subway (instead of sitting). It was rush hour and the cars were full. Not just full to the point that all the seats were filled, but full to the point that I wasn’t sure any more people could get on. As many riders were standing as were sitting, maybe more. Most were standing easily, and at least pretending that it wasn’t any problem. I, on the other hand, was clinging to a subway pole for dear life, or at least dear uprightness. The necessary tensing of leg muscles to keep one’s body standing steady is constant and changes minute by minute, mile by mile, bend by bend. On Tuesday morning, my thighs ached in new and devious ways.

I plodded on, during the week, and everyone plodded with me, kindly. I got back to Waco last Friday night, late. Saturday morning, I could hardly move. Sunday morning, I avoided sitting down in Sunday School, where all the chairs are little, as I was quite confident that I would never be able to get up out of them. I went by Walgreens on my way home and bought a knee brace for my left knee, which hurt worse than my right one. I put it on and got on the treadmill and walked.

Next time I go to New York, I’m going to be ready!

And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Romans 5:3-4 (NKJV)

I’m always sorry I don’t have a pedometer to track how much I walk in New York. Mid-week, I thought that I should have at least been keeping track of the number of steps that I had climbed. After you walk to the subway, you go down stairs to ride trains, then there are STAIRS to get back up. Sometimes there are elevators that go all or part of the way up, but certainly not always! The second time I went to New York with JoAnne, I had been going to Curves. Our first day, we went from Brooklyn to Times Square. We got off the subway train and walked to the exit and there were stairs. I climbed them easily and thought Thank goodness I’ve been going to Curves. We rounded a corner and…there were more stairs. I climbed them with a little more effort and thought, with a little heavy breathing, Wow! A very good thing I’ve been going to Curves. We rounded another corner and there were…MORE STAIRS. By then, I had stopped thinking about anything besides getting to the top of those stairs.

This trip, I started mid-morning Wednesday, counting, and had logged in 150 stairsteps by time we got back to Brooklyn that evening. Then we were home all day Thursday, cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner (no stairs). Friday, before I left at noon, I got another 50 stairsteps when we went to Bay Ridge for arepas (ah RAY pahs).