The Tulsa Death March

so, yesterday i decided to embark on what i'm calling the tulsa death march. it may not seem so 'death marchy' to some, but for me, used to driving everywhere i want to go, it was nothing at which to sneeze.

i got it in my mind that i wanted to go to barnes and noble to use a gift card kenny gave me for giftmas. on a previous trip, i was looking through the folk lore/myth section and noticed the arabian nights and considered it much at the time but wasn't sure if i should get it. not knowing much more than the next man about the tales, i finally resolved to pick it up upon my next visit to ye olde bookshoppe.

and so began my Great Walk.

i live roughly one 0.5 miles from 21st and memorial, and barnes and noble is roughly at 41st and yale. anyone who knows tulsa knows of its great grid system of main thoroughfares and how the main intersections are all one mile apart. from 21st and memorial to 41st and yale, one must go two miles west and two miles south. add my 0.5 miles to this to get to 21st and mem. and you've got 4.5 miles each way if you take the surface streets all the way. but not take some shortcuts is for chumps, so i shortened the distance by perhaps a half a mile each way. total roundtrip distance was approx. 8 miles. i think i averaged about 3-4 miles per hour, but since i stopped and sat around at BN for a while and then stopped on the way home at thai siam for some din-din, it took longer.

upon hearing that i did this, some of my friends remarked that i was insane for walking that distance just for a book. my response has been, so far, that i didn't want to drive to save on fuel, that i wanted some sunlight (as working at night deprives me of it most of the time), that i wanted some exercise/fresh air, that i'm preparing for all the walking that i'm about to do when i go on my two-week trip to marburg, germany and istanbul, turkey. this has helped to shut most people up. and if someone remarks upon it again, i'll add to the above list of reasons for the walk that the book is an excellent one and worth an even greater distance in the future. i'm reminded of the story of abraham lincoln supposedly walking some 20 miles to get a book once (n0t sure if that's the distance in the story).

it's been a day since the walk and my feet only ache a bit, enough to be completely negligible. i went on webmd.com to see how many calories i can expect to have burned, and the number was between 700-1000, depending on how vigorous the walking was. does walking into the wind for half of the trip count for extra cals burned? i'm sure it does.

well, that's it for this crappy post. for me, it's back to the arabian nights. good shit these tales are.

a