My car was sick, so I took it down to Fort Collins to see the doctor today. I had a book with me and set out on foot to the coffee shop a few blocks away.

I enjoy walking, I always have, as long as it's not in a shopping mall. I get tired of that real fast. I walked (or biked) to school for years prior to high school--when it was uncool to walk and I became lazy. I'm fortunate enough to have gone to college at a university with a beautiful compact campus and now a small mountain village conducive to walking from place to place. Walking in big cities, however, is another story.

There's virtual no pedestrian sidewalks along College St. in Fort Collins, so I have to travel through parking lots and across grassy patches. Where there are sidewalks, they're hugging the curb and cars fly by at 45mph three feet away. And crossing at intersections is just about as bad. Unfortunately, most Anerican cities have these same problems.

I'm also not a fan of the newer residential areas with roads that wind and turn like ant farm tunnels. At one point on my way to a nearby library, I got sick of the obnoxious roar of the cars along the main street, so I tried a quieter route through a neighborhood. After winding in a direction I thought was more or less diagonal, I ended up back on the main road only a few blocks ahead of where I'd left it, having traveled in an arc. Give me square blocks any day.

And give me new shoes. These ones gave me blisters.