Walk a mile in those shoes?!

One of the allures of Portland is the ability to detach yourself from your car. This is accomplished by having a more compact metropolitan area (see the first nerd post) and a mature mass transit system. Getting around town seems fairly easy, although I haven't hopped on a bus or a train yet. No, I've spent most of my time walking around.

I was fortunate enough to find an apartment that is only 0.6 miles away from work. Thus, I can walk to work and let my car not burn gas. Another positive side effect of walking is ... you guessed it... exercise! A walking site I found suggests that you should get 10,000 steps a day; 1,000 to 3,000 steps makes you sedentary :(. I wanted to find out if I was getting my recommended daily allowance of walking in Portland, but I also wanted to see how much more walking I was doing in Portland compared to OKC.

So, a week prior to leaving Oklahoma I wore a pedometer to count the number of steps I took each day. I rounded to the nearest 100 steps and took an average for 7 days. In OKC, taking into account walking around the house, to my car, and walking around at work, I averaged 5800 steps per day (hoary! not sedentary). On the other hand, in Portland I averaged 7100 steps per day.

I was kind of surprised that I only walked an additional 1/2 mile (approx.). I was walking to and from work, walking around town at lunch time, walking to stores, etc., but I still couldn't get my 10k steps (the closest I came was 9000 steps walking to and from the river). The other surprise was just how much I walked around at my old job, even though I drove to work. Working in a big building that required interaction with people in other parts of the building kept me out of the sedentary range.

I must say it is nice being able to walk around!

Stay tuned! In 3 weeks I will give an update on the other side of the equation - how much gas have I used since coming to Portland.