I love where I live except that I need a car. Public transportation stinks. There are buses but everything is spread out and they run too infrequently to be practical. While this is technically a ‘city’, like most places outside of a major metropolis in the United States, the culture is suburban-car-centric. Public transportation is given short shrift.<\/p>\n
I confess, I have never boarded a bus here in Norwalk. I don’t know the routes or the cost. Neither does my 17 year old daughter – which is really crazy to me because growing up in NYC, I was taking 2 city buses to school by the time I was 8 years old. \u00a0Molly expects rides and dismisses walking as a way to get someplace.<\/p>\n
When I walk now,\u00a0<\/em>I do so with intent. I take my dog out or go with my friend for exercise. I don’t walk like I did when I lived in what I still call ‘the city’ – New York – to get where I’m going. When I lived on the upper West Side I avoided buses and subways – eschewing crowds and the expense, but mostly because walking is a pleasure and the city is so walk-able<\/em>.<\/p>\n I walk when I travel. Behind the wheel of a car, or\u00a0even as a passenger, it is impossible to really see<\/em>\u00a0the world. \u00a0Everything is fleeting, without smells, without a sense of the air, the up-close color of \u00a0leaves, the bark on a tree, the color of a house, the flowers, the smell of cooking … the poetry and essence of a place.<\/p>\n This morning, I dropped my car off to be serviced and then walked the 2 miles or so home. I walked where I always drive and saw only 2 other pedestrians in my jaunt. Actually, they were not walking — they were waiting for a bus. There are no shelters on this stretch of the Post Road. Bus riders must stand by the road in the now-grassy but soon-to-be icy patch, breathing passing fumes and at the ready to wave down a bus hurtling by at breakneck speeds.<\/p>\n On my walk I passed little jewelry shops, variety stores, delis, Indian restaurants, I never noticed before. They are sustained by the spirit that keeps Norwalk special: long-time loyalties of old neighborhoods, friendships and families. And judging by the shabbiness of some of these little strip malls, I imagine, reasonable rent.<\/p>\n Jogging across the street to get out of the way of the cars not used to or particularly respectful of pedestrians, I stepped across a grate in the tarmac, so clogged with dirt that grass grows between the metal slats. I’ll remember that next time the road floods. I passed the cows and chickens fenced in outside of Stew Leonard’s crazy ‘Dairy Store’ where I popped inside for a good cup of coffee to drink while I walked. Then I criss-crossed the parking lot to a side street that leads home. \u00a0No sidewalk, so I hugged the shoulder while admiring houses and gardens up-close. I turned my face up to the sun and later, flinched away from the bloody sight of squirrel-road-kill. A dog I’d never met leaped off his patch of lawn to bark at me. I noticed two houses that looked empty -desolate windows and peeling paint. Making my way home in the morning sun, I paid attention and really saw my neighborhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love where I live except that I need a car. Public transportation stinks. There are buses but everything is spread out and they run too infrequently to be practical. While this is technically a ‘city’, like most places outside of a major metropolis in the United States, the culture is suburban-car-centric. Public transportation is … Continue reading Walking Home in a Car-World<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[38,37,12,31,30,41,19,26,27],"class_list":["post-1809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seasonal-musings","tag-light","tag-morning","tag-nature","tag-neighborhood","tag-norwalk","tag-seasons","tag-time","tag-travel","tag-walks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sPzTS-walking","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1809"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1814,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions\/1814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}