On Walking

I had a dentist appointment this morning at 8:00 AM, but my wife needed to leave at 8:30 to go to VBS (Vacation Bible School for you non-southerners out there). Since we only have one car, I obviously could not drive to the dentist. Since she was on a tight schedule, she could neither drop me off nor pick me up.

So I walked.

It's only a short distance away, 1.2 miles by Yahoo! Maps. It was a pleasant walk through the representative residential and commercial areas of South Suburban Tucker, as we like to call it. Only one major (i.e., lighted) intersection and not too much traffic at 7:45 in the morning. It took about 20 minutes each way (woohoo! 17-minute mile, beat that, you . . . well, never mind).

Two things bugged me, though.

First, while there are sidewalks throughout the entire residential portion of my walk, they ended abruptly once I crossed the boundary into the commercial zone. Grrr.

This a) made my walk a little less comfortable and a lot more dangerous, and b) is indicative of my least favorite thing about sprawl: the assumption that if you are going to do anything "real" you must be in your car. "Let zem walk among zair leetle 'ouses," the Marie Antoinette of DeKalb county DOT says, "but surely zey must drive to get zair cake, no?"

No.

Second, there was no place to grab breakfast or a drink along the walk route. The intersection I crossed has lots of cars coming through it every morning, from multiple directions. One street is a main feeder road to the Interstate, the other has a school on it, which generates copious amounts of morning traffic.

Currently occupying the corners of that intersection are 3 automotive businesses and a fruit stand (which wasn't open). A bagel shop there would get plenty of folks stopping in or driving through in the morning, especially when school's in. If they had chocolate-chip bagels, I'd walk there at least once a week. My wife would probably go there daily to get morning coffee, since I don't drink the stuff and she won't make it for just herself.

C'mon folks, that's [counting] $10 a week, right there. What're y'all waiting on? Of course, my first priority is a Fellini's Pizza in downtown Tucker.