Thursday, April 5, 2018

Walking, Peeing, And Serious Difficulty Posting Pics In London

I've been doing a lot of walking in the last few days. On the first day of my trip, I didn't walk a lot, but that can be attributed somewhat to jetlag.  But since then, I've walked over 25,000 steps a day. In the last three days, I've walked over 30,000 steps each day, and have surpassed my step count each day. And I'm definitely feeling it. I most certainly can't keep up this pace.


My feet are pretty much shredded. There's not much l can do about it except tough it out. I guess I could buy some moleskin and wrap my toes in it to make it a little better, but a few calluses later, it'll all work out, I'm pretty sure.


I've already altered my clothing somewhat to compensate for it. I am now wearing compression underwear which helps with the chafing on my thighs. And I'm pulling the layers of clothing to cover my waist, so my fanny pack strap doesn't rub against my skin if my pants droop a little while I'm walking.


But it's still not easy. My left leg is not that great after a series of bad things that happened to it in the last few years. My gait is definitely slower than it used to be, and not as natural. It used to be that I was one of the fastest walkers in a crowd, and now almost everyone passes me.


I tested today how many paces I comfortably walk in ten minutes, and if I just walk, and don't stop for anything, at my normal pace I walk a little over 1000 paces in ten minutes. So I should be able to walk about 10000 paces in a little over an hour and a half, right? But it doesn't seem to work that way. I'm always doing stuff that breaks up the walking. And that is a good thing. I don't want to JUST walk, I want to check out cool stuff, take pictures of things that interest me, and stop to enjoy my surroundings when I feel like it. So it ends up being a lot slower.


And urinating becomes an issue when walking. Well, actually, it's an issue when it comes to travel generally. Sometimes, you gotta go, and it's not that easy to find a place to go. I found that in London, at least, you can search for "public toilets" on Google Maps, and you'll be able to find one in the vicinity, if you're in a central area. But yesterday, I searched for two in a row, and walked quite a ways to get to them, Abd they were birth out of order. I was at the point where I was dancing in the street, and about to go in my pants. But finally, I saw one of London's open markets, Old Spitalfield Market, and I found a public toilet there. And it wasn't even a pay toilet! (most of them are) Blessed relief.


I've been getting really crappy signal in London, so I'm getting behind in posting pics on Facebook. Today I posted two sets of pictures, and four hours later, they still hadn't posted. Five hours later, one set had posted, but the other hadn't. What the hell? I got better signal in Laos. T-Mobile is my carrier in the US, and they give me free data in most countries in the world, but only guarantee 2g speeds. Well, I'm definitely getting the low end on that in the last couple of days. The wi-fi at the hostel is not much better. Hostel wi-fi is usually bad because a lot of people are using it, and the hostel is usually too cheap to pony up for enough bandwidth for everybody, so everybody squeaks by and gets kicked off a lot.


Today, I started my day by taking the Tube to a park I picked out on the map, Hampstead Heath. It looked like a good place to walk around outdoors, and away from the typical touristy areas, a little farther out from the center of London.  It was a beautiful stroll; the weather was sunny for the first day since I've been in London, though it was somewhat chilly. But it wasn't as cold and windy as it had been the last few days, and I didn't have to pull out my umbrella frequently. An added bonus was that there was an English manor turned into a museum, the Kenwood House, bordering the park. It had been turned into a museum featuring paintings by English and Dutch masters, and, best of all, the admission was free! If I hadn't just picked out a random place to go, I never would have found this hidden gem.


I moseyed back into town, intending to walk as far back toward the hostel as I could. I walked pretty much all day, stopping to check out places I encountered along the way. I hiked to the top of the hill at Primrose Hill Park, admiring the beautiful view of the city from there. Then I walked to Regent's Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, wandering through the neighborhoods and districts surrounding them. Then I started getting weary, and when the walking stops being fun and interesting, it's time to cone up with a plan to wrap it up.  But I was still quite a distance from the hostel. So I went to the nearest Tube station to get back to the hostel to rest, and when I started to go into the station, I found, to my chagrin, that I had lost my Oyster card, which had a week of unlimited rides stored on it! And I know exactly what happened; this happened to me before. I put my phone in the pocket with the card and I'm sure that one of the times I pulled my phone out, I pulled the card out without noticing and dropped it. Dang it, keep the phone in a separate pocket! Anyway, the stationmaster helped me buy a new Oyster card, and it only set me back about ten pounds. I had bought a week-long card even though I was going to be in London less than that because it ended up being cheaper (um, but not if I lose it).


So I got back to the hostel and rested for a bit, then a couple of hours later, went on a short jaunt around the neighborhood to eat. I was just a couple of hundred steps away from surpassing yesterday's step total, so I just walked back and forth down the block a bit, and came back to the hostel with the intention of staying put.

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