Sun.Star Essay: Walking well

Saturday, January 28, 2012

IT’S good that they’re running and biking. And let’s walk.

These are good times to grow healthy in, if the inspiration lasts. Some people are more aware now of what running or biking can do to shape up physically and mentally. There’s an awareness of health and physical fitness among runners and bikers, besides expectations of the additional points of a beautiful shape.

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But how about walking?

It’s not jog-walk but plain-brisk-walk—to office, to our favorite restaurant for lunch (instead of order and have it delivered), and never get on a jeepney to reach short destinations. If you won’t run, won’t bike, burn calories and strengthen the heart by a simple brisk walk to and from the office.

They say a walk is also good for our brain and bones. That’s what Grandpa used to tell us kids. In the 50s, he would exercise in the patio before breakfast and walk from Jones ave. to an office in the vicinity of the old Post Office as an accounting officer in a Chinese firm. One day he was seen by the family driver walking home. The driver stopped to let him into the car. But he shook his head and walked on. Can we do today what Grandpa did years ago?

Let’s walk to office with simple brisk steps.

But we need as much walking space as the runners or the bikers have borrowed spaces and, hopefully, lanes. Government is lately aware of them, especially in relation to carbonized present-day living, in search of a cleaner environment. Even the motorized movers in the city somehow give way for runners or bikers to pass.

But not to simple walkers.

The problem for the walkers in Cebu City is the lack of sidewalks big enough and built smooth in one level throughout—just right for brisk walking. The first thing you see on your arrival in New York are the sidewalks. A blind man could walk down there with a dog to lead him (I didn’t see a companion walking on his side)—a sight in Manhattan I saw in two instances.

New York has more people than there is comfortable land area to move in, live in, drive in. One out of every 11 employed persons in New York walk to work. And they walk fast.

As I keep saying, I will never forget a lot of things about New York. And one of them is the fast walk of pedestrians, which probably are also in other fully-designed urban areas. Just before office time, say an hour before that, the workers start walking to work. I would look out the window of my friend’s studio and watch them walk briskly by. I could sense them in all the sidewalks, bracing up (as though for a day’s competition).

Many of the workers own a car but which they park in Park zones (for a fee). And the parking areas may still be blocks away from office, so they walk. I’d go down to the streets of Manhattan only when all walkers were already working, in order not to be on their way.

The host of my trip there, who lived in that city of cities for many years, had caught up with the walking speed. She’d walk “normally” fast, then after a few fast steps towards the next block, she’d stop and wait for me to catch up.

But in Cebu, we can’t do any faster walk because there are no real sidewalks, we could fall into a man hole along the way. The beautiful idea of letting only pedestrians (and bikes and a tartanilla here and there) enter historical Colon street shouldn’t be just a dream.

When Cebu City was still a simple town, people ambled to work, mostly in Colon and Magallanes streets. Work places were just a few blocks away—reached after a bit of saunter here, a stride there.

Now the tempo is faster.

But no, there’s still no kick to the walk here, nor to the run, nor to the biking. But there’s now a difference in perception of health and the environment, don’t you sense it?

(ecuizon@gmail.com)