I take Marta to work every day because, well frankly, I hate driving in the city. I avoid it as much as possible. So needless to say when I found out I would be going out of town for work, I made arrangements so that I could get dropped off at Marta instead of driving to work (I didn’t want to leave my car parked on the street over night at Marta).
So I went to work only to find out that plans had changed and I had to stay behind to work on a project that was due in a couple days. Sadly no out of town trip for me. And no car waiting for me when I got back to my local Marta stop. What to do. It was easy really – walk home.
It is about 2 miles from the Marta station to my house. No big deal. But apparently it is. Nearly everyone I talked to told me to wait for them to come get me at Marta – 30 minutes to an hour later. I didn’t really feel like hanging out at the Marta station so I looked it up on Google maps. It was only a 39 minute walk. It took longer to walk to the city when I was living in Albania. Since the weather was nice, I started walking.
Of course being the competitive person I am, I had to beat the GPS (which I did by 9 minutes!). I made it home and didn’t even break a sweat thanks to a nice breeze and a shy sun. But when more people found out I had walked back from Marta, nearly all of them looked at me like I was crazy.
I’ve been back in the States for for over a year and a half now and it still amazes me how uncommon it is for people to walk places. I realize that American cities were not built around pedestrians like in other much older countries. But if I park a few blocks away and have to walk, I don’t think twice about it. Until the people I’m with point out how far it is.
I suppose in my stints overseas, I got used to walking everywhere. I got used to not having a car – or the option to drive. I got used to walking more than a few blocks. I got used to thinking a 20 minute walk was pretty short. In fact, that is one thing I miss about living overseas. Cheap (though not always convenient) public transportation in cities and the ability to walk anywhere if you want to.
But here – especially in Atlanta, everyone wants to drive everywhere. No one seems to enjoy walking – even if it’s just a few blocks. So while everyone drives and gets frustrated with traffic, you will most likely find me on Marta going North, South, East or West or walking on the side of the road. But if you do find me driving, it will be early in the morning, before everyone wakes up and the roads get crowded!