Going for a seven-year walk

I now spend as much time walking around the office as I do cranking code or writing on my desk. Over the years, I started recognising other habitual pacers in the department. We joke about forming a society and lobbying for a pacing room.

If you are a busy/frantic person, walking isn't a very intense way of exercising, and doesn't translate to an achievement game as easily as running, lifting weights, etc. If you don't have a nice area to walk in, I can see not ever really understanding the appeal. I would probably still walk now if I moved to a metro area, but I might not have picked up the habit in the first place.

Driving a car at night comes as a close second, but without the added benefits of exercise.

Long train journeys are also surprisingly effective, as I've recently found out.

I don't know whether it's the walking, the solitude (not many people walking around where I live and I only have to cross about 5 roads in a 4mi walk), the soft music I walk to, or what, but it works wonders.

As you your point: I'm definitely in a minority here. Unfortunately the other guys have mostly forgotten how to use their legs and complain even when having to walk a couple blocks down the road to fetch food. It's quite sad, actually :/

When I was in high school and college, though, I used to drive to think. It was partly to do with growing up in Texas (a big, spread-out state with lots of straight, empty highways) and also partly to do with privacy. If I wanted privacy, I would go out on the highway and drive. Living with parents, and later with roommates, a car was the only place where I knew that I wouldn't be bothered. In a small town, walking means making yourself conspicuous, which isn't conducive to contemplation. You have to be in a dense city or a rural area to achieve solitude through walking.

Given that driving used to serve the same purpose for me, I wonder if the physical effects of walking are important. For me, the most important factor was suspending the constant vigilance of being around other people. Always knowing you could be interrupted, knowing you might need to put on a mask at a moment's notice, how can you really think? Walking and driving require a very low level of engagement with the outside world, but some engagement, which intermittently rises and falls as you encounter interesting sights or an occasional challenge such as a puddle to walk around, another car on the road that must be paid attention to, or a choice of going right or left. (Driving in the city usually doesn't work. Safety demands too much attention.) If I were to name the most important factors, I would include solitude, freedom from vigilance, and occasional non-threatening interruptions of one's train of thought.

I would love to read the story of someone who walked from Siberia to Alaska via the shortest sea crossing possible. But above Magadan, there are no more roads. And the Kolyma highway to Magadan is considered a major adventure already, with only a small window where the rivers are low enough to be crossed by motorcycle (and therefore, man).

I'm not saying this can't be done, but it looks like a serious arctic expedition to me. Which I kind of doubt he will do. This is probably going to end like usual. Helpful Russian truck drivers take him with them for as far as they can go, then (Mommy!!) a helicopter shows up...