A Long Walk

A Long Walk

They're building a new outdoor mall down the road. Some of the stores are open, but a lot of it is still being built. It's a controversial project--the city put up a huge tax incentive and the voters narrowly approved. I was definitely in the dissenting minority. It's on a great corner that someone was going to want to build on even without all of the giveaways to Phoenix-based developer. All sorts of promises were broken and what was sold as an "upscale" shopping experience is your basic Walmart and Best Buy, Olive Garden crap. Which is what I tried to tell everyone they would be getting if they voted for it. But it's a done deal now. The thing is up and running. While I won't shop at the Walmart, I'll do business (and have) and many of the other stores because I can shop there by bicycle, etc., rather than driving halfway across town to go to the same stores. It's just a fact of life, now.

Anyway, I ordered up a CD for my daughter's birthday using the online order store pickup service at Best Buy. I'm sure there are reasons not to shop at (big box store) Best Buy, but they offer things I want at a good price close to home--and there are no "local" alternatives (if their were, that same CD would be $17 instead of $10). Anyway, JuJu and I decided to pull out the stroller and go for a long walk (4 miles each way) to Best Buy and back. Things went well. We walked down to the store--almost the entire way along a multi-use path, went in to the store, waited in a short line, purchased the CD, walked back to the path (with a short pause to let some front end loaders and trucks driving up the path go around us), stopped off to get the mail, and made it back to the house in two hours. That's pretty good time, really.

Julian slept most of the way there but was awake on the way home, enjoying the wind that was coming straight at us all the way home. I'll tell you one thing, a double stroller into the wind and uphill is definitely a form of resistance exercise! It was a good walk on a beautiful day and proof enough that given time and carryability, shopping at the new "mall" is possible by foot. How far is your "mall"? Where can you go by foot instead of driving? Even if everyone only made one such trip per week it would make a huge difference.