Walk Score

A year ago I was obsessed with a web site called "walk score". We were in the middle of a housing search for a home that above all we wanted to be "walkable". The site allows you to type in any address to rate how easy it is to walk to libraries, grocery stores or convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. I would find a house on a real estate site, type in the address to walk score, and wait while it drew a map surrounding the little red dot, our potential new home. Many times the just-right house was just outside a comfortable walk zone. Car-dependent, it declared. As the ratings went up, the yards shrunk, the garages squeezed onto the lots (or didn't exist at all), and the price shot up, too. But how great would it be to be able to walk to most things?

The walk from our house to New Morning Nursery school is just under a mile with only a mild elevation change (I am still adjusting from Chicago). Today I pushed the empty jogger over to pick the boys up. They bemoaned my new rule that I don't push them uphill. Granted, they were exhausted after swimming this morning and playing this afternoon and the general excitement of the spring-is-coming sun. Once we were on the slow downward slope home, they rode and happily bantered about making hats and reading books about a king in a bathtub who ate his lunch in the tub and a magic hat that made people into animals. I relish this peek into their new world apart from me. When we drive, it is Justin Roberts all three minutes home -- whether the CD is in the player or not. But today, walking, they let me in on the books they read and the hats they made.

When we reached the bike trail, Dietrich hopped out and ran ahead. The runners had shed layers today and smiled at Dietrich clad in the same winter gear he had on in January. He did finally take off his mittens. Bike commuters slowed down to make sure Dietrich stayed on his side of the path as he waved them by. Elliott sleepily wore a cone-shaped magician's hat and rode solo. Just as we crested the exit ramp from the bike path to our block (with heavy whining at the request to walk the hill) we met a neighbor going to join the walkers and bikers and runners and strollers and be-hatted kids on the path.