How clearing walking is!
David Losordo
Sunday afternoon at around 1 I asked my buddy Gabe if he wanted to go for a walk with me. Since doing the walking Chicago class I have realized that walking is a very fun activity that helps clear the mind and is a great easy exercise. He said yes, and I thought I should write my essay about our walk. The walk we had was awesome and he helped me notice the mood changes from the streets and how different each street was. We left for our walk at exactly 2:37 and we were very excited for it! We both live in seton, and we decided to just walk and have our minds take us. It was a beautiful day outside, the weather was cool, so we weren’t sweating, but it was warm enough that all we needed was a sweatshirt. We started heading down Fullerton and were excited to explore new parts of Lincoln Park. Gabe and I walked down this strip (that I am familiar with) that is filled with bars and restaurants. I’ve been here many times to try the local restaurants around campus. We talked about our favorite food spots, and we also questioned why all the bars were completely filled at 3 o’clock on a Sunday. Then we realized it was Sunday football so that answered our question. When we were in the area that was crowded, I felt very high energy because we had people talking, people screaming at the top of their lungs to the tv, and people drinking. It honestly made me feel at home because at home sports are huge! Boston has so many pubs of people drinking and watching sports. So, I got a big sense of comfort which set the mood for the walk. We got out of the crowded area, and we ended up in the classic confusing streets of Lincoln Park. This street was pretty crowded, so we decided to walk where the crowd was going. We followed the crowd for about 15 minutes until we ended up in the very pretty park. It was the same park that my discovery class went to on our first walk. The park was very pretty, and it was extremely crowded. Saw many cute dogs and there was a little league baseball game going on. While walking through the park we talked about how this park reminds Gabe of his home, we also talked about how the park made us smile. The trees were starting to change colors, the sun was beaming right on us with the cool wind blowing on our faces. I was very drawn to this one tree that was completely yellow, most of the other trees are still green with light shades of yellow but this one was completely yellow, and it stuck out from all the other trees. After leaving the park at around 3:20, we walked down the street and ended up in an alleyway. While we were there, we saw a cat! The cat was very adorable and kept coming up to us and letting us pet them. That put a smile on our faces, and we decided to leave them and keep on walking. We walked down some more streets and one feature we noticed is the difference in how some streets are very busy and some are completely empty. The streets that were less busy tend to be the streets with just apartments on the street, all the busy streets had businesses around them or a main road. Less crowded roads make me feel awkward because we are in a big city, I feel as if mostly all roads should be crowded. Then walking by only one person in the road is weird because I don’t know if I should say hi to them or not and it makes a very awkward scenario. I can definitely say that I like to enjoy more crowded streets because I feel safer and more comfortable. We kept on walking, and we noticed that we were about a mile and a half deep in our walk, but we were enjoying it a lot, so we just kept on walking. We kept on trotting until we noticed a very hidden, circle bench structure. It was perfect. We were tired from walking, and we found this bench that was right on the main road. We sat there and chatted for about 10 mins. We saw a part of the metal fence surrounding the bench, it looked like it got hit by a car because a part of the fence was down and that could be the only logical reason why it was down. After hanging out at the bench for a second we decided to continue on with our walk. We started to head back into the direction of campus, then ended up in a place we are familiar with. I love walking around because that is the best way to understand a city. One goal I have by the end of the year is to know the city and how to get places without using google maps. I’d say I know my hometown city pretty well, but Chicago I have no idea. But I am starting to be more familiar with Lincoln Park and some parts of the loop, which is making me feel better about moving to a new city. Gabe and I were walking for a while, so we decided to head back home. While walking home we talked about how head clearing it was to walk around and how we are very excited for it to get colder and the trees to start changing colors. But in the middle of our conversation, we got interrupted by a little baby rat who was the cutest thing imaginable. We tried to pet him, but he ran away. We got back around 4 and we were tired. Overall, the walk we had was a very amazing experience, I want to start getting into the habit of going on walks and noticing little details that you don’t notice on an everyday basis. Ten out of Ten walk, I will be going on many more in the future!
