Training For Travel

~ For the past month or two I have been in training for travel.

Health professionals, and national health authorities constantly encourage people in first world countries to eat well, drink less alcohol, exercise regularly, and in the case of smokers, to give up the habit completely. Thankfully, I have never been a smoker and I’m only an occasional drinker, but at 110 kilograms (240 pounds) I can afford to lose some weight and not miss it.

The hard part is motivating myself to get up off the couch – or more to the point, to tear myself away from the computer – and find some type of exercise that will help me shed some weight and get a lot fitter.

My biggest problem is – I hate exercise. I get no pleasure at all from pumping iron at a gym, sweating profusely in an aerobics class, or sitting on a stationary bike pretending I’m in the pelaton at the Tour de France. As for running on a treadmill, all that conjures up for me are images of mice racing headlong on running wheels, getting nowhere fast.

As I say, I need something special to motivate me to get up and move. For me, this motivating factor has become travel. It is just the incentive I need to get fit or die trying!

Since travel tends to involve a lot of walking, I’ve settled on walking as the best low impact way of preparing myself for my next round of jet-setting. So every day, I head off to walk one of three circuits I have mapped out around my neighbourhood and along the foreshore between Semaphore and Largs Bay.

The three circuits involve distances of three kilometres (1.86 miles); five kilometres (3.10 miles); and eight kilometres (4.97 miles). How far I walk on a particular day, will depend on how I am feeling, but more and more I am walking the longer distance of eight kilometres. In fact, after a couple of months of regular walking, I have now become fit enough to extend that distance even further. Hence my previous entry, Walking Manhattan.

The more I walk, the more convinced I am that I can tackle the length of Broadway, which for my purposes I am measuring from the 207th Street/Inwood subway station to the running bull sculpture at Bowling Green. According to Google Maps this is a total distance of 20.4 kilometres, or 12.67 miles. Again, according to Google, this distance could be covered in around four hours and eleven minutes of continuous walking.

Clearly, a reasonably fit person should have no trouble completing this walk. However, at 61 years of age, I am not quite reasonably fit – or ready to take on 20 kilometres. Yet. But I’m getting there. By the time I hit the streets of New York City in July, I will be ready, although I have no intention of completing the distance in one long continuous four hour walk. With rest stops and some sightseeing along the way, it is more likely to take the better part of 8-10 hours, but complete it I will.

So if you have problems like I do with exercise, take my advice and don’t call it by that name. Instead call it Training for Travel. It might just be the incentive you need to get up off the couch and out to the gym or onto the streets of your neighbourhood, in preparation for your next journey.

The Frugal Traveller Takes it Slow

~ I’ve written before about slow travel The Slow Traveller, and the benefits that can be derived from that form of travel. Now that I am getting closer to my next extended trip, I thought I’d take another look at the concept.

At the end of June, I am heading off to the USA for three months, two of which will be spent in New York City. Having visited New York in 2008, and having seen many of the major tourist attractions (State of Liberty and Ellis Island, Empire State Building and numerous major galleries and museums, etc), I am not fussed about returning again to some of these locations.

However I do want to get a sense of how life is for the average New York resident. Or at least how it might be for a local resident on vacation, since I don’t have to go to work five days a week while I am there, and contend with the morning and afternoon rush hours.

So how does a slow traveller get the most out of their travel experience? By acting like a local and participating in the same events the local citizens will be getting involved in. This time I want to immerse myself in many of the events that New Yorkers will also be participating in. To that end, for the past few weeks I have been spending hours a day, researching some of the hundreds of events being planned for July and August in New York. Many of the websites I have visited are yet to post their full summer schedules, so I will need to come back to those over the next few weeks.

Things like the many free or low cost events that take place around the city every summer. For example: Shakespeare in The Park, the Central Park Summerstage program, free film screenings and music performances in Bryant Park, the Lincoln Center Out of Doors summer festival (July 28–August 15), as well as numerous other free events at the Lincoln Center, free events put on by the City Parks Foundations, and events at many other locations.

Perceptive readers will have noticed my repeated use of the word ‘free’.

The only way I can afford to spend three months in America, and two in New York City is by making my limited finances stretch as far as possible. Thus, there will be no luxury accommodations, no $100 meals, and no spending sprees on Fifth Avenue for this frugal traveller. Instead I will be making the most of the hundreds of free or almost free events taking place across the whole of New York.

My few indulgences will include a Broadway show (or two), possibly a cooking class with Rustico Cooking, a Hidden Harbor Tour, a couple of major concerts (if I can find something or someone worth seeing), and several other events currently in the pipeline.

I’m sure I will return to this theme over the coming weeks and months as my departure date approaches. However, if you have any places on your must see list favourite New York locations, or better still hidden gems you think I should know about, I’d love to hear about them.

You know what to do. The Comments box awaits.

New York Dreaming

~ One of the things I like most about travel is the sense of anticipation I get as the departure date draws closer and closer.

Couple this with the research I get to do about my main destination (New York City); the events I pencil into my travel calendar; the excitement I derive from discovering new people, places (and new things about myself), and it’s safe to say the pump will be primed and ready to go from the moment I touch down at JFK.

Here are some of the events I have already added to my schedule:

• July 4th Celebrations featuring the Macy’s department store fireworks display
• The Bitter End All Star Jam gig (twice a month at The Bitter End in Bleeker Street)
• A Hidden Harbor Tour of New York harbor
• Catching a couple of Broadway shows: West Side Story and In The Heights
• A Brooklyn Bombshells vs. Queens of Pain Roller Derby event
• An all-time favourite, Iris DeMent at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill
• A Circle Line Cruise around the entire island of Manhattan
• Check out the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum
• Walking tours of the Downtown area, Grand Central Terminal, and elsewhere
• Museum Of The City Of New York
• Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Walk The Highline
• Watch free movies and listen to live music in Bryant Park
• Explore the South Street Seaport Museum and Chelsea Piers
• Eat pizza at Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge...
• ...and sleep in occasionally!

I’m also researching open mic nights, Irish music sessions, and of course I will return to some of my favourite 2008 locations such as The Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Rockerfeller Center, Brooklyn Bridge, Chinatown, the Staten Island Ferries, Greenwich Village, Central Park, and probably Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (if I can be bothered fighting my way through the crowds and queues).

On my Been There – Done That! list are the Empire State Building and the New York Skyride; the United Nations Building; Madam Tussauds (tacky, yes, but worth doing once. Just); the New York Transit Museum; Bodies…the Exhibition; the New York Police Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History – although that is well worth a second look.

But what I particularly enjoyed on my 2008 trip was simply walking the streets of New York City discovering everyday life (people, events, places) in this amazing metropolis. On that trip (apart from one bus ride from the Staten Island Ferries hub, all the way up Second Avenue to Harlem and back down to 42nd Street), I never explored further than the American Museum of Natural History at about W 78th Street. This time I will be staying right at the top of Manhattan in Washington Heights, and I’m looking forward to ranging far and wide across the ‘top end’ of the island as well as revisiting the places listed previously.

Of course, there are many places not listed above. If you have any ‘must see’ locations you think I should add to my calendar, feel free to let me know via the Comments link below.