I decided (see my last post) that as from today I need to start getting out of bed earlier, and to take a good walk first thing to get me moving and to start the day off right.

So I arranged for Debbie to wake me up around 7am this morning with a phone call, however I woke up on my own around 6:45am instead of my usual 8am.  Do you find too that if you need to wake up early, you don’t always need to set the alarm, your body somehow wakes you up at the right time?

I chatted with Debbie for a while on the webcam before she headed out for an afternoon appointment (remember she is in the UK), then checked some of my emails and Tagfoot messages, and headed off for my “hopefully” daily walk around the lake, golf course and nice homes where I live.  It’s a 2 1/4 mile route around the block, with 6 flights of stairs down and then up at the end, which takes about 35-40 minutes if I “hoof” it and make it a brisk walk.

Well I spent a bit too long chatting and messaging, so it was 8:30am by the time I left, but it was an almost perfect day, partly cloudy, a nice breeze, and about 70 degrees.

When I walk alone I always take my trusty MP3 player with me.  It’s about 3 years old, doubles as a flash drive and only has 512mb of memory, but it’s enough for me, since when I mostly use it, I am either walking or flying, and for both I really enjoy listening to a selection of my favorite tracks.  I have it set to play songs randomly, and although it always starts on the same song, flipping to the next I never know what it might play.

This morning I did pretty well, the MP3 player selecting for me a good driving track to start the walk off right, “Highway Star” by Deep Purple.  That saw me setting off to a good pace (I tend to change my walk pattern to match the music), and it was followed by a slower track that I love, “No Se Tu” by Luis Miguel from the album Romance.  Some of you might remember it as the featured love song from the movie “Speechless” with Geena Davis and Michael Keeton (Romance is a great album of love songs by the way, remade hits of the 50′s-70′s in the style of Nat King Cole, but in Spanish).   Then one of my all time favourite songs, “Cinema Show” by Genesis, from the album Selling England By The Pound.  They use a section of this on their medley of “really old songs” in concert, but this was the original, and has one of the best Genesis instrumental sections ever.  By this time I was 2/3rds of the way around the circuit, and the next random track was also a good one, “China Girl” by David Bowie.  Today I recalled the duet of this between Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer – a great movie.   Finally, for the last leg, my trusty music machine kicked out “Kill The King” by Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow, which saw me along the straight, across the road, and up the stairs to the front door.

Home, I took a cool shower, made some Green Tea With Lime for later, and grabbed a bowl of Oatmeal for breakfast.

So how did you start your morning today, and what would be on your listening selection if you were taking a walk before breakfast?