Tag Archives: walk

The End Of A Short Era

Posted on by
6

Deer Creek Country Club Deerfield Beach FloridaTomorrow I head back to work, starting a new contract after three months of being unemployed, and so apart from weekends, today marked the last time I expect to be able to take my morning walk around Deer Creek.

I have really enjoyed getting out of bed in the morning, and heading out around the lakes and golf course at Deer Creek to stretch my legs, listen to the birds chirping, and to watch the wildlife and trees.  There is always something different to see every time I take a walk, and I will really miss it.  At least I should have one weekend day when I can take my walk (the other I see my daughters and take them for breakfast, so no time).

I also still hope to go walking most evenings, which I also enjoy, and it’s different, especially in the dark.  Of course now with Summer here it doesn’t get dark until late.  Going out for a walk at 8pm even a few weeks ago would provide you with an awesome clear sky full of stars.  Now the sun still hasn’t set by that time.

Well it looks as if my Squidoo Lens about my walks around Deer Creek has started a trend.  Today Clouda9 published a lens about a Walk On Our Country Road, a lovely tour of the rural area where she lives, and it’s so different to Deer Creek, being out in the countryside.

I hope many more people will think about doing this.  It’s so nice to see the places where people live, so inviting to stroll along with them on a virtual tour of their favorite places to go walking, and nice to see the photographs of these special places.   So if you think you might like to do this, let me know.  Just stroll out, camera in hand, create a lens or a blog post, and I will write about it.   Maybe we can acquire a nice collection of these as time goes on.   If nothing else, these will make great memories in years to come, something to hand down to the children and grandchildren.

Patricia Sanders (aka Jewelsofawe) also has a great lens about being out on her sister-in-laws farm.  Take a look at Out On The Farm and see if you feel envious of the beautiful scenery.  She also created a lens that gives a wonderful virtual tour of her Garden Of Veggies – the Apple Pie looks delicious.

An Early Morning Walk

Posted on by
1

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?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Posted on by
3

For New Years Eve we thought about going out somewhere, maybe a pub, but then we are often quite happy to head up to bed before midnight, and pubs on New Years Eve are full of loud drunken people in groups; it’s not so much fun for a couple on their own.   And so we decided to stay in, catch up on the web and watch television.  Boring maybe, but for us it was the best decision.

While I was working on putting the finishing touches together on this, our new blog, Debbie was catching up on the soaps and repeats of Only Fools And Horses.

Then somehow we ended up watching several episodes of shows about Haunted Britain, one about caves where the Hell Fire Club used to meet was quite creepy at times.  And then at Five To Midnight we switched channels to watch the New Year Celebrations in London.   Since I have spend my New Years in the USA since 1993, I have been out of touch with the celebrations somewhat, other than seeing the ball drop in Times Square in New York, which doesn’t quite have the same appeal to me.  This year, however, not only did I get to listen to Big Ben chime in the New Year, the firework display that was centred around the London Eye on the Embankment was spectacular.   I have seen some impressive firework displays before around the world, but this was so dazzling and bright it overloaded the television cameras at times and it went on for a full 15 minutes.   It’s just sad of course to think of the many thousands of pounds it cost, but it was a truly brilliant display.

Today being New Years Day we didn’t just want to do nothing.  We laid in quite late, blogged around a while, then about midday grabbed a bit to eat and went out to wash the car.  It had got quite dirty with all the rain in the last couple of months, and I was going to do it for Debbie earlier in the week, but it was absolutely frigid outside.  Today was milder though.  Still cold but bearable.  So we washed the car, then decided to go for a walk along the river.  The way we went took us for a good 3 mile trek along the river bank and up and around various woods and fields.  We passed several pubs along the way, and the smell of the food made us really hungry, but we pressed on regardless.  It was really nice, and helped us work up quite an appetite, which we satisfied with a nice warming Cottage Pie when we got back.

Right now we are just sitting catching up on all the HAPPY NEW YEAR messages on all the sites we subscribe to, and will maybe have an early night.  Maybe…