2014-10-12 – Two days before I started my new job, my brother asked me what I would do for exercise now that I wouldn’t be commuting. With my old job, I would get a minimum of two-and-a-half miles walking to and from the train, four miles, if my wife Kit didn’t pick me up in the afternoon. I’m doing my new job at my desk in my basement. I didn’t know the answer to my brother’s exercise question at the time, but I do now:

Ten thousand steps.

The week I came on board to my new job, an email came out saying that they were starting a new wellness program. Everyone could get a pedometer and an account on a website to record the number of steps walked per day. I sent an email to HR asking if this applied to remote employees. The answer was yes and, a few days after the pedometers arrived at the home office, I got my pedometer in the mail.

I’ve been at it for almost a week.

The truth about the 10,000-steps program is that you get a large number of steps just walking to and from the bathroom. Or to the kitchen to get a snack. I’m guessing that’s somewhere between five and six thousand a day. If I was still working at the old job, the daily commuting walk would have gotten me to the 10,000 mark on days I got a ride home from the train. Days I walked home would have given me 14,000, which is a secondary goal in the company’s program.

I don’t have the commuting walk anymore. But I’ve added or lengthened some dog walks. Lefty’s beginning to look very trim.

Kit and I like to walk a lot, but we don’t always find the time. Those were the extra walks—above the 14,000 mark—that we used to do and still do. It is sometimes three extra miles, sometimes six. That would be 6,000 to 14,000 extra steps.

The nice thing about this pedometer program is that it changes your default. Without the pedometer, you might drive a couple blocks. With the pedometer you walk. I was already starting to do that, with biking becoming the default mode of transportation for longer errands if I didn’t have to schlep back a 40 lb. bag of kitty litter. The pedometer is cementing that change in my behavior.

Now I need to figure out a way to write this blog while walking. (Yes, Mike. Your treadmill-desk is a lovely idea, but I’m kinda partial to walking in the outdoors.)

When you’re out walking, sometimes you get a song running through your head. This one, an old one from Peter, Paul & Mary, and written by Hedy West.

If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles
A Hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles

Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three, Lord I’m four
Lord I’m 500 miles away from home
away from home,away from home,away from home,away from home
Lord I’m 500 miles away from home
Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name
Lord I can’t go a-home this a-way
This a-away, this a-way, this a-way, this a-way
Lord I can’t go a-home this a-way

If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone
You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles