Speedy Biped

In 2010 the travelling Ice Skating Rink came to Wellington's water front. George, Steven and I went ice skating. It was probably my idea, that sounds like something I would suggest. But I do not actually enjoy ice skating very much. I have the theory of it, but don't trust my sense of balance or the gap between my feet and the earth, so I end up slowly inching around the edge. Not quite holding the side, but not so far from it.

After several laps of getting the hang of it, I begin to pick up speed from a 'shuffle' to a 'grandma walk speed', after several more laps, maxing out at around 'other people's walking speed' (not mine, I walk fast).

Have you ever had someone say something really off-hand and it has totally penetrated your perception of self? 

Now, while we're skating, George sees me on lap 2 or thereabouts, very much still in the shuffle stage, and says 'I've never seen you do anything slow before!' as she zooms by. A harmless observation, but I'd never really consciously thought about doing anything at variant paces. 

She had a point though.
I walk fast. 

I sprint fast.

I swim fast.
I drive fast.
I talk fast.
I type fast.
I think fast.

I live my life in such a way so as to try and fit 2 lifetime's worth of life in.

Obviously, if you can do things fast, you should. 

But I skate slowly. It is outside my comfort zone. It is a tentative enjoyment that I have with ice skating, one that is predicated upon relinquishing some control in return for not taking all my dignity if/when I fall in my ass/face.

I was musing about this anecdote as I walked the 4km or so home from work today (16 Aug 19), trying to wear my best poker face to cover the latent rage that I experience whilst walking around Dublin. 

My inner monologue went something along the lines of 'I am not someone who walks fast, I am fast. It is who I am, it is a form of self expression, and you are not merely walking slowly and taking up the ENTIRE footpath, you are getting in the way of my self-expression!' whilst I skirted onto the road to get around the troop of tourists. (What is the collective noun for tourists?)

I love the feeling of walking fast. I like the movement in my body, the pace, the momentum. I like that I can feel my hips loosen and my lower back wriggle back into place, my arms swinging by my side. I like the heat that is generated in my body and the energy that is released. I feel lithe and strong. I don't view it as a race per se, but passing people is just par for the course when you walk nearly double the speed of everyone else it seems.

There is an infuriating lack of rules as a pedestrian. In some ways, this is just as well - I break the few there are constantly. But having lanes for pedestrians, so at least there are sides that people should vaguely stick to and/or pedestrian break lights or indicators... Well I can think of worse ideas. Thailand actually mandates that particularly on stairs you should keep right, so it's not entirely out of the realms of possibilities. 

I have tried the idea of 'keep left' but this unequivocally doesn't work here. Instead, I usually end up on the road side of the bollards that line the edge of the footpath, walking the (not insubstantial) tightrope of concrete tiles between the edge of the footpath and the road. (Mum, they're about 40 cm wide before you freak out.) 

Walking around the rather narrow streets here can get stressful. There are bus stops every couple hundred meters, taxis parks half on the curb, and people walk 2-4 people wide, ambling along as if it's the only thing they have to do in the world. Walking in Dublin is made even more treacherous by broken concrete tiles spotted around the uneven, narrow paths, or pedestrian streets covered in cobblestones. 

How did this speed-stepping start? 

My mum walks fast. I remember having to nearly run when I was little to keep up, and complaining "Mum, you walk too fast!" Her rebuttal was always "No, you are just walking too slowly". I think I was about 9 when I finally learned to keep up. She had things to do, and places to be, and you had better hurry up, or you'd be left behind. 

When I was little we walked a lot. Wellington is a veritable treasure trove of nature walks and every Saturday there was a different walk - usually involving a very significant hill. I have now figured out my parents strategy with this - exhaust us so we didn't pest them. Yes, Lauren, you should definitely try running up that shoal cliff, see if you can roll down that hill, hop on those rocks! Oh you fell off? Try again....run and catch up to Peter, make sure he doesn't go too far ahead (cos if I walked fast, Peter and Daniel Rankin walked faster). 

My brothers and I would often walk to school - from Belmont to Kelson was a good 2.5 km, and we'd usually get a fair amount of the way home before mum would fetch us. 

Intermediate was the same - 3km walk to and from. I actually used to have classmates when I was at Intermediate who would walk with me after school so that they could catch their bus - otherwise they'd miss it. I was the girl who walked fast. 

When I first met George and we walked from her place in Melling up to my place in Belmont, I forgot that other people were not used to walking up hills. My default pace is fast, and does not slow down while going up hills. 

When Jared and I first got together, he delighted in the fact that I could walk as fast (faster, let's be honest) than him rather than trudging along like his other SOs. 

It is delightful having to walk around Dublin, not having the option of a car, it is the most I've walked since I was 15. 

I met some girls for drinks the other night with Girls Gone International, and one had only been in town for 4 days, so I walked her home to Grand Canal Dock which added about 5km to my walk home, but I was on an extrovert high from meeting new friends and it was a beautiful clear cool night and there were zero fucks given, quite the contrary, I enjoyed the walk, intentionally going through what were supposed to be 'really dodgy' areas of town after I left her, just to see if they were in fact that bad.

They weren't that bad. 

I saw maybe 10 people. It was very tame. My inner bad-ass trained martial artist was rehearsing which wrist lock to perform on anyone who tried anything and she was a little disappointed, I'm not gonna lie. 

I also snapped this gem of the old Customhouse: 

I spent most of July walking around Dublin, taking a hoard of tourists with me - anything from 9-100 students, depending on the day. I discovered that I do in fact walk fast, by Irish standards, but also I'm basically sprinting compared to Italian or Spanish standards. This led to some.... 'heated discussions' with group leaders and students particularly around crossing the road before the man turns red, and getting off the road when there are cars coming - things I did not think I would need to explain. So I compromised and went around half of my normal pace, and still left most of them in the dust. 

So all of this got me to thinking that perhaps I was missing something while I was rushing around the place. Perhaps there's some reason that others enjoy such a leisurely pace, strolling along. July at half speed shed no light on the answer to this pondering. 

If I find out what this secret to slowness is though, then I won't be able to walk fast anymore... Do I want to take that risk? I'm not convinced. Perhaps the secret is just less post-walk melting? Eh, I'll just keep my speed and grab a towel to pat my forehead.

There is an inherent value in being intentional about your speed of doing things. I read a really interesting book called 'In Praise of Slowness' by Carl Honore when I lived in Laos. It spoke to the counter-culture movement of slow eating, and slow living, intentionally getting out of the rat race and choosing a slower life.

When I moved to Laos I didn't really realise that I had chosen that also. The ethos in Laos was that if you need to rush then you have a problem. Laos PDR is supposed to stand for the People's Democratic Republic, but it was affectionately explained to me as Laos PDR - Please Don't Rush. And that slowness was contagious. I started to slow down. I read more. I wrote more. I relaxed more, and relished in these times.

Lao people did things slowly and deliberately. It was far too hot to walk fast, and the pace of public transport definitely bred patience. It took 12 hours to cover 300 km in one particularly painful bus journey.

Also the slowness that everyone else had whilst driving their scooters meant that it was really easy to overtake them as I zoomed by on my scooter in all of my Western haste, speeding towards nowhere in particular, but just enjoying the act of going fast. 

I think sometimes the pressure to do things quickly when you would rather do them slowly is what creates stress. But the reverse is also true. Is speed or fastness stressful if you enjoy the speed? I do not think so.

In some things I'm a 'slow and steady wins the race' kinda gal. Reading would be one of these examples, as would tiling. These are where my values of 'thoroughness' and 'correctness' win over expediency.

But everything else? I'm a speedy biped.

Are there any activities that you intentionally do slowly? Leave a comment below and lemme know what you take your time with.