walk talk

May 21, 2024—2:03 a.m. (Local park... blocked!)

May 22, 2024—11:08 p.m. (The new ramp is up. Part of it, anyway.)

May 22, 2024—11:19 p.m. (I just liked the lighting for this one.)

Above are some images from walks I've done over the past few days. No images from tonight's walk, alas: I'd forgotten to take my phone to work with me, and I started walking straight from the office. (From work, the walk to the Han, then to my apartment, is 7K. If I start the walk to the Han from my apartment, it's a bit more than 9K.)

Today, Thursday, is a fasting day since I have my hospital appointment tomorrow. And that's how I discovered something interesting: having eaten nothing all day today, I experienced not a twinge of chest pain when I went out walking tonight. I think the chest pain is food-related—specifically, it's carb-related. Compare tonight's pain-free walk to last night's walk (Wednesday night): I had to rest multiple times because my chest kept hurting. Tonight, the only break I took was a bathroom break; otherwise, I had no desire to rest at all. So basically, if I eat nothing, I'm fine. That's my paradox: to live, I must starve. Go figure.

The off ramp that they've been building along part of the Tan Creek is progressing faster than I'd have expected. As you see in the second photo above, the "sandworm" parts have now been moved to the tops of their respective columns/pillars. What's left is to (1) finish the ramp and (2) top the ramp with actual road plus some sort of railing. The ramp is curving toward an access road that I'm familiar with; I'd guessed the ramp's trajectory a while back, and I predict that the ramp, when completed, isn't going to help traffic very much: that access road is already fairly crowded at rush hour, and with even more traffic merging into it, it's going to become a nightmare. But it's the same everywhere: I come from the DC-Metro area, which is the third-worst area in the US in terms of traffic congestion (behind LA and NYC, I believe), and every time the crews try to add a lane or something to 395 or 495 or 95, the project takes years, and by the time it's done, the traffic flow has increased with the greater number of cars, so everyone is back to where they started. It's a fool's game. People should learn their lesson and move out to somewhere quiet. Despite sentimental ties to northern Virginia, I have no plans ever to move back there. Wyoming still haunts my dreams and tugs at my heart: mountains, lakes, rivers, and wildlife that can eat me.

There's also something going on at one of our local parks: they've blocked all of the entrances to it, so I guess they're doing some sort of extensive landscaping project. Kind of a shame: I really like that park. But the city grows and evolves with a will of its own: I don't recall that we citizens were ever consulted about these changes, so we'll just have to see what the powers that be come up with. That's one huge disadvantage of living in a city: you're disempowered and a passive ward of the local government. You don't make things happen: things happen to you.

In totally unrelated news: I found keto-ish bread on Coupang. It's ridiculously expensive (almost W30,000 for 16 slider buns), but I'll give the buns a shot.