Recently I was on duty for a week caring for my 90-year-old mother in Charlottesville.
One afternoon, my husband unwittingly drove back to our farm in Orange County with my car keys in his glove compartment. We needed laundry soap, olive oil and white wine for Mom’s ritual cocktail hour. So off I went, shopping bag over my shoulder, a $20 bill in my pocket, to hoof it from my mother’s house in Meadowbrook Heights to the Kroger on Hydraulic Road.
The walk passed quickly and along the way I pondered its win-win implications: low carbon footprint, high fat-burning returns (after all, I was power walking to the beat of my daughter’s tune selections on our shared Shuffle), and abstemiousness, three items being all I could afford with my $20 and cared to hump all the way back. I was pleased when the total came to $19.06 and that my Spartan load was bearable.
Though happy with this alternative means of getting to the grocery store, I was surprised to find my rather straightforward route to be so pedestrian-unfriendly. For though there is a partial sidewalk along Hydraulic beside the Kroger shopping center, it ends abruptly and one must cross to the other side of the multilane road to continue one’s journey to the U.S. 250 Bypass.
In these days when there is a heightened concern about both the environment and the epidemic level of overweight Americans, in a town as enlightened as Charlottesville, why does the focus continue to be on constructing multimillion-dollar traffic exchanges and parkways over state-of-the art pedestrian and bicycle friendly win-win byways?
Upon returning home, I helped my mother out to the terrace and poured out two glasses of wine, savoring the occasion the more for the effort that went into it.
Felicity Blundon
Orange County
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