Commercial Perambulations: Or, a Walk at the Mall

So I have not joined the weekend walk session because they don't meet until 8am which for me falls unter the "too d!@# hot" catagory as well as the fact that the lakeside park area gets extremely crowded on the weekends with people much hardier than I.  As a self confessed loner, I HATE crowds.

But this weekend, the group decided to do their walk at a local mall.  I was up anyway so I figured what the heck.

I have occasionally heard of this recent phenomenon of "mall walking" but never really gave it much thought as I rarely spend much time in malls and prefer to do as much of my exercising as possible out of doors.

So, imagine my surprise when I show up at the mall to meet my group at 8:30 and, while it's not "crowded," there are many, many people circling the mall like planes in a flight pattern.

And it was cool (relatively speaking), and, unfortunatley, there was much to look at as we cruised around and around the .6 mile circuit.  Most of the stores hadn't opened yet, but there was plenty of window shopping.  Probably too much, as one woman told me her last mall walk ended up costing her $300!

I discovered I had to often resist slowing down and browsing the window displays.  As I try to be relatively frugal in my attempts at adult financial repsonsibility, I rarely go to malls and try to shop at stores for things I specifically need and keep my impuse spending to a minimum.  So, I found the vast array of wares for sale extremely tempting.  Thank God for my fellow walkers keeping me on the path at a brisk pace!

I hate to say, my physical issues were acting up that day and kept me from walking as far as I had hoped, I did manage to walk 3.25 miles at a better clip than I expected, thanks to the group leader who's legs are about twice the length of mine!

I wish I had a photo or two to share, but the mall prohibits photography wihtin and I do generally TRY to pay SOME respect to rules.

So, here's a picture from a recent outting to the local zoo.