Sunday, July 22, 2012

Skinny Bay Area Folks

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. - Steven Wright
First week at my new job is done with. I'm staying with one of my coworkers who lives in the Berkeley hills. I stayed here, instead of my usual Palo Alto home-away-from-home, under the assumption that the communite from Berkeley to San Francisco would be better than the commute from Palo Alto to San Francisco. That may not be the case.
The commute here involves a 1.2 mile hike down the Berkeley mountains to the BART station followed by the BART ride into the city and another 0.8 mile walk from BART to the office. The commute home is different - because it would likely be something like 20 stories hiking up the hill from the BART station. So instead it's around a 1 mile walk from the office to the bus station followed by a final 0.5 mile walk down the very steep hills to the house. So each day I'm easily walking 20+ stories and 15,000+ steps as part of the commute. This is why bay area people are some of the skinniest in the nation.
What I found most interesting about this whole thing is that by leaving the house at 8am, we get to the office at around 9:15am. So a little over an hour for the commute. If I run the numbers from Palo Alto, it would end up taking just about the same amount of time. Since the baby bullet gets me from Palo Alto in 38 minutes, I would just need to calculate in the time to walk on both ends. Honestly it might be shorter. This week I'm planning to spend one night in Palo Alto, so I'll figure it out.
By the end of this first month at the office I would be a greek god of physical stature. Or something like that.