The weather was absolutely gorgeous today so I spent a few hours sitting outside on the patio with the Kindle enjoying the warm sun and catching up on my reading for class. I got a lot of reading done. Dominica would have come out and sat with me but her own Kindle has been on loan and she has nothing that she can read outside. This might be an argument for physical books again. She has gotten into the habit of loaning out her Kindle like it was a book and goes long periods of time without it so we can’t read together like we used to.
I tried to get Dominica to go out walking with me today but her feet hurt from yesterday and she decided not to do any walking today. So I decided that I would go out myself this evening as I really want to keep the activity level up. Without doing the extra exercise I am never going to manage to lose the weight and get into shape for Europe. So it is really critical.
I left for my walk just before Luciana was going to go to bed. I had checked out the path earlier for walking from home to historic downtown Carrollton. It did not look too bad and I need a “destination” when I am walking to give myself motivation. So I set around eight or eight thirty. It was dark but the nice was quiet and the weather was good – just a little bit cool so that I could really enjoy my walk. I had “Hard Eight” on the iPhone Touch to listen to while I walked.
I am finding that there are many more late night or all night gas stations around me than I would have realized. I don’t think that I have ever lived somewhere were getting gas late at night was so easy. You can go in any direction from our house and you will hit a gas station open all night. I stopped at Seven Eleven on the way to pick up a fountain soda, some nuts and a package of veggies. It is Sunday so, for the most part, I skipped eating today as I often do but on the long walk it is kind of important to have something.
My path to downtown Carrollton took me through some areas that I have barely seen previously so it was nice to walk the neighbourhoods and get to know the area better. I approached downtown from Denton Road and got to see the old houses. That area looks a lot like I imagine it did in 1950 when those houses were not very old.
I got to downtown just before ten. I walked all around downtown as I have never been inside the main plaza before and I wanted to see what there was. Downtown is full of really neat little shops, the train station, a twenty four hour RaceTrac gas station and more. Downtown is really pretty and very accessible. It is mostly food, candy, clothing and antiques but it is extremely well done. It was nice to walk around and at some point I look forward to getting Dominica to walk down here to try out the food. Sadly, though, there is almost no fish and very little vegetarian outside of a salad here or there in all of downtown’s restaurants and what there is is extremely bread heavy as every restaurant is a sandwich place except for one that is an Italian restaurant whose menu was not available in the window. There is the rather famous Agave Azul Mexican restaurant there that can be see far and wide because it is so tall that it towers over the highway. We’ll need to do some exploring here during the day when things are open. This is not a late night area.
I stopped at the RaceTrak and loaded up on supplies – nuts, V8 and some Green Machine. Very healthy stuff. I used the restroom, thank goodness for all night gas stations, and headed back north. The walk back north went quicker, I feel, than the walk south. I was feeling pretty good and I decided to stop in at the Carrollton Public Library and check out the external parts of the facility so I walked through the building (there is an open area to go between the two main parts of the building) and down to the waterfront on Josie Ranch Lake where there are nighttime lights and a fountain. There was even someone out there fishing at nearly midnight.
It was not quite midnight when I got back to the house. Probably a quarter till midnight. Nearly ten miles on my walk today. Not bad at all. I was tired when I returned. Right off to sleep for me.