Walking Music

I listen to music when I walk at lunch.  This is something I just started doing, within the last month or so.  I began bringing my iPod with me because it had Wi-Fi.  I would walk with my destination being a coffee shop.  There, I would connect to their Wi-Fi and peruse email, update my Facebook status ("At the coffee shop").  I felt very much a part of the modern age, very hip, very cool, oh so with it.  Unless, I forgot my reading glasses.  Then I felt very unhip.  I knew that my expression, as I squinted at the tiny display, could easily be mistakenly read as confusion - "Look at that poor old guy, trying to work his newfangled gadget.  Why does he even try?".  The iPod-coffee shop sessions soon lost their appeal.

But, as long as I had my iPod with me, I might as well listen to music.  So now I walk for most of my lunch break and I listen to music.  I don't have a ton of music loaded on it - most of our music is on CDs and I find moving it onto the computer to be a tedious task.  I can't do more than a couple at one sitting.  I have found that iTunes often offers free music.  I almost always download it.  What I end up with on my iPod is an eclectic blend of old and new.

I used to spend far too much time contemplating what to listen to when I walked.  I tried putting together a playlist of good "walking music".  It sort of worked but after a few days I grew tired of hearing the same songs.  Now, I just let the iPod play anything it can find in the library.  Sometimes, I intervene and skip a song if it just isn't working for me.  I love the soundtrack to "Schindler's List" but it's a bit melancholy when you're cutting through a college campus, dodging kids playing frisbee.  I'll save that one for an overcast day in late fall.

Sometimes one of my new, free tunes will play.  I find them a welcome addition, something new mixed in with the old familiar, comfort music.  Like sprinkling feta cheese on a hamburger hotdish, they give the old a new perspective.  When these tunes come on, I sometimes turn up the volume a bit, hoping some of the sound will bleed out to the young folks I'm walking next to - let them know I'm cool and young at heart.  For similar reasons, I tend to turn down James Taylor - these kids don't know "Fire and Rain".