Mall Walking Without The Mall

I'll admit it, I've totally slacked off on walking the last several days.  We just had a heatwave, 14 days in a row over 90 degrees (F), and several of those days in the mid to upper 90's.  I don't mind walking in the heat too much.   But I live with my mom right now, and she's afraid I'm just going to keel over and die if I walk in the heat.  So I've missed several days of my primary form of exercise.  But I'm getting to a new phase since I've been trying to walk consistently for over a month now.  I get pissed off when I don't walk.  It's become part of my life now, and I miss it when I don't do it.  That's what I've been working towards.

So today it was supposed to rain and storm all day.  It seemed like another day without walking.  That bummed me out.  But then an idea popped into my head.  Why don't I just go over to one of the big stores in town and walk laps inside the store?  We all know about the old people who walk around malls for exercise in the morning.  The mall walkers.  I never pictured myself as one of them.  But we don't have a mall in this little town.  There's one about ten miles away, but I didn't want to waste the gas to go there.  So I went to a big store and did laps.

On my first lap I went up the dumbell aisle, and pulled out a 15 pound dumbell and did a few curls.  Then I just started walking laps around the perimeter of the store.  One thing I noticed quickly was that I was walking faster than most of the people shopping.  That seemed weird because I'm well over 300 pounds, and I walk slower than most people.  But people in shopping mode with carts (or "buggies" as they're called here) walk slower than my normal pace.  The biggest issue was getting stuck behind people blocking the aisles.  I would usually just cut down another aisle to go around them.

Another thing that caught my attention was something I first noticed shortly after I moved to North Carolina.  If you're walking in a straight line here, people will walk right into you without dodging.  In California, it's just the opposite, people naturally dodge around each other.  They usually don't say, "Excuse me," they just walk around you.  But people here in the South will see you walking on a collision course with them and they'll just keep walking right towards you, making you either dodge or walk into them.  It's just one of those little things I've noticed about the South.

It still hasn't stormed since I got up, but the clouds are thickening.  Thunderstorms will get here before too long.  I got a fair amount of walking in today, despite the weather.  I'm happy about that.