OT: walking and exercising (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Tue, 25 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
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D <nospam@example.net> writes:
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On Mon, 24 Feb 2025, Rich wrote:

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[...]
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I often 'frustrate' my wife by going off the beaten path (major roads)
onto back roads (I'll admit, sometimes done specifically for the value
of the 'frustration' part) to get "there" from "here" with no GPS nav
or pre-planning at all and in almost all instances I get "there" even
though the entire route is brand new for me.

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This is excellent! Always going the same way, or driving the same route gets
very boring after a while. Sometimes when I walk a new path, I discover a new
store I didn't know existed.

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That really happens when you walk instead of driving.  Not to mention
that if you're walking, it's okay to stop by at a store.  If you're
driving, it's not okay because (at least where I live), it's never easy
to find a parking place.  And you might not want to interrupt the song
that's playing or get out of the air conditioning.
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This is the truth! I like walking. It is one of the few forms of
exercise I engage in. =) It is also relaxing and can almost be a bit
meditative if you get into it.

I agree. :)   What I often do at the beach is actually just walk it end
to end.  The beach I always go to has about 1 km in length.  But lately
I've been trying to swim in the ocean as well.  I've taken swimming
classes for various years and I didn't have the energy to continue when
I joined graduate school.  Now I'm out and I have been trying to
continue, but after two months swimming in a gym, I decided to quit it
and move to the beach.  I'm happy to announce that lately the water has
been crystalline around here.  The news called it Caribbean today.

I have been using some fins to give me some ``self confidence''.  It's
fairly scary to swim the beach end to end.  You need to distance
yourself from the shore to stay a bit away from the waves and even other
people.  And you can barely see much while swimming: even with
crystalline water, visility is still very limited.

But it's really more pleasurable to be at the beach than at the gym.
Sure, when the water gets pretty dark, I will probably not swim.  I hope
I'm lucky enough so that such conditions don't last too long when they
arrive.