Around The World (i.e. Manhattan, for those of you not from New York City) in (less than) 80 Days

Joseph D. Terwilliger, Ph.D.

Total Steps as of January 22, 2005 = 1,931,006

Which equals roughly 1279 miles or 2057 km

In September 2004, when teaching a course on "Logical Reasoning in Human Genetics" at the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, I was given a pedometer by the Institute as a gift for the teaching. I started to monitor my average daily walking, and it turned out to be a meager 5000 steps, which at roughly 1510 steps to the mile, was only 3.3 miles a day, which was basically walking to work and home two or three times a day...

Realizing that I was overweight, and needed to get in shape after a year on the road travelling in foreign countries eating wonderful food and not exercising at all, I decided that this year in my annual November-December getting in shape period, that I would walk every block of every street in Manhattan again as quickly as possible. I had done it once before over the course of an entire year, in 2002, but this time I decided to try and do it in two months by the end of 2005. At that point I weighed about 250 pounds, and had a 40 inch waist, and knew I had to fix it while I had the chance, knowing I would not leave NYC again until February.

As a mathematician, I had to first define the task specifically and rigorously, such that I could clearly know when I had finished, by answering the question "how do you define a 'street'" for purposes of walking every block of every street? I decided for purposes of this project the rational definition would be that a street is any roadway that has facilities for both pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic. I excluded private drives, as those are not public streets, and to have a consistent definition, based on the structure of NY city streets, I defined public streets further as streets defined as above which are connected to other streets by continuous pavement, and here I use the word in the American definition of pavement (for some bizarre reason Brits call the sidewalk the pavement, a 'false cognate' between British and English languages which got me in trouble with the police for misunderstanding when I lived in oxford...). Private roads and apartment driveways are typically connected to the street by recessed sidewalks made of sidewalk concrete, rather than asphalt. Furthermore, if there were a fence or sign restricting entry as a "private drive", it was not counted as a street. Furthermore, since the roads through the various parks are not intended for pedestrian use, those were not counted either, though obviously many traversals of central park and others were necessary to complete this task. The Manhattan Greenway on the waterfront as well is not technically a street by these definitions, yet I did walk that as well, independent of the goal of completing every street in town.

Examples of things that were not considered streets would include "East 4th Street Walk" which is a pedestrian path that has a name and addresses, but is clearly not meeting my definition of a street; 14th ad 15th streets, east of Avenue C, as they are fenced off, and have restricted access, as does, for example, Washington Street between Barclay and Vesey; Academy Street, east of 10th Avenue, as it is fenced off, and many occurrences of "Marginal Street"; and most of the Henry Hudson Parkway, south of the George Washington Bridge, as only in the North does it have pedestrian paths. Same argument holds for the FDR and Harlem River Drives, excepting those areas where they do have pedestrian pathways, which are scattered all along the East of Manhattan Island.

Examples of things that are nonfunctional and useless streets, but nevertheless met my definition of 'street' and were thus walked, include the block of W. 134th street which goes under the West Side Highway and ends at a brick wall, and is surrounded above and on all sides by walls - basically a half block long tunnel to nowhere; the same street between Lenox and 5th Avenues, which basically is going nowhere, and is about 50 feet long like the cross of a T sticking below Lenox Terrace; the various sidestreets East of Pleasant Avenue, which gradually terminate in a big dirt filled vacant lot construction site; etc...

The next question was how to define the limits of "Manhattan". I decided to use the political definition of New York County, which, for historical reasons includes the region of Marble Hill, across the Harlem River, Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Wards and Randall Islands which the Triborough Bridge crosses. Furthermore, all East River and Harlem River bridges are considered to be in Manhattan until they cover land in the Bronx, Queens, or Brooklyn, so those are all considered streets, as they have facilities for both pedestrian and motor vehicle access (excepting the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, which does not admit pedestrians). This meant that I ended up having to cross the Triborough Bridge from Wards Island to Astoria on what turned out to be a snowy day, which is NOT a fun thing to do!

So, my goal was to walk every block of every street in the Borough of Manhattan in New York City, starting from Marble Hill on October 28 and working my way down to the bottom. In the beginning I was averaging only about 10,000 steps a day, but it quickly edged up to an average of 20-30 thousands (15-20 miles). I started marking it off on a wall map of New York in my office, and keeping track of the total steps. I had hoped to finish by the end of 2004, but as I had a visitor for a week in December, and had to visit my mother for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and it was a busier season than usual for tuba jobs, it took a couple weeks longer than planned. As of January 14, I had walked over 1200 miles, and lost about 45 pounds, and finished by walking across the Triboro Bridge to Astoria this afternoon, just in time to get home and have my euphoria crushed by the Jets once again...

The following set of photos shows the progress and distances travelled, as I started photographing the map on November 29, and progressed from there as follows. Before the historical shots, however, the current status of the walk is shown - in this case, as of today, January 22, 2005. Note that on January 14, 2005, I had finished every block of every street in Manhattan, and had begun to walk The South Bronx ;)

In the first month, before I started photographing the wall map, from October 28 to November 29, I walked a total of 595587 steps, I had finished the streets as shown on the following map

.

The rest is summarized by a snapshot of snapshots below...

December 6 - (after 128,588 more steps)

December 21 - (after 349,889 more steps)

December 23 - (after 53,352 more steps)

December 28 - (after 81,886 more steps)

December 31 - (after 113,161 more steps)

January 1 - (after 43,753 more steps on New Year's Day)

January 9 - (after 199,221 more steps)

January 12 - (after 68,742 more steps)

January 14 - (after 115,714 more steps - YES THAT IS 77 MILES IN TWO DAYS!!!)

January 15 - (after 22,816 more steps)

January 18 - (after 49,399 more steps)

January 22 - (after 85,409 more steps - including 32,213 during the Blizzard on 1/22)

Now, On to the The South Bronx!!!

Some interesting trivia and opinions