The Slippery Slope Of Laziness

It all started last week when the The Great Christmas Tree Adventure of 2005 activated some tendonitis in my ankle (and gave me a bit of poison ivy, but that isn't relevant to this post). So for a few days last week I couldn't walk -- at least not without a good amount of pain -- and so I drove in to campus.

Now, I have had a walking commute since I graduated from high school. Well, one year in college I lived off-campus and about a mile away from my classes, and so there were some days when I would drive even though I tried to bike most days. But throughout grad school and my postdoc I lived a walking -- or occassionally biking -- distance from the office and parking was so expensive near campus that I couldn't have driven in even if I wanted to. And now that we live here in Smallville, we live all the way across town from my office which means it takes me about 12 minutes (pretty consistently 3 songs on my Ipod) to walk to the office. All of this is to say that I have never really driven to work before. But last week my ankle was bothering me enough that I did. In fact, last Wednesday I had to go get my campus parking permit, which was totally free and allows me to park anywhere on campus -- yet another joy of teaching someplace other than an urban campus.

By the end of the week, I had gone to see the podiatrist who had loaded me up with some anti-inflammatory medication and over the weekend the medication and a lot of lying around helped the ankle so that I could walk pain-free. But on Monday I decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, so I hopped into the Toyota Sienna and drove to campus.

Yesterday morning one of my classes had their final exam at 8:30 in the morning. And this was pretty darn early for me to make it to campus, especially since I needed to get there early to rearrange the tables in the room. And I decided that I wanted to bring them in doughnuts, so I thought I should drive to campus.

Yes, you can see where this is going. The walk is perfectly pleasant and quite short, but driving is even shorter and more pleasant, and I am now addicted to driving in and looking for any excuse I can. Today's excuse: The temperature outside right now is 3 degrees Farenheight. Of course, before those of you who live in Minneapolis and Ann Arbor think I'm a wimp, let me point out that with the wind chill it feels like it is THREE DEGREES. I think that's a pretty darn good excuse to drive in. Don't you?