FitBit(ch)

I take a walk almost every day. Some days more than one walk. It helps me think and relax. I wear a FitBit and it tracks my steps and mileage. While it may be pushing it a bit I do have a few complaints about this device. In one way or another Fitbit and I have been together for over ten million steps and just over 5,000 miles. When you hit certain mileage numbers FitBit gives you a new badge., When I crossed the five thousand mile barrier I was told I had walked the length of the continent of Africa. Seems like a lot of that walking never got me off Tybee Island. On to my complaints about FitBit.

First, the number of floors you climb. Fitbit calculates how many steps you go up by taking very subtle measurements of air pressure. I found it interesting on May first when I walked that I had gone up the equivalent of 54 flights of stairs. Tybee Island is very flat. I checked a mile of Butler Avenue the other day and discovered that mile only had a six foot change in elevation. I have walked six or seven miles on this island to discover over that entire walk I had not gone up the equivalent of one flight of stairs. What happened May first? A low front was coming through and it was going to rain. The storm front lowered the air pressure and FitBit credited me with 54 flights of stairs I never walked.

Second, how mileage is measured. FitBit determines how far you have walked based on how many steps you have taken and the length of your steps you enter in the settings. I have set my step length a 32 inches. This means I take about 1980 steps per mile. So ten thousand steps is about 5 miles. I also track my long walks with a GPS program called Map My Walk. It tells me how fast I am walking every quarter mile. I try to walk at about three and one half miles per hour or about 17 minutes per mile. There are two ways to walk fast. The first is to increase the number of steps you take per minute. The second is to increase the length of each step. I grew up on a farm and spent a good deal of my teen years walking in bean fields pulling out weeds. Covering ground was accomplished by taking longer steps not quicker ones. You could tell the farm boys in high school by the way they walked. Long strides meant to cover ground. Unfortunately with FitBit, and I have done this, you get to 10,000 steps and Map My Walk shows you at almost 6 miles. So either your stride got really long or FitBit failed to record lots of steps.

Having said all that at the end of the walk my satisfaction is not based on how far or how fast Rose, Lily and I have walked. It is did we enjoy the experience. Did we see something on the walk we had not noticed when we drove by in the car or golf cart? Were there new plants in bloom? Did we see one of our fellow daily walkers, bike riders or runners on their daily journey? Did we dodge all the tourist driving around sightseeing? Did we choose the route that was not part of garbage pickup that day? Tybee has an ugly reality. Temperatures in the mid 90's, a UV index of 10, a trash can full of last weeks fish and beer cans is an assault on your nose. When you get away from the beach a couple of blocks the wind dies away. When a trash truck goes by you the smell can linger for a couple of blocks. To borrow part of a line from George Carlin... it would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. If you walk here you learn what days to walk in an area that does not have trash pickup that day.