Walker's paradise

I've posted several times in the last couple of years about my warring love of the Front Range's natural splendor and antipathy for Colorado Springs' urban sprawl. Last winter I mentioned the walkability ranking website I'd found. Today I entered our new address into the site and found we've traded a "Car-Dependent" locale for a "Walker's Paradise."

But we hardly needed the website to tell us that. In Week 1 at our new home we've

• Bought one of those urban personal shopping carts and walked to the grocery store twice to stock up
• Walked to a fancy dinner and sold-out movie for our 10th anniversary (it wasn't climbing a 14-er, as we'd originally planned for our celebration,  but it was a decent substitute mid-move to a more ordinary landscape)
• Walked to the hardware store to buy extension cords and other romantic, anniversary-worthy items
• Walked to Starbucks multiple times
• Walked to ice cream after dinner
• Walked to a free evening concert in the park
• Walked to the train station for schedules to downtown Philadelphia
• Walked to the post office
• Walked to get a haircut
• Walked around a beautiful college campus at dusk, letting the kids play under the trees and in the meditation labyrinth
• Walked to a new church
• Walked past the hospital
• Walked to the farmers' market in the rain and walked home with a cart full of fresh produce, honey, coffee, bread, soup, and flowers
• Anticipated walking to the brand-new public library as soon as it opens in a few weeks
• And of course, walked to the playgrounds and top-notch athletic facilities on the campus where we're living and where we effectively have a personal gym available to us free of charge.

It's all pretty fantastic.

Of course, the miles we are no longer putting on the car in daily life look like they're going to be added to Tom's newly long commute. We've been here one week and Tom has had four job interviews with two different institutions and received two job offers. Both are good churches, both are long commutes, neither job is in his main areas of ministerial interest but both have potential, and a hard decision is in the offing. But two job offers in Week 1! Hooray.

The roads have also brought us an extraordinary number of family visitors in our first week. Last Wednesday Tom's aunts, cousin, and baby cousin showed up when we were at our most chaotic, having let Alice "unpack" toys at will all over the apartment. The family whisked the girls away to play on playgrounds while Tom and I unpacked our way. The next day Tom's parents arrived and took the girls off to see their Bucks County cousins. On Saturday my parents drove in and spent two days with us, continuing to delight the younger set with patient attention and the older set with quality catch-up time. "Who is coming to see us next?" Alice wanted to know.

We've put in serious unpacking time, and the apartment is looking decent. My first major project was to paint the girls' room, which took several days and mushroomed into a far more ambitious project as we added just one...then two...then three accent colors to our initial plan to cover up the electric yellow-green on two of their walls with something more sleep-inducing. The building is an old 19th-century hotel with complex molding, external electrical wiring running along the walls, high ceilings, and other inducements to elaborate painting schemes. But most of their room is done now, and we even have about half of our pictures and wall hangings up.

As we downsize from 2220-square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 2 offsite offices lined with bookshelves to 1200 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and no offsite offices, Tom meanwhile has been lugging all kinds of books and furniture up to our attic storage space in the building's tower, right at the top. Think the owlery in Harry Potter; then imagine relocating your library there, sans elevator.

Given the perversity of moving, however, we find we still need to buy some new things for our place. We've done some browsing for a couch and next will turn to floor lamps for dim rooms and area rugs for the old, creaky, worn floorboards. We've gone from wall-to-wall carpeting in even our kitchen and bathroom to hardwood and linoleum everywhere, with people below us to hear every toy the girls drop.

Meanwhile we've toured school options for Edith, gotten internet and TV service set up, gotten to know some of my new colleagues, and spent a day visiting Princeton...specifically, the wonderful public library, the super independent bookstore, and the dear friends at the girls' preschool.

At least one of you has asked what exactly we're doing with this move back East. I spent five unfruitful years on an oversaturated college job market, in which some 20-50% of PhDs from top history programs are getting offers of employment. Then this spring I received an unexpected slap in the face (financially speaking) from Colorado College, which seemed to think I'd jump at the chance to stay on for a 60% paycut and termination of benefits, as casualized labor. Since I couldn't see raising the girls on the street, I declined the offer and for the first time turned away from the higher ed market. Having discovered how much I love teaching (not a proclivity generally admired or rewarded in higher ed), I started looking for jobs with independent secondary schools to see what might happen...and wound up choosing between multiple wonderful offers. After eight years of training and five years on a job market that gives you nothing except the message that that you're unworthy, it's nice to be wanted.

So we actually had--gasp--some choice about where we would move next, and I accepted a job in Philadelphia teaching history at an independent PK-12 girls' school where the girls in my sample class at the interview blew me away.  Another attraction of the Philly area was family relatively nearby, and a final crucial consideration was that Tom had professional contacts and networks in the broader area from our time in New Jersey...as evidenced  by the outcome of his week of job hunting.

So that's where we are. Edith may attend the school where I'm teaching, and as we turn to Alice's schooling, it looks like she might attend the preschool that rents space on campus. In that case the girls and I would live, work, go to school, and have daycare all in the same building. How's that for green living?

Of course, there are less rosy aspects of the area and this turn of events. For one thing, we've traded the land of pickup trucks and Subarus for the land of BMWs and Lexuses. The tuition information for the school where I'll be teaching includes hypothetical family financial scenarios so far removed from what I'd consider reality that it makes me feel a bit ill.

But those posts are to come. One step at a time. To the grocery store, to start.