Chapter 105: Breaking the No Routine, Routine

Most of the weekdays passed easily. I had not realized how much I needed to build up my reserve energy. After three days of doing nothing more than showing the two vacant apartments, I felt as good as I had in years. Not better, but I was back at my highest level of energy. In those three days I had also established a routine that I enjoyed.

Every one of those three mornings, I dressed like an Eskimo, started Gus's bike, then rode to breakfast at the local Hardee's. On the morning after Kate and Martin left my apartment I picked up aTryon paper there. In it I found a story about middle aged and older, men and women who walked at the two malls in Tryon. After that I began a new part of my morning routine. I rode the bike five miles out to the mall located between Aster and Tryon. It wasn't a large mall, but it did have two enclosed stories which made it ideal for walking.

I wasn't sure how far I wanted to walk, but I did my math calculations before I left the restaurant. If I walked 3 miles an hour, which Google informed me was the average idle walking speed for an adult woman my age, then every twenty minutes I walked one mile. That very morning I stopped by the Wa- Mart store which, wasn't too far out of the way, there I bought a cheap digital watch.

Once I arrived at the lower level of the mall, I stripped off most of my clothes. It was not at all sexy I can assure you. Then I looked at my watch and began to walk. I tried to walk normally as I began the first lap of the bottom floor. I walked by stores mostly filled with boutique type businesses. I did find two large department store chains represented. I had no idea that they were in the mall. Obviously I am not much of a shopper.

There were also three empty stores on the bottom level of the mall. Christmas had come and gone with no more than a turkey dinner at Jen's house for me. Followed by passing out of a few boxes of very expensive cookies. It looked as though for at least three retail shop it hadn't had a better Christmas than it had for me. All the stores in the mall seemed to have suffered to some extent during the season of giving. In the present economy I was told that it was typical.

I walked steady for the complete lap and then checked the watch. I had walked eight minutes. I did a rough calculation and figured that I needed to do two and a half laps of the down stairs area for a mile. So five laps was two miles. That seemed about right, so off I went for four more laps. I rode the escalator up to the top floor after one more lap of the bottom floor. I timed upper floor lat as well and found that it was pretty close to the same.

Right or wrong, I set five laps as my baseline. I began to walk and my mind began to drift. As I walked I began to notice the people that I passed. I realized that I had instinctively turned right off the escalator which set me to walking clockwise while everyone else walked counter clockwise. There had to be something significant in it. The herd going in the same direction and me going backwards, I mean.

The direction I chose to walk had me confronting each of them every lap. I guess I might claim it kept people from walking up behind me, so maybe there was a reason after all. I mean other than me being out of step with everyone else in the whole world.

I was pleasantly surprised to find how friendly the mall walkers were. They were mostly older retired folks. Yes most even older than my forty something years. They seemed to be a reasonably fit bunch as well. Some were couples obviously husband and wife types, some were couples, like women who came to walked together regularly, and some couples looked to be mall pickup couples. Probably one walk stands, I thought.

There was also a very few singles like me walking as well. All that I noticed before I walked into the food court. In the food court I found another twenty or so people. Some looked as though they might be walkers on a scheduled break and some looked as though they might be mall employees waiting to start work. The workers being only marginally better dressed.

For the first time since I left the sandbox, I had a routine at least part of the day. For must of a week, I had walked at the mall after breakfast at Hardee's. I knew that if I was in a high risk environment, any routine would have been totally stupid. Since I really wasn't in an imminent threat situation, it was only mildly stupid. The morning walk gave me a little exercise, and it gave me a little structure. I decided that I needed both.

The final reinforcement for the continuation of the walk was at the food bar. No I would never eat there, but there was a cookie shop. I tried to avoid sugar like the plague, because for me it was. I would have tried to pretend that the cookie shop didn't exit, except that all the people, waiting for the stores to open, had coffee cups with their logo. Since I love coffee, I bought a cup on my last lap. I was only half a lap from finishing, so I waited until I reached the bike to try it. The coffee was delicious. It was just a little stronger than what most restaurants served, and just a little weaker than my own. Not only that, the girl behind the counter was gorgeous and sweet as well. I was hooked.

Before I left for breakfast that morning, I realized that Friday had slipped up on me again. At the Hardee's I realized that I had finally been around long enough to recognize the people there. I could wave at most of them, and they would wave back. Since over the years, I had learned the art of eavesdropping without being obvious about it, I knew enough about most of them to speak. It was a skill that came from working undercover investigating thefts from military installations.