I left Sunday evening yoga class and was confronted with a dilemma: take the train to meet my friend, just one stop, or simply walk the whole way? Normally, this would be a simple math problem--which way is fastest? However, my options this particular day weren't so simple.

I could walk up and over the 17th Street hill to Cole Valley (which would mostly be "up," with very little "over"), but this particular hump stretches three quarters of mile at a grade approaching 18%. That photo to the upper right just doesn't do it justice. It's the kind of hill people normally drive up, and while sitting at the stoplight perched at the top, nervously look backwards like one does at the top of a rollercoaster. It's the kind of hill where the homes at the peak sell for far higher sums than those below because of their kick-a** views. Yup, it's that kind of hill.

Alternately, I could take the N train, which tunnels under Buena Vista Park, an adjacent and even larger hill bordering the famous hippie haven known as the Haight. (Comically, the sharp incline of 17th Street is actually the passable, comparatively small hill between that park, which tops out at 569 feet, and Twin Peaks, which rises a whopping 910 feet.)

At first, my hamstrings, fully stretched from two sweaty hours of yoga, made waiting for a train seem quite appealing. Ah, but there was a catch. The nearest N stop lay eight blocks out of my way, and on the other end of my ride, I'd have another six blocks to walk. Although this route was mostly flat, could it actually be longer? Curses! The math was getting complicated.

I stood there ten minutes, calculating, hemming, hawing, and delaying the inevitable. I never did make that decision, but before I knew it, I was putting sneakers to scary sloping sidewalk, not unlike a sleepwalker heading towards a cliff. Maybe the long road ahead inspired me to surrender to it, the way a challenging asana requires me to turn off part of my brain in order to see it through. Or maybe I was just nuts.

Halfway up, I was breathing so deeply I thought I was back in class doing nonstop chaturanga dandasanas. At any rate, I had to consciously breathe slowly like a yogi just to keep my heart inside my chest. Although I needed a rest, doing so only halfway up was unacceptable--it would feel too much like being a middle child; seeing that you're too far to turn back, but knowing you're nowhere near done, either. I pressed on (and up).

Two blocks from the summit, I finally took a breather between cross streets named for Mars and Uranus. If I really were in outer space, I probably wouldn't have been gasping for oxygen any less. I turned around to find a fantastic city view, almost seeing my own neighborhood in the hazy distance, three miles away. I crossed over the peak, walked down the few remaining blocks on the other side, and checked my watch: one (very challenging) mile in just 22 minutes. Not bad. I knew I made the right choice--but was that the N train I just heard, rumbling by in the distance?

Much of the talk in "Walk Talk" concerns ditching the most polluting form of transportation, the single-occupant car. On the other hand, public transit is always a green way to go--even if it can feel pretty amazing to ditch it sometimes, too.

Paul Freibott (a.k.a. The Outsider)

San Francisco