Things are Spread Out in Tucson
March 14, 2009
Post Tags: Ferguson Tractor , Tucson , Tucson Urban Living
It is a long way from one end of town to the other
I have friends and family that live in other parts of the country. This past August I went back to Ohio where I grew up. On that trip I stopped to visit in Des Moines where my daughter and her family still live. I was a minister there for 18 years and I hadn’t been back for 7 years.
I also have a daughter who lives in Iowa City with her husband. They both live near the campus and often take the bus or walk to many of their destinations.
I spent a few days in these urban settings and realized how much time seems to be spent here in Tucson going from place to place in the course of a day.
It helped explain how so many people were getting so much more done in a day than I was; more than I ever seem to find possible. It has a lot to do with location and distance (no not time management like you are thinking).
A Lot of Miles Driven Each Week
All in a days work
This past week I drove over 500 miles. Most of the time it was just over 100 miles a day doing routine things here in Tucson. I’ll admit our routine is more mile intensive than most people that live here in Tucson. Working in real estate mean you put a lot of mile on a car in a year.
Wednesday was a typical kind of day. Trip to downtown Tucson to shot the farmer’s market and scout out a couple of neighborhoods we want to get back to for a photo shoot. Then to the center of town for a lunch meeting. After the meeting out to Vail for a final walk-through with our buyers. Then home for the evening and office work. Driving distance for the day 115 miles. Time in car 4 hrs.
Thursday morning it was down to emissions testing for the annual all clear on my Tracker, 17 miles each way. Buyers out at 11 am. till 1:30 pm. Grabbed a little lunch then it was down to Alltel for a phone issue 12 miles from home to the store, on to the eye doctor and then deliver keys after the closing. Home around 6 pm. Distance driven for the day 150 miles.
Tucson Urban Settings
There are parts of Tucson that provide that “urban” setting. There are some people that can walk or take public transportation for almost all of their needs. It all depends on where you live and how isolated you want to be. If you want an urban setting Tucson has it. If you want to get out where the bobcats and javelina walk the streets and will eat the flowers on your porch or take a mid afternoon nap on your back patio, Tucson has that too.
An Iowa March Blizzard
I’ve lived places that were more spread out, honest. When I lived in Iowa it was 9 miles to the closest grocery store and 13 miles to the closest McDonald’s (I keep track of things like that). Taking the kids to school was a 30 mile round trip. Not only that, the last spring I was in Iowa we had one of those March snow storms. I was living alone at the time and my home was on a dirt road and the driveway was 1/4 mile gravel driveway. I had a blade on the front of my Ferguson Tractor, but the snow was up to the top of the gas tank. It took 6 days before the road was opened. It was opened by the neighbors getting together with tractors and backhoes to make a single lane open enough people could at least get out till the county could open the roads which they did two days later.
I’ll take Tucson spread out.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:57 am
[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Last week I said Tucson is spread out and a couple of days ago I added a map to show my travels on one of the days mentioned in the [...]