7 Bridges Walk

This past Sunday I walked the farthest I have in over ten years: 22 kilometers (~14 miles). A few years ago I ran nearly this far in the Brooklyn Half Marathon, and during the blackout of 2003, Dana and I walked nearly this far... but not quite. Sydney was sponsoring a typical spring/summer/autumn event for the city that consisted of walking over seven bridges in "Sydney".

Q: Typical?
A: Yes. Besides the three or four months during which it is slightly chilly, there is some great outdoor event for every weekend day. The Saturday before this walk Dana and I had lunch at a fantastic food and wine festival in Hyde Park. There were transvestites and lots of little dogs!... but sorry, I forgot my camera.

Q: Why the "Sydney" in quotes?
A: Because in Sydney you can walk 75 kilometers in any direction and still be in the "city"... unless you walk east.

So at 8:45AM, Dana, Glenn, Chris, Fiona, and I started toward the Rocks to pick up our passport and start the big walk. Chris and Fiona live in Pyrmont - on the walking course - but we had to go to the Rocks to pick up our passport. When registering the for the walk, there was a question that asked, "So... which village do you think you might start from maybe?" All of us thought, "Well I think maybe we might start from the Rocks," and so so we checked that box. When we received the confirmation email, it said, "You MUST start at the Rocks village, since this is the village you said you would definitely start from!" At the Rocks they grabbed a passport from a pile, taped the barcodes we had brought with us to it, and sent us on our way back through Pyrmont. {sigh}


Thirty minutes later we were at Darling Harbour, about to cross the Pyrmont Bridge. I heard that this is the busiest pedestrian bridge in the world. Or at least the southern hemisphere. I do love that "southern hemisphere" claim to fame. "Wow, there's nothing in New Zealand, Argentina, or South Africa that exceeds it???" It very well could be the busiest pedestrian bridge in the world. But, even if not, it's a swing bridge on which construction started in 1899 and a monorail traverses it. So it's pretty cool.

On through Prymont and up over the Anzac Bridge. The bridge was completed in 1996 and replaced the old Glebe Island Bridge, which looks almost exactly like the Pyrmont Bridge. Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. An Australian flag flies on the top of one Pylon, a kiwi flag on the top of the other. You can easily distinguish the two flags because the flag of New Zealand has one less star. The Anzac Bridge is the longest cable-stayed span bridge in Australia and amoungst the longest concrete cable-stayed span bridges in the world.

This puts us about one sixth of the way into the walk. More tomorrow...