ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – I wonder sometimes about routines, about how they develop and how it’s possible to have several. At home, my routines include just about everything from how I pack my backpack to preparing meals to cleaning up at night. I even brush my teeth in the same pattern, twice a day.
When I travel, I adhere to another
set of routines: the packing of my carry-on suitcase; the mix of work (writing
or editing) and fun (reading or watching a film) on a plane; and writing emails
on my Blackberry during the short breaks in between meetings.
When it comes to running, I feel
like I have a split personality. At home, I run early, sometimes at 5 a.m. I
set out almost exactly 30 minutes after I get up. I have certain set routes. (When
I go on a different route, it seems to take much more effort.) On the road, though,
I run whenever possible. It could be soon after arriving at the hotel. Or I could
go when there’s an opening in the middle of the day. And almost every run is a
new route; finding my way doesn’t seem to bother me a bit.
At home, I am rigid; on the road,
flexible. Maybe my routines on the road are simply a matter of taking advantage
of time. But why can’t I do the same at home? At home, my routines both give me
comfort (peace of mind in establishing a known rhythm of a day) and restriction
(there’s almost no way I’ll run at the spur of a moment.) On the road, I’m free.
I was just in St. Petersburg, and
after a meeting, I found out that I had exactly one hour before our group were going to dinner. I wasted no
time. I ran up the stairs in our boutique hotel, changed in my room (called the
Bangkok Room for its Thai motif), and was out the door. I turned north along
one of St. Petersburg’s many canals.
We had the luck of being here in
fall, and the temperature was about 60 degrees. It was 6 p.m. with still
another three hours of light, and the sun felt soft and warm as I headed toward
the old part of the city.
Guidebooks call the city the Venice
of Russia for its canals, and it was easy to trace a run along them. They
criss-cross every four blocks or so, and I found myself going up and down foot
bridges like an old goat might. If sun fell on the canal path, I followed it, turning
every few blocks or so.
I had wanted to come to St.
Petersburg since I was in high school in the town of Springfield, Vermont, a
place also dominated by water: The Black River ran through the town, and machine-tool
shops were built along its very edge. In high school, I wrote a paper about
Leningrad, then the city’s name, relying heavily on a National Geographic
article as my source. I still remember the beautiful pictures of the city; it
was described as a gem behind the Iron Curtain and I wondered whether I would
ever have the chance to see such veiled beauty. And so it was especially
thrilling to me to have a stolen hour in this city, turning corners and seeing
architectural wonders that were just pictures in a magazine to me before.
I ran past cathedrals, the statue
of Alexander the Great, the Hermitage Museum. I stood by the main waterway that
ran through the city, the Neva River, and marveled at what was all around me.
I looked at my watch. I had been
out 25 minutes. With 25 minutes to get back, that gave me just 10 minutes to shower
and change. I reluctantly left the river and the majestic buildings from
another era, and started running back along the canals, scooting in and out of
traffic at crosswalks, a little extra spring in my well-traveled legs, so happy
to have had a break from routine in a city I had dreamed of.
