When the pandemic struck, I found myself stranded in Madison, Wisconsin, without friends or direction. I wanted to make the most of my isolation, and I dove into everything from creative pursuits to busy work. But when the trauma of the pandemic was too much for me to be productive, I did what many Americans did: I put way too much pressure on the afternoon walk to cure what ailed me.
Even as I strolled between the twin lakes of Madison, I wanted to have something to show for my time. I was using the Strava app to map my routes, and it occurred to me that, if I were more intentional in my wanderings, the resulting maps might be more interesting.
Alas, the streets of Madison bent to the contours of the lakes, with a layout more akin to my native Boston than to a more orderly city.

I put this aspiration on the back burner, waiting for the day my travels brought me to an accommodating design.
It was a full year later, in March 2021, that I finally found the grid I’d been looking for — in the Sunset District of San Francisco.
I immediately started plotting the walks I would take, taking screenshots of Google Maps and using an image editor to trace possible paths. Certain constraints presented themselves: I was staying in the narrower Outer Sunset district, near the beach to the west, so if I wanted to spell a long word, I would have to cross into the more expansive territory to the east of Sunset Boulevard. Certain letters, such as R
, W
, and others with angles, would also be difficult to form. Finally, I didn’t want to “cheat” by pasting together multiple walks; my routes had to be one, uninterrupted, unbroken line, Etch-a-Sketch style.
With those rules in mind, I set out. My first walk would spell the name of the computer that has inspired me to create blogs, podcasts, magazines, and license plates.
The route consisted of 28 north-south blocks, each being roughly 0.1 miles; and 34 east-west blocks, at roughly 0.05 miles each. That may not sound like much, but they added up: it took me 91 minutes to walk the combined 5.31 miles that spelled out APPLE II
.
But it was worth it! This result garnered a lot of attention on Facebook, with 256 likes, 58 comments, and three shares! There were some critics, of course, who intentionally chose to misread some letters, but I knew I’d done the best I could.
My next walk came on the cusp of my second vaccine shot, so I decided to be a bit political and commemorate one of the heroes of the past year.
FAUCI
was such a short word that I was able to keep to my own neighborhood — even stopping at my Airbnb mid-stroll for a pitstop. And that’s good, because I was halfway through the first letter when I made a mistake and had to start over! It made for a longer journey, but better to make the mistake sooner than later.
My stay in San Francisco afforded me time for just one more piece of street writing, yet I lacked inspiration for its message. Fortunately, my co-worker Laurena had the perfect idea.
If you don’t recognize the phrase, you may need to be reminded of the 1973 tale of Wilbur and his friend Charlotte:
SOME PIG
was by far the hardest phrase to spell, though I blame my own poor choices. Unlike the other two routes that I’d walked, I rode my bicycle for this one. And since I wanted to avoid making a lot of left-hand turns off a main road, I wrote this phrase backward, starting with the G
and ending with the S
. That led to me forgetting where I was and going the wrong way, sometimes not realizing it until I’d already gotten back to my Airbnb and looked at the data I’d collected. So this time, I did cheat: though I did bicycle everything shown above, I had to stitch together three different Strava activities to make it look seamless.
Whether you call it figure running, street writing, or GPS art, this pastime was a rare opportunity and fun, safe reason to leave my Airbnb during a pandemic. I still go for walks and bike rides, but, similar to nomading itself, I now allow myself to enjoy the taking whatever turn catches my eye, unworried about what the result will look like.
Ah, I <3 this. Some Pig!