MARTIN L

Author: Martin L

  • Walking into 2026

    It’s time to review my 2026 walking goals! Every single year I do a major walking challenge. My main reasons are:

    1 . Fill up my Strava map. I religiously look at my Strava map often and I like the new orange lines that pop up after each workout.

    2. Explore new or familiar places by foot. I find that you don’t notice the small details about your local neighborhoods by car or bus. Bikes are a bit slower but still suffer from the same perception issue, and running for me is just focusing on keeping a low heart rate, so not perceptive at all.

    3. Add novelty to an otherwise plain activity. Walking can be pretty boring, and adding a challenge aspect motivates me to walk more.

    My 2025 Walking Challenge

    To be quite transparent, I just made this walking challenge thing up this year. But in some way, I’ve always had an athletic goal linked to my motivations above. The walking challenges are an rebrand of sorts to those goals.

    Last year, my main goal was to complete two main tasks.

    • Walk at least two miles each day (720 miles). Technically, I did not “walk” 720 miles last year. However, if you include my “hiking” workouts, I greatly exceed this number. If we’re being frank, hiking is just walking in more rugged places. So did I complete the challenge? No, but also yes.
    • Complete the San Francisco Crosstown Trail. I still have six miles left of the trail before I can claim (buy) my commemorative item. Alas, I only went back to San Francisco once last year, and unfortunately I made no progress with this trail.

    My Strava Year in Sport.

    Although I didn’t complete either of these challenges, I am glad I put them in the back of my brain, because it made me realize how inconsistent I can be with walking.

    My 2026 Walking Challenges

    You may be wondering: what’s coming up in 2026? Here are my challenges for the upcoming year.

    1. Walk at least two miles each day (720 miles). Yes, the same goal is coming back! Two miles for me is around 35 minutes of walking per day, which is totally doable. Any remaining mileage I fail to accrue will be donated to Girls on the Run Bay Area, my 2026 partner charity.
    2. Complete the Long Branch to Hamilton Link. The Long Branch to Hamilton Link is a line that will link my Hamilton Strava activities with my Toronto activities, completing a continuous line through the Greater Toronto Area. This will involve me walking from Long Branch all the way to Downtown Hamilton. A progress tracker will be updated on my website! This is a part of a greater goal to have connecting activities from Hamilton to Oshawa.
    3. Line 6 Finch West. In 2023, I successfully walked all of the TTC system in operation (Lines 1,2, and 4), completing the still un-opened Line 5 in 2024 as well. Since Line 6 is now open, I will also be completing this line very soon!
    4. Line 3 Scarborough. It may have closed two years ago, but the line is still incomplete in my heart. I will also be completing this line this year, although I do have Kennedy – Lawrence East already done.
    5. Finish the Crosstown Trail. The Crosstown Trail will finally be mine this year. I’ve never been to the Bayview (driven through it) and this trail is my one chance to see a new part of the city that I love so much.

    An example of a Line Walk. Each photo corresponds to a station on the Eglinton Crosstown.

    What is Girls on the Run Bay Area?

    Girls on the Run Bay Area is a charity dedicated to providing opportunities to young girls to get outdoors and embrace the impact of physical activity for a healthy, well-rounded lifestyle. I’m excited to partner with them this year as a part of my commitment to support Bay Area youth. You can learn more about Girls on the Run Bay Area here.

    I will be providing a monthly update on my goals on the Discussions page.

  • It’s the end of the year!

    Well no, it’s December 8th as I write this, but 2026 is almost around the corner. This however, is terrifying for a number of reasons:

    1. I am getting older. My stamina is weaker, sometimes I get back pain? No one told me getting older sucked 🙁
    2. I am still pretty young. My aunt and uncle thought I was like two years younger because I still get acne, so is life really that bad?
    3. I am still not living life that much. FOMO? I’ve heard of her and I still have it while simultaneously doing nothing. I stayed at home all day doing stuff and I think cooking and cleaning took up four hours of that. Kinda crazy!

    Overall, 2025 was not a great year for me, but 2026 will be amazing! I can’t say for sure but I will work on that. I also didn’t even go fall hiking this fall, kind of a flop if you ask me.

    This December, I hope to finish my series: MBTA thoughts before I forget them all, but I appreciate you for reading my words on text. If the sentences seem pretty rambly, it’s because I don’t read my paragraphs back and fix sentence structures.

  • series: MBTA – My experience on Commuter Rail

    This is Part 2 of series: MBTA, a collection of ideas on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

    A “T” logo at Porter Station.

    When I visit new cities, I typically make it a point to visit a bunch of different transportation modes. Luckily for me, Boston is home to a plethora of transportation modes – from the famous T, there’s also buses, ferries, and the elusive Commuter Rail.

    For most tourists, there’s very little reason to ride Commuter Rail, especially since it’s evidently catered towards commuters, and not tourists. Nonetheless, I had the opportunity to ride Commuter Rail during my trip, as Apple Maps told me it would be slightly faster than taking the Red Line into Boston.

    My Experience

    Station

    Porter Station Commuter Rail Platform.

    Porter Station is a busy train hub for Porter Square residents, with local shopping and Lesley University nearby. It’s also home to the longest set of escalators on the T, which takes a solid two minutes to ride up to surface level. Although the Red Line station is grandiose in a brutalist-80’s type of way, the commuter rail station is a sad shack in comparison. Located below Massachusetts Avenue, the platform is your typical American commuter rail station, consisting of a couple of benches and a small shelter on the platform. The accessibility area was located right at the station entrance, which I really did like. There was also a direct connection to the Red Line station, which is great for transfers.

    Train Ride

    Digital Signage at MBTA Porter Station

    I took the Fitchburg Line, train #421 from Porter to North Station (1 stop). Mid-day, the train runs hourly from some Boston suburb to North Station, although I’d have to assume frequencies improve during rush hour. The train is scheduled to take 14 minutes to North Station, which is faster than the 30 minutes it would have taken to take the T.

    The fare system in Boston is wack, but in this case, my seven day pass covered the trip. Did you know that you can’t use CharlieCards (the Boston version of OMNY) on commuter rail? Once Charlie (the second-generation system) rolls out this should be possible, but it’s also the year 2025, and you could take regional trains using similar transit cards for the past 30 years now. You can validate your ticket using a CharlieTicket (a paper version of a CharlieCard that somehow has more capabilities despite being disposable) or mTicket.

    Inside the train carriage

    The train ride was pretty monotonous, but when the train pulled up, only the accessible door at the front opened for passengers? It was kinda strange since the trainset was five coaches long, but not a big deal. The northbound train came five minutes earlier, and all the passengers scattered around the platform had to run to the accessibility coach to get on board. I noticed that the doors were a manual set, very strange in 2025, but not unheard of (see Paris Metro).

    I’m not a train foamer, but the coach set used was a super old car, with a 3/2 seating configuration. The third seat looked like it was tacked on. I’m not going to lie, it was a bit strange, but the coach was pretty clean overall, albeit extremely dated. No bugs though, so what can you do. The train took the scheduled amount of time and was pretty monotonous.

    North Station

    When we got to North Station, we had to wait for the conductor to manually open the doors (still very strange to me). North Station is your standard terminal, with long platforms to the large waiting hall indoors. I like North Station because it’s connected to the Green and Orange lines, as well as TD Garden (I don’t care too much about hockey), but it’s great for concertgoers. The MBTA has also installed fare gates at North Station, which means commuters need to tag off at the gate. I like this a lot, because it increases fare compliance without the need to install gates at all of the stations.

    Final Thoughts

    Overall, I enjoyed my time on MBTA Commuter Rail, although the rolling stock is pretty bad. I would say it has really good bones, but I’m concerned if the MBTA could ever transition into a true regional-style rail system like the Paris RER. Commuter Rail ridership had the strongest recovery out of all the MBTA modes, so there’s plenty of potential for Greater Boston to rebuild its historic transit network.

    A Charlie reader on a MBTA Green Line train.

    It does have one major problem I hate, which is the fare ticketing system. The Commuter Rail does not support CharlieCard, and will also not support the next generation of fare payment, Charlie+. It baffles me that the networks are not integrated – seems like such a large oversight that doesn’t seem to have any particular reasoning. I understand it was originally supposed to support Charlie+, so I’m hoping that later rollouts will support Charlie+.

    Please watch out for Part 3 of series: MBTA, a collection of ideas on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

  • Three reasons why you need to make Buffalo your next stop on a All-America trip

    This post has no affiliation with the following organizations: The Corporation for Travel Promotion d.b.a Brand USA, New York State Department of Economic Development (ILOVENY), Erie County Economic Development (Visit Buffalo!), City of Buffalo.

    The locals

    Buffalo is the “City of Good Neighbors”. It’s also the “Nickel City”, but I digress. The people in Buffalo are generally very good and welcoming, and there’s a surprisingly amount of diversity in the metro area. It’s a really great city if you want a place that fosters a sense of community.

    A city with a community

    One of the main draws of Buffalo is the fact that it’s still a city, with big city amenities. You still have your apartments, your walkable neighborhoods, your Apple Store. It even has its own subway. What it lacks however, is the big-city traffic you’ll find in most major cities. While it has that hustle and bustle, it doesn’t make you feel like you’re stuck in it.

    Proximity to Nature

    Buffalo is surprisingly a city very close to nature. You have Niagara Falls just 20 minutes away, but also a huge network of state parks in the region. South of Buffalo, you have access to rolling hills and mountains of the Appalachians. Lake Erie hugs the city, and there’s plenty of access points in the area, including the Outer Harbor, a lakefront retreat in the middle of Buffalo’s abandoned industrial past.

  • It’s okay to like Benson Boone.

    In a world full of weenies, I’m a Benson Booner. I love Benson Boone because he can do backflips and he lives life. IDK why y’all are hating when you don’t even have the arm strength or flexibility to do a back flip. Get back to me when you come up with a incredible ability to sing as a soprano.

    That being said, I’m not saying his discography isn’t bad. There’s some hidden gems, but most of his songs are bad. This doesn’t mean that HE should be disliked because he has done some amazing covers.

    At the end of the day, I am telling everyone to stop hating people because their discography sucks. Have a great day!