Ever thought about walking to work? For some of us, I am quite sure, it wouldn't be too much of a big deal, specifically for those that live close to work. But for those of us that do not live close to work, it would most likely be quite an arduous task. Well, tell that to Shane Anderson.

Shane, who works in Dev as a software engineer, has been with Zappos since December of 2007 and has quickly become both a valued co-worker and friend to many. At the beginning of September, Zappos participated in the 8000 Meter Challenge, a 34 mile hike / race over three mountain peaks in a twenty-four hour period and Shane was a part of that. A couple of weeks before the hike Shane decided to walk to work.

“I was trying to think of ways to train for the eight thousand meter challenge with my busy schedule, so I started looking at biking to work and stuff like that, but then I asked myself what about walking to work, since it was more like a hike,” he reports. “It was kind of like an interesting thought and one of those wacky things that would be kind of cool. There was a coolness factor about walking to work from across town.”

Some may think that walking to work is nothing like a long hike, but when you take into account the distance and elevation change, it really does turn out to be quite an impressive task and great conditioning. Shane lives off of Hualapai and Ann Road, at the extreme north end of town near Centennial Hills.

“So, I looked it up to see how far it'd be,” he begins, “and it was about twenty six miles.” If that doesn't WOW you, nothing will.

“So, I wasn't too sure if I was going to do it,” he continues, “But then one morning I woke up early and I decided to just go do it and so I did it. It was really interesting. It is one of those things where you didn't really realize what the experience was going to be. I knew it was going to be hard, you know the whole walking thing, but the actual experience, what you see in different parts of town, it was really interesting.”

First off, here was Shane's route:

Left house at 4:00am, major cross street Hualapai and Alexander.
Pebble to work. Arrival at 10:20am.

Total time – 6 hours
Total distance – 26 miles

If any of us have ever gone on a walk, we can attest to how the smallest most insignificant things suddenly seem larger than life. “I was walking along and as I was looking down at the bottom of these walls I see they have these little pipes sticking out, you know, for drainage, and in each one of those there was like a spider, you know, spider webs,” Shane explains. “So, I looked into the spider webs and it was really interesting, you'd see these big black widows and some of the webs came way out, so I was way over on the edge of the sidewalk. So, it was interesting to see that they are all waiting for a meal.”

Shane also had an interesting epiphany when it comes to real estate as he was, again, coming off of the Sahara overpass. “As you go across the tracks there was one thing that really stuck out to me and that was a cardboard box with a pair of feet hanging out. And I was like. are they dead or what?

“It didn't look like rigor mortis had set in,” Shane says, “so I didn't feel the need to alert anybody. But you notice a few of those and it just got me thinking back to all the spiders because here you are laying on the ground, next to a fence, in a cardboard box and if I was a black widow that would be a perfect place to do a nest. By then the sun was coming up and I was thinking its gotta be hot under that.”

Through it all, from picketers on Paradise to people sleeping in the bushes on Tropicana and Maryland Parkway; from the giant blisters on his feet to his sweat soaked clothing, Shane did not regret the experience and even says he may do it again sometime when it cools down.

“This was real city stuff,” Shane concludes. And what better way to see it then on a leisurely twenty-six mile, six hour stroll from one side of the valley to another. Real city stuff doesn't get much better than that.