Walking New York

Green is a former civil engineer whose main profession, if you can call it that, is walking. Two years ago he "walked across the United States from Rockaway Beach, Queens, to Rockaway Beach, Ore. The journey took five months, during which he averaged 20 miles a day, pitched his tent on front lawns and wore through three pairs of Timberland Chocorua Trail boots," writes Lipinski.

For an encore, Green recently begun a quest to become the first person to walk all of New York City's roughly 8,000 miles of streets, parks, paths, and cemeteries, a task which he thinks will take "more than two years of full-time walking to complete."

Lipinski describes Green's daily routine and experiences, which he captures on a blog at imjustwalkin.com, and tags along for part of his journey.

Rather than seeing his current endeavor as a journey of self discovery, Green views his ambitious plan more as a quest for city discovery. "People tend to narrativize neighborhoods in New York, saying such and such a place is hip, or poor, or ugly or barren," he said. "This walk is a way of understanding a place on its own terms, instead of taking someone else's word for it."