I can talk the Pokétalk, but can I walk the Pokéwalk?

This past Saturday night, my girlfriend and I were supposed to meet up after I had finished work (around midnight). Unfortunately, there were a few mixups, near-misses, and crossed wires, all of which were exacerbated by the fact that her cell phone had died, leaving me unable to get into contact with her. Long story short, I spent a good few hours going all over the city trying to find her, firmly believing that she may have been abducted and quite possibly killed.

As night wore on and I ran from location to location, hoping to find some clue as to her whereabouts, a creeping image began to pervade my thoughts: that of my girlfriend scared and helpless, at the mercy of some street gang or psychotic killer, praying for help that would come too late. The thought sickened me, made me feel weak and nauseous, frustrated to the brink of tears.

As it turned out, she wasn't dead, had simply thought I finished work at a different time, and waited for like an hour longer than anyone would have reasonably been expected to before heading to my house. When she found out I had gone all over the city looking for her, fearing the worst, she was touched. Then I told her that the one thing that had kept me going through the ordeal, kept me strong – that one thought that kept playing itself in my head, urging me on despite wanting to break down in despair – was knowing that I was racking up some sweet mileage with my Pokémon Pedometer, or Pokéwalker.

Not so much with the touched.

So what is the Pokéwalker? It's a portable pedometer peripheral that comes packaged with your purchase of the new Pokémon, of course.

Basically, you're allowed to transfer any one of your Pokémon to the small device. Like a pedometer, it keeps track of the steps you've taken. For every 20 steps you take, you earn 1 Watt. The more Watts you earn, the more items you unlock, and the stronger your Pokémon grows. What's more, you can even catch Pokémon on the device that you couldn't catch otherwise!



For me, this is perfect. I'm about average at playing Pokémon, which is a bit depressing considering the median age among people playing this game is like negative three. However, I can safely say that I'm above average at walking around in circles like a moron. The Pokéwalker has now given me, for once in my life, an edge at something.

Consider my job: I'm a Customer Experience Representative of a major book chain. This basically means I have to walk up and down the rows of the bookstore for 8 hours a day, seeing if anyone needs help finding what they're looking for. In your average day of work, I'm walking a little bit more than 20,000 steps (that's 1 thousand Watts). Yes, I've heard that there are ways to cheat the device (thanks for the link, Eric), but I don't plan on doing that, as it goes against my Pokémorals. Hell, I don't need to do that. I even hear that walking is healthy for you. After all, I'd hate to end up like these kids.

In other Pokémon news, didn't play much this weekend, spent most of it with Rebecca to celebrate her not being dead. Two of my Pokémon evolved, though – Tokek into a Feraligatr and Moloch into a Nidorino.

Other than that, I caught a level 14 male Koffing (Cap'nTrips), a level 13 female Miltank (Cudley), and a level 16 female Meowth (Macavity). On my Pokéwalker, however, I caught an Elekid, Murkrow, Smoochum, Onix, Machop, Tentacool, Shellder, Grimer, and Voltorb.

As you can see, the Pokéwalker has been quite instrumental in my quest of catching 'em all. Of the 40 or so Pokémon I've now accrued, 14 of them have been from the pedometer. Many of them are fairly commonplace, but some I'm pretty excited about, such as Elekid. I have a feeling he's going to be in my lineup for the longterm.



This post is dedicated to my Ekans, Oberyn, who's been tirelessly racking up all these Watts on my Pokéwalker.