About a year back, I was struck by the idea of walking Manhattan from tip to tip. Foolishly, I shared this with my long-standing friend Jenny, who liked the concept enough to actually agree to do it with me.

The trip is 13.4 miles as the crow flies, and closer to 15 along any walkable route, which should have led either of us to conclude that’s more than anyone is meant to walk in an afternoon. But, as Jenny recently won the New Jersey marathon, she’s clearly missing the part of her brain that tells her to stop after hoofing some reasonable distance. In my case, I have no other defense than that I’m a complete idiot.

So, yesterday, just before noon, we headed up the 1/9 subway line to the 215th Street stop. Yes, the 215th Street stop. Apparently, Manhattan has lots and lots of streets. And nearly a third of them are below Houston, once you run out of numbered ones.

Nonetheless, we subwayed up, and we started walking back down. At first it was along streets like Nagle and Isham that I’d never even heard of before, much less realized were major thoroughfares on this island where I live. In upper Inwood, the Siberia of Manhattan, we passed stores selling live chickens, and stopped to use the bathroom at a McDonalds where I was nearly unable to purchase bottled water, seeing how none of the people behind the counter spoke English.

We trekked through Washington Heights and saw adds for sodas (Energy 69!) that absolutely don’t exist below 125th St, and arrays of dresses on sale in front of small shops for under five bucks a piece. Then down through Harlem, where we passed McDonalds and Papa Johns’ on every other corner, trekking all the way to Morningside Heights and the top of Columbia before we spotted our first Starbucks or sushi joint.

By the time we’d made it to the Upper West Side, we were less than halfway, and already looking rough. The day was overcast and muggy, we had sweated through our clothing, and we were possibly hungry, though too churned up from constant walking to want to actually eat.

Near the Museum of Natural History, we stopped in at my brother’s apartment, where he handed off a pair of rum and Cokes like Gatorade passed to long distance runners.

A bit further still, at Columbus Circle, we decided maybe eating wasn’t such a bad idea after all. So, we stopped at Bouchon Bakery in Time Warner Center, relishing the sitting even more than the first-class eats.

In Hell’s Kitchen, I stopped to lance the blisters that had formed on the back of both of my feet, and to drop off an apparently unneeded, but somewhat pokey, umbrella hauled in my backpack. And then we got back on the road.

It was at about this time that I started trying to pansy out. I had several good ideas, such as subwaying down to the next-to-last stop then walking the final stretch. Or calling it for the day and picking up the second half of the trek on a subsequent weekend. Both, I reckoned, qualifying as tip-to-tip travel, at least with explanatory footnote.

But, Jenny, being far more used to motoring mechanically through such minor problems as excruciating knee pain, kept us moving ahead. By this point, clearly neither of us were enjoying the walking, though we had reached a point of sufficient delirium that we were still happily laughing through it, talking loudly about people we passed and wondering what they might be making of our bedraggled, foot-shuffling duo.

We walked through Chelsea, the West Village, SoHo, and TriBeCa, though by that point my recollections are largely a blur. I do recall stopping at a firehouse, ostensibly to get an estimate of remaining distance, though mainly so Jenny could put the moves on a cute firefighter.

We kept walking. Down past Ground Zero, through the financial district, and, limpingly out to South Ferry. By 6:15, we stood looking at the Statue of Liberty, wondering why we didn’t feel accomplished and elated so much as in need of somewhere flat to lie down.

The South Ferry stop on the 1/9 was closed. So, one foot placed gingerly in front of another, we walked back up a bit, staggering down into the Whitehall subway station, then slumping into the seats of an uptown R train.

Back at the top of Times Square, I saw Jenny off on her ride further uptown, headed home, showered, then went back out the door. And while dinner at Blue Smoke and drinks at Pete’s Tavern were both excellent, it’s nearly a miracle I made it ambulatorily from one to the other.

This morning, scuttling plans for vacuuming on the grounds that it involved even small amounts of moving around my apartment, I instead searched online to price out Rascal and Jazzy scooters. If I ever walk again, it will be too soon.