Google, the Internet search engine that can provide detailed directions for a car trip pretty much anywhere you'd want to go, now does the same for walkers.

The new feature opened quietly a month ago. Google your way from a point Downtown to, say, downtown Blacksburg, Va., and it will show you the way, with 166 turns along the 311 miles.

It says you can get there in four days and eight hours -- but that's only if you're walking 24/7.

The feature is intended mainly for tourists, to show the best way a visitor can get from his hotel to that aquarium, museum, monument or strip club he'd been dying to see. But as one who began this year thinking he'd walk Pittsburgh in all directions before the calendar reached the wastebasket, I decided to try it out here.

I hadn't gone south yet, so I had this idea of making a 2-hour, 5.7-mile hike to Dormont Pool, ending with a splash before taking a bus back. I already had printed the directions -- over Mount Washington and through the city's South Hills neighborhoods -- when I discovered the pool didn't open until late in the afternoon. Nor did any city pools, which wouldn't do for my deadlines.

So I decided to hike up to Grandview Park, a little green gem I hadn't visited in years. The computer said I could do the 2.2 miles in 51 minutes, which seemed easy enough.

So I walked down the Boulevard of the Allies just as the noon bells were pealing at St. Mary of Mercy, made a right on Smithfield Street, took the bridge over the Mon, hooked a loping left on Carson Street, and then began my ascension of Arlington Avenue.

'Twas about here that my fellow walkers disappeared. The funky multistreet intersection at Carson and Arlington isn't exactly pedestrian-friendly, despite the walk signals. Arlington's intersection with McArdle, farther up the hill, also is a bit tricky.

And then my printed Google sheet directed me to make a sharp right on William Street. It looked like a dead end, but it turned out to be one of those neighborhood shortcuts that abound in this city.

Soon, I was walking through a wooded stretch that would have seemed in the country were it not for traffic sounds in the distance. With no sidewalks on lower William and several blind turns on the serpentine road, I stuck close to the side as I walked up and into one-way traffic, had there been any.

It seems I'd read right past the standard Google warning to walkers: "Use caution -- This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."

Google takes hills into account when calculating the expected time, and it gave me 15 minutes to walk the half-mile, which proved conservative. I made it in about 12, despite stopping to chat with a man about his front-yard tomatoes.

Then I made a left on Bailey Avenue, walking east past some beautiful homes with back-window views that would blow your hair back. It was less than a half-mile to the park, and my entire trip came in under 50 minutes.

I wasn't in the park long when Dale Malacki came up with his dog, Callie, from the wooded trails on the hillside below the lawn. I introduced myself and he offered to show me the trails. We were soon deep in green and could have been anywhere.

"People up here get tired of the views anyway," he said.

We walked and talked in that way you can when a sniffing hound breaks the ice. Mr. Malacki, a city firefighter, was planning to head to Parris Island, S.C., where his 19-year-old son, Charles, will graduate as a U.S. Marine -- 33 years after his dad did the same.

We talked about the city, too, having the kind of conversation you'd never find with a drive-by. We shook hands and parted, and I walked to the Monongahela Incline. Though I doubled back to buy a nice slice of pizza at Bellissimo's on Shiloh so I could break a $10 bill, I still made it back to the office in less time than I'd walked up.

God bless the inclines.

It would seem Google doesn't yet know what to make of Pittsburgh's city steps. We've scattered 45,000 steps in 700 sets across 66 neighborhoods, but a Downtown-to-Fineview walking route I checked didn't make use of any of them.

But I shouldn't nitpick. The site now offers driving, walking and, within the Port Authority service area, transit options. That ain't bad.

Kayakers will just have to be patient.