simoncc said:
A twist to this topic. A couple of years ago I started cycling to a new place of work in suburban Manchester and noticed the huge amount of work-related car parking moans that other people made. One day I had to take the car to work and easily found a parking space about a quarter of a mile from the building. I told my colleagues where these easily available spaces were and they just looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot.
When I worked in Burnley, people got to work early just to grab the spaces at the 'right end' of the company car park. There were plenty of spaces, but if you didn't get there in time, you might have a 200 metre walk to the office block
!!
A few years back I was doing some contract work at a company based in a converted textile mill. The car park was right outside the building. There was a lift inside the door. I strolled into the car park just as some of the guy's from the department I was working in drove up. We walked in together and I headed for the stairs. "NO - HANG ON, THE LIFT IS HERE!" shouted one. I smiled and replied "It's okay, I'll take the stairs". My work mates stared in amazement at my foolhardiness. As the lift doors closed behind them, I got moving. Having sprinted up 4 double flights of stairs to the top floor of the mill, I walked over to the reception desk and was signing the visitor's book when the lift doors opened. The sight of me there stopped a conversation dead in its tracks and someone blurted out "HOW THE F**K DID YOU DO THAT!"
Last year, I made a special trip to visit my elderly mother in Coventry, fulfilling a long-held ambition of cycling down from Hebden Bridge through the Peak District. I was taking the panniers off my bike when my mother's carer walked in. "Oh, hi Colin, have you just ridden up from the station?" "No, I've cycled from home." "Er, what... your home in
Yorkshire?" "That's right" "HOW - I GET TIRED JUST DOING A SHOPPING TRIP TO SAINSBURYS, AND I DRIVE THERE!!!"
Most people these days don't have a clue what it is like to be fit. Here's a charming little conversation I had at the entrance to
Hardcastle Crags:
Man in car, anxiously: "So, the only car park is here, and the visitor centre is a mile
that way...?"
Me astride mountain bike, cheerfully: "Yes, there is a lovely walk to it through the woods, down by the river, just take that footpath."
Man in car, angrily: "Yeah, right, and just how am I bloody well supposed to get my kids there and back - he's 10 years old and she is only 8!"
Doomed, they're all doomed, I tell you...
and the price of fuel, and pays a fiver a time to go on the treadmill at a gym ~ 400m from his house once a week!!
!
