Perhaps this might be called the ‘toil of travel’ but I think what I wrote will cover the essential point that for some people just getting to work is a hard task in itself without the effort involved of then carrying out their duties.
Take the wife for example. This morning as is now usual I left the house at 5:15 a.m. to take the youngest off to her skating lesson. The wife organised the eldest and made sure she was ready for school before leaving herself to catch the bus that takes her to Sydney. She saw a bus, thought it wasn’t one she wanted… and as it sailed past realised it *was*. She gallops after it… and catches it, then collapses with ragged breathing and sore lungs. Nice way to start a two hour journey into work! She seems to have recovered now, but it’s amazing what people do to get to work on time.
Another example is the car park that *is* the “Hills M2 Motorway“. Each morning at 5:30 a.m. or so, I drive along towards Sydney and even at that time of the morning I’m driving in fairly solid stream of traffic. It’s true I’m still travelling at speeds up to 100 kph, but the road is clearly filling even then.
When we drive the return route some two hours later the both lanes of the road are solid with traffic and that traffic is nearly at a standstill. I don’t mean some sort of temporary glitch around the area of the toll booths by the way. I mean both lanes of the road are bumper to bumper filled with cars travelling at a maximum speed of 10 – 20 kph… but usually stopped.
The jams start prior to the toll booths but there is no denying they are worse before rather than after. As I drive along the queue stretches from kilometre to kilometre stretching the entire length of the road from the tolls all the way back to the beginning of the M7 motorway and this morning even further than that! As I was driving this morning I noticed a bus had broken down in the bus lane and a uniformed officer was stopping the traffic in one ‘car’ lane to allow buses to overtake the stalled one.
The chaos was dreadful. I honestly cannot understand why anyone would subject themselves to that more than a few times before realising that no matter how bad the train and bus service may appear to be, it simply *cannot* be worse than those regular jams day after day.
The wife by the way is contemplating doing more exercise to build up her fitness levels. Maybe she could jog to work?? Wouldn’t be much slower than the car, bus or train!!
The Eclectic Interweb 