Green transport is ecological quid pro quo

The cutting down of trees in the car park of the swimming pool means that I have had to resurrect my bike.  Or at least take it out from its partial hibernation.

            Destroying twenty trees was obviously not enough for the heartless people in the leisure centre.  No, they want to efface the evidence of their destruction and have closed the car park for the next month.  The leisure centre is in a residential area with lots of on-road parking.  Unfortunately next to the leisure centre is a school.  And that changes everything.

            Children go to schools.  A very good thing too, it keeps them off the streets when we retired people can wander about without the screams and general awfulness of the youngest generations spoiling our well deserved time away from work.  But probably the worst thing about children and schools?  Parents.

            In the general run of things I have nothing against parents, after all my entire existence is thanks to them, but my parents allowed me to catch a bus to school.  They did not see the need to take me to the school gates, drop me off and then wait around imagining me making my way through the yard towards my form room.  While being themselves double or triple parked, on a pavement or on the zebra crossing, across an entrance, at an angle, on a corner or any damn where they pleased with little or no consideration for any other non-parent-of-their-child whatsoever.

            So, now, added to the insanity of parents dropping off their kids, residents parking their cars, visitors needing a parking space we will have people going to the leisure centre, finding the car park closed and then trying to park within a maximum of ten paces away from the door.

            It is going to be chaos.  And nasty chaos as well!

            Having given this some thought, I imagine that one of the more unbearable aspects of this month-long torture is going to be car drivers stopping in the middle of the road trying to spot a non-existent parking space and effectively blocking the road for all other road users. 

Luckily, in this country, we are blessed with some of the most tolerant road users in Europe who never mind waiting and who show no impatience at any road user impeding their progress!  So that’s all right then.

As if!

This morning I had to park three streets away from the centre and half way down the street as well.  Things can only get worse, and I do not intend to emulate the Flying Dutchman endlessly roaming the area searching for a parking space!  The bike is the answer.  Possibly.

It is well over a year since I’ve ridden the thing and I have had to hack the dust off it.  Toni has oiled the bits that need oiling and I have attempted to make the dynamo work.  Not that I have any intention of riding the thing in the dark, you understand, but I do like to think that I could if I wanted to.

It will be interesting to see how I adapt to this new regime.