Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side, of course. But why did it want to get to the other side? This is a question I know the answer to. It wanted to take a walk, and getting to the other side allowed it to walk against traffic, a rule even the chicken knows.
But why does it seem the majority of people around here walk on the wrong side of the road? That’s a riddle I wish I had the answer to.
As everyone should know, when walking, running, jogging, crawling or skipping on the road, you need to be on the left side going against traffic. It’s a basic rule parents teach children when they are young, and one people will hear over and over again. “Walk against the traffic,” my mother always told me when I left our rural home to walk somewhere.
It’s a lesson people around here apparently never received, as when my family and I go out for walks or drives we always encounter people walking on the wrong side of the road.
Everywhere we walk, we bump into other walkers in our lane of travel, leading to awkward confrontations. Who should move over and what way should we move, so we don’t knock each other down? Plus, it forces even more awkward conversation. I can be a little grumpy sometimes and talking to strangers is not my forte. And talking to strangers not following rules really irritates me.
Perhaps I am just too weird about this, but it bothers me when I see these people not following the rules our society has made for the safety of everyone. We are required to walk on the left side against traffic so we can see the oncoming traffic, rather than having it come from behind us, making it easier to take evasive action in case it is necessary.
When I’m walking against traffic and an oncoming car approaches, I move over as far as I can, greatly reducing any risk of getting struck by this vehicle and ensuring the vehicle’s driver that I know he or she is coming and I won’t make any sudden moves into the driver’s lane of travel.
Following this rule has worked well for me, as I’ve never been struck by a vehicle in my life. Chances are most people have never been struck by a vehicle either, even the people walking on the wrong side of the road, but I’m sure the people that haven’t followed this rule and have been struck by a vehicle deeply regret not listening to their mothers.
Perhaps their mothers gave them badly-worded advice. “Make sure you walk on the right side of the road,” the mothers may have told them. “Right” actually meaning against the traffic, but the interpreter translating it literally to mean the right side of the road.
So this leads to a new riddle I don’t have the answer to: Who’s the stupid one here, the mother for giving badly-worded advice, or the child for not having the intelligence to interpret it correctly? It reminds me of another riddle: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The funniest thing about this to me is it seems completely local. I’ve lived in numerous communities in Wisconsin and people always walk on the proper side of the road. Prior to moving to Plover, I can’t recall wrong-side walkers every really irritating me.
But here, I encounter it daily. Maybe it’s because Plover doesn’t seem to have any sidewalks and people are too lazy to cross the road. Maybe it’s because of some strange ordinance I don’t know about that requires people to walk on the right side with traffic, so then I am the foolish one. Maybe it’s because Plover is some Bizarro world and I’m the strange one, irritating everyone because I’m not on the correct side.
Who knows? Maybe the chicken does, but nobody has bothered to ask him.
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Green Circle Trail is great connection to nature
Although I’ve been working at The Gazette for more than a year, my family and I have only lived here since the end of April, after finally selling our house in Wautoma. We’ve been busy since then and haven’t had much of a chance to explore the area. We got our opportunity over the weekend and haven’t stopped since then.
Saturday, with nothing on our agenda for the first time in months, my wife Jenny and I decided we wanted to do something inexpensive, healthy and fun with our 3-year-old son, Braden. For a year we’ve heard nothing but good things about the Green Circle Trail, so we thought we’d give it a try.
We’ve actually been on portions of it before, but they were the more public ones near roads and parks. We thought it was nice, but little more than a glorified sidewalk.
Boy were we wrong. The segment we decided to walk Saturday was like escaping off this planet to Yoda’s Dagobah System, except there weren’t any serpent monsters that don’t like droids or Darth Vader hallucinations in caves.
Alright, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but the trail was so cool my enthusiasm is making me spew “Star Wars” references. Coming back to Earth, I would say that the trail is a valuable asset to the Stevens Point area, and one everybody should make an effort to use as often as they can.
My family and I are doing so, now that we know how good it is. We walked the section of the trail from Tommy’s Turnpike to the Whiting Mill Saturday, and then Sunday we walked a good portion of it by the Schmeekle Reserve near the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. We returned to the trail Monday to walk a portion by Iverson Park, although that trip ended shortly after it began because we forgot bug spray.
The Tommy’s Turnpike section was the most secluded because, with the exception of two bicyclists, we were the only ones on it. At one point I said to Jenny that this must be what it felt like to walk around in nature back in the 1880s – few signs of civilization, the exception being some railroad tracks, and an abundance of animals and plants. We saw chipmunks, an osprey and her fledge, a deer and two fawns, and enough plants and flowers to fill a greenhouse.
Schmeekle had more people, but in some ways it was a little more fun. We sat on a bench by a pond on the Trail of Reflections, took a journey up a treehouse and walked the “planks” on our way to Lake Joanis. We spotted another deer at the end of our trip taking a nap near the Visitors Center. The deer didn’t even care we were there, only getting up when some bicyclists frightened it.
Iverson was pretty cool, almost creepy in a way, but the mosquitoes were too thick to get far without spray. We’ll return soon.
Jenny and I are already planning on spending an entire day walking as much of the trail as we can. We probably won’t take Braden with us, since he tends to get tired of walking after about 90 minutes, but we’ll bring him on our shorter jaunts so he can develop an appreciation of the outdoors.
I thought moving to a bigger city from a rural area like Wautoma would mean our connection to nature might disappear. Now I’m convinced it will only get stronger, since we now have access to something as great as the Green Circle Trail, as well as other parks and nature reserves we plan on checking out soon.
Wautoma may have been surrounded by nature, but most of it is inaccessible since it is privately owned. So although we could drive past it, we couldn’t get out and actively enjoy it, like we can here. And that’s something I plan on bragging about to our Wautoma friends.
Saturday, with nothing on our agenda for the first time in months, my wife Jenny and I decided we wanted to do something inexpensive, healthy and fun with our 3-year-old son, Braden. For a year we’ve heard nothing but good things about the Green Circle Trail, so we thought we’d give it a try.
We’ve actually been on portions of it before, but they were the more public ones near roads and parks. We thought it was nice, but little more than a glorified sidewalk.
Boy were we wrong. The segment we decided to walk Saturday was like escaping off this planet to Yoda’s Dagobah System, except there weren’t any serpent monsters that don’t like droids or Darth Vader hallucinations in caves.
Alright, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but the trail was so cool my enthusiasm is making me spew “Star Wars” references. Coming back to Earth, I would say that the trail is a valuable asset to the Stevens Point area, and one everybody should make an effort to use as often as they can.
My family and I are doing so, now that we know how good it is. We walked the section of the trail from Tommy’s Turnpike to the Whiting Mill Saturday, and then Sunday we walked a good portion of it by the Schmeekle Reserve near the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. We returned to the trail Monday to walk a portion by Iverson Park, although that trip ended shortly after it began because we forgot bug spray.
The Tommy’s Turnpike section was the most secluded because, with the exception of two bicyclists, we were the only ones on it. At one point I said to Jenny that this must be what it felt like to walk around in nature back in the 1880s – few signs of civilization, the exception being some railroad tracks, and an abundance of animals and plants. We saw chipmunks, an osprey and her fledge, a deer and two fawns, and enough plants and flowers to fill a greenhouse.
Schmeekle had more people, but in some ways it was a little more fun. We sat on a bench by a pond on the Trail of Reflections, took a journey up a treehouse and walked the “planks” on our way to Lake Joanis. We spotted another deer at the end of our trip taking a nap near the Visitors Center. The deer didn’t even care we were there, only getting up when some bicyclists frightened it.
Iverson was pretty cool, almost creepy in a way, but the mosquitoes were too thick to get far without spray. We’ll return soon.
Jenny and I are already planning on spending an entire day walking as much of the trail as we can. We probably won’t take Braden with us, since he tends to get tired of walking after about 90 minutes, but we’ll bring him on our shorter jaunts so he can develop an appreciation of the outdoors.
I thought moving to a bigger city from a rural area like Wautoma would mean our connection to nature might disappear. Now I’m convinced it will only get stronger, since we now have access to something as great as the Green Circle Trail, as well as other parks and nature reserves we plan on checking out soon.
Wautoma may have been surrounded by nature, but most of it is inaccessible since it is privately owned. So although we could drive past it, we couldn’t get out and actively enjoy it, like we can here. And that’s something I plan on bragging about to our Wautoma friends.
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