don sees the world: Carrot and Stick

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Carrot and Stick

In old cartoons you will often see a mule that is being enticed into pulling a cart by dangling a carrot in front of its face hanging from a stick. I have to admit that the pub is my carrot that gets me to ride every evening. I have been riding ever evening after work.

With few exceptions, I get on my bicycle, head east into Kingston, cross the Thames, then west into Hampton Court where I look in on the King's Arms to see if there is anyone I know in there. (And there usually is.) So I will hop off and spend a few minutes chatting with my friends and then it is back across the river through East Molesey and back through Thames Ditton to home. It is about an hour ride.

Because a carrot made of beer is not good for the diet, I have been exchanging a Diet Coke or a glass of seltzer with lemon for the usual Tanglefoot. The entire route as I do it is about ten miles. I need to expand it so I think that next week instead of going along the A308 (Hampton Court Road) I'll turn left at the bridge and go along the Barge Walk (ride along the rive) and increase the length to almost fifteen miles.

What would be ideal would be if I could somehow arrange it so that the pub got just a little further away from my place each time I went there. That way the exercise I got would increase constantly. Heck! If the pub and the house I live in were at opposite ends of the road that Mom grew-up on, eventually it would twenty miles from the house to the pub one way; up hill both ways and there would be snow drifts the size of the Miami Cathedral in the middle of summer to content with on my way. How fit would I be then!?!