I have these two friends, and all I will say is their names both start with the letter P. I am married to one of them. They are currently giving me grief, talking me down and making light of my concern for safety.
They just do NOT get the number one rule in mountain climbing. One MUST, prior to climbing, define the conditions for when to call off the climb. And ONE MUST STICK TO SUCH PARAMETERS, or risk death or worse!
They do not get that one must treat all outdoor activities with the same risk awareness of mountain climbing. Believe me, I know, frozen death awaits us all when we ignore Mother Nature. She can be a cruel master.
Pradeep and Peggy have both been 'calling me out' on my bicycle riding. My answer to both of them is that I defined my parameters for riding and the current conditions are just too risky.
I defined sub 40 degree weather as a dire health hazard and think it most imprudent to risk the ride when conditions are not conducive to safe standards.
Now perhaps they could argue my parameters. That would be a fair discussion, and one that I would be willing to enter into (and perhaps win). But to just callously call me out for not riding is cheap, and shows a complete disregard for my safety.
And in conclusion, this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with my current addiction to watching the entire collection of the Soprano's and staying up till past eleven on most evenings and feeling really tired when I wake up, and waking up too late to invest the 30 minutes needed to ride to work. I repeat, this is a SAFETY ISSUE.
2 comments:
Very clever, the photo of the frozen bike. Careless readers might think it was yours. Yours is frozen, but not with ice. It is frozen with inactivity.
But you are fundamentally right. When it's too cold, it is silly to ride your bike to work just because you said you were going to!
I can't do anything about the weather, but I can help with the late nights and failure to rise to the first or second call of the alarm. I propose moving the clock radio closer to the person in our family who has enough discipline to actually respond to it by shifting from a horizontal to a vertical, upright position. I am not talking about Neko, Munchkin or Pushkin.
I also propose implementing a curfew (the word comes from the French "couvre feu"), which means lights out at 11 pm. No more Jon Stewart after the Sopranos, and no Soprano episodes started later than 9:45 pm. We can catch the weekly review of Stewart and Colbert on Sundays.
Usually, safety parameters are put in place to protect people from dangerous work. While I'm sure OSHA would be quite pleased with your stance, this is the first safety parameter I've seen to protect someone from actual work (insert bad joke about unions here). I suggest you immediately apply the following text as a bumper sticker on your bicycle as a public service.
F x d = Unsafe!
On the other hand, we can all acknowledge that work itself is responsible for many ill health effects. I think you may have talked me into your camp. Pass the potato chips, please.
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