Friday, April 20, 2012

Stairway to Heaven


As a general rule, Swedes are generally more down with walking than Americans. They think nothing of walking 20 minutes to their favorite café rather than jumping in a car, and it is a very pedestrian friendly city. That doesn’t mean they aren’t lazy though!

Leaving the subway yesterday, I saw a traffic jam in front of the escalator. Evidently both up escalators were currently being worked on, but were not blocked off. So people didn’t realize that they weren’t running until they were right on top of them. This caused folks to stop in their tracks like they were about to walk on hot lava, almost get run over by people behind them, and then move to the left to take the elevator (slowest elevator in the world btw). Granted, it is a long escalator, but they people walk everywhere, its not THAT big of an inconvenience.

So along with a few other tri-athletes to be, I decide to get my cardio in and walk up the stairs. Everyone is hustling, but then about halfway up, the stairs magically transform back into escalators. This was a little jarring to come out of nowhere, but kind of fun. The funny thing was that IMMEDIATELY, everyone that had made the conscious decision to walk up the stairs determined that their legs were non-functioning any more. It was like they all had stepped into cement boots as they moved to the right side and let the escalator do the work for them. I loved that everyone changes immediately from “I will walk up these stairs by myself” to “I will let the machine carry me now”. The “I will use the escalator for assistance to speed my walk” option was not available that day I guess….

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