On this morning's commute to my daughter's school one of the other parents called us crazy for cycling in this weather - it was, as we Yorkshire folk say, "chuckin' it dahn" (raining really hard). Still is, actually. Probably will be for the rest of the week and next week too according to the forecast. And I'll be out there actually experiencing it every day, unlike 99.9% of the folks around me, who are apparently afraid to get a bit wet. Why? Because when I get an excuse to experience real actual life on this Earth, rather than sitting in the dead, dull, sterile and uninspiring air conditioned environment that we've built everywhere for ourselves, I take it.
I wish I'd had the presence of mind to tell the parent who called us crazy that I thought she and all the other parents are crazy for NOT cycling to school. Life is for living - it should be an adventure, and adventures sometimes involve doing stuff that isn't all that comfortable. There's weather out there in all its glory, and it's at its best when it's experienced at first-hand, with (at most) a rain cape, not through a car windscreen.
Not that I don't like comfort - I do - too much. And so does pretty much everyone else. But unlike most folks I realized that our desire for comfort is not all that healthy. So I denied myself one comfort - just one - the automobile. Never learned to drive, never will, because occasionally we need to live life rather than sleep through it.
