Climbers make their way up to those two itty-bitty flags at the top.
The last stop in Australia was Sydney, on the Northeast coast. Sydney boasts a very pretty harbor, and the centerpiece of it all is a huge arch bridge. Wide enough for 6 lanes of car traffic, a train, an a pedestrian walkway, it purports to be the widest arch-style bridge in the world.
I heard that people “climb” the Sydney Harbor bridge. With the assistance of a harness and safety ropes, a person can make his way to the very top of the arch. Some kind of sobriety test and some level of physical fitness is required to make the climb.
Before heading over there to check it out, I sat in the crew mess with quite a few crew people watching the big-screen TV. It was Wednesday afternoon November 5, but in NYC it was Tuesday night November 4, and the Election results were coming in. At 3:30 PM McCain gave his very gracious concession speech, and I headed off to the bridge.
Along the way I heard Obama’s voice booming out of the open doors of a pub. I wandered in and found a dozen Aussies with their eyes riveted on the screen -- it was Obama’s victory speech in Chicago. Having been in Toastmasters for a few years, I like to watch a excellent speaker, and there aren’t too many better than Obama.
Maybe it was the Australian ale, but as soon as left the pub I yet again stepped into the street without looking to the correct (to the right) direction for cars. I jumped back on the curb to get out of the way of a car going 40 mph. During this voyage only two countries, Vietnam and China, drove cars on the right side, like USA. The left-siders, besides Australia, include Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia. Who knows, maybe it evens out when you take in the whole world.
Over at the entrance to the Bridge Climb they wanted to charge me $189 Aussie dollars (about $130 American) for the climb. Next to the counter was a gallery of thirty 8 x 10 glossy photos of celebrities up on top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Mostly actors and musicians -- Bette Midler, Michael Caine, Bruce Springsteen, Will Smith, Matt Damon. Also Al Gore, who some people consider to be an actor also. I wondered if these people paid the $130 to climb the bridge, or was it a freebie in return for the 8 x 10 photo.
Suddenly the whole bridge climb thing looked like a hype job to me, so I decided to use the walkway for “normal” folks and simply cross to the other side. Shortly after starting across, I found myself face to face with somebody who was heading in the other direction. I was walking along the rail on the right side. He was walking along the same rail. However to him it was “left”.
I conceded and moved to the left for this guy. Then I started walking along the rail again, on the right, and again found myself avoiding a head-on-collision with another walker. After two more such incidents it finally dawned on me that ALL of the bridge pedestrians were in the same pattern as the cars -- walking to the left of the direction faced.
I tried to remember if there was a pedestrian pattern, left or right, back in New York. Manhattan is so chaotic, with so many people walking at different speeds and directions and passing each other. Yet I think that under non-rush hour conditions, pedestrians stay to the right, like the cars. Anybody have an input on this?
A related curiosity is circular paths, like for horseracing, car racing, track and field events, the merry-go-round, the bumper cars at the amusement park.. Seems to me it’s always counter-clockwise. Even in baseball, the run around the bases is counter-clockwise.
There’s a “walking deck” on every cruise ship, and I always use them, trying to do an hour’s worth of laps. Almost everybody walks counterclockwise, without being told to. It comes naturally. Every now and then somebody chooses to go the other way. One result is that you have to pass this person face-to-face twice per lap. After giving somebody the customary “hello nod” or smile once or twice, you get sick of doing it and you deliberately look downward to avoid making eye contact with the jerk as he passes by for the umpteenth time.
Somebody told me they attended an Australian horse race, and the horses ran in the opposite (clockwise) direction. Must have been Australian-bred horses, I think an American racehorse would’ve refused to run. Then there’s that business of water going down the drain with a corkscrew pattern, and an opposite corkscrew pattern Down Under. Which might not have anything to do with anything, but I felt like mentioning it.
It’s a left-and-right, clockwise and counterclockwise world. Opposites everywhere you look. Sometimes you just gotta go with one and forgo the other, just for uniformity’s sake-- but also to keep things from crashing into each other.
Back on the ship later I chatted with a guest who thought Obama was terrific. A few days earlier I chatted with another guest who thought that Obama was Satan, and that she’d move to Mexico if he got elected. I hope she keeps her promise.
This is the Sydney Opera House, sitting on a man-made peninsula in the harbor with artsy architecture suggesting a sailboat…many ship guests were herded through this place. Nobody heard any opera.
6 comments:
NYC walking: Many years ago, after a visitor to the City pointed out that it is appropriate to walk on the right, I realized why I'd always had a problem walking on sidewalks. Possibly because I'm left-handed--or for other reasons--I prefer to walk on the left-side and always feel like a salmon swimming upstream.
Lefthandedness -- another variable we can add to this discussion. Perhaps you could tell me why only 10% of the population is lefty. Is it from all those centuries of Crazy Christians forcing people to be righthanded?
Was there a 50-50 distribution of righties and lefties before Christianity?
I'm considering folding my arms the opposite way for a few years just to see if I get used to it.
For whatever it might be worth: back in Italy, when I was much younger, richer (and handsomer), I used to fly, mostly for sport and sailplanes.
The goal, once launched by tow-plane or winch, was to stay in the air as long as possible riding either thermal or dynamic currents.
To stay inside the thermals one has to fly a fairly tight spiral and there are no rules as to the direction, as long as no other sailplane is riding the same current. I was never comfortable spiraling clockwise and neither was any other pilot I knew.
During competitions, however, there used to be rare cases of "dirty tactics" when the pilot riding higher that others in the same thermal would deliberately change the direction of the spiral, often forcing less capable ones out of the column of ascending air and also causing potentially dangerous confusion among other pilots below. If I were to be still flying today, I would probably call this the "Lieberman effect". In those days we would just call those pilots nasty names or (if they owned their sailplane)throw a couple of fish heads in the cavity of the fuselage. You'd be amazed at the effects this can have after a couple of warm days!
BTW: try noticing how most birds fly when riding thermals. (and they never had mean nuns rapping their knuckles!)
My theory (very empirical and totally unscientific) is that this has to do with the orientation of our stomach sack. Any takers?
Beautiful pictures of Sydney, Steve. You are so lucky to be able to see the world and get paid for it. Wow!
About right and left. As a kid I use to wonder why the steering wheel is on the left side of the car. Why couldn't it be centered in the middle with a passenger seated to the left and right of the driver. It would be more cozy, too!
Interesting, I think being forced to walk on the left side of roads, bridges, etc, would be extremely irritable to me. As you said, like folding your arms the opposite way or anything else we're used to doing righty, is very uncomfortable doing lefty.
I feel like it's always been an unwritten rule to walk on the right side of the road here in America. How that started I'm not sure. Any type of human traffic seems to go right, even baseball starts that way now that I think about it, though I can't think of any other transportive (is that a word?) activity to include this. Oh yeah, writing and skaking hands. But maybe this is only the norm because righty is the norm. I don't know.
What I do know is that researchers have still not figured out why roughly 90 percent of people are right handed, only certain traits or characteristics that go along with that. No root reason why it's the norm yet.
So if 90 percent of people are right-handed, and this somehow relates to our tendencies to do everything else righty in America, how do Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Indonesia fit in?
I don't know.
But speaking of Obama, he's a lefty, as well as the last few presidents, more than half of them actually.
Well I guess that reduces my chances of becoming president. That plus I own a cat, not a dog.
In England, Japan, etc, left-side driving begets right-side steering wheel cars......I'll bet Toyota makes just as much of one as the other.
So us Americans were forced to sit in the left side of a car in order to drive.
Jackie's idea about steering wheel-in-the-middle may have merit, in fact it may be the key to world peace.
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