I drove to Ipswich this morning to return our rental car, so we’re officially sans auto from here on out (barring renting one now and then for trips yonder). From here on out it’s walking, buses, and/or biking, and I can assure you that we’re not really in shape for it. You’d think that will all the walking we do at home this would be easier, but we’re all quite tired after several hours of walking in to town for errands, etc., but we’ll all walk into shape soon enough now that we don’t have any choice. I’ll presumably start walking in to the office at least some this week, and Sub-Evil Boy (pictured above at the Reykjavik Family Park and Zoo at the start of our 00-01 sabbatical) starts school next week.
I’ve never been to Ipswich before, so I was originally planning on checking out a museum or two while I was there. University of Chicago geneticist James Shapiro came up from London today, though, to talk to Riccardo (Poli), Bill (Langdon), and I about evolution and genetic programming, which sounded cooler, so I bailed on Ipswich and had a nice geeky day talking about evolution.
The big question mark for me is whether to buy a bike or not. There is an active cycling group in Colchester and plenty of bike shops. These busy, narrow roads creep me out, though, especially when I think ahead to the short, wet days of winter. I found some plausible route options on a little exploratory walk yesterday, however, and I have yet to actually walk all the way to/from the office. Going home tonight is entirely on foot, though, so we’ll see how that goes.
It’s very sad to see how car-oriented Britain has become, even in the two decades that I’ve been spending time here. The congestion on the roads and contention for parking is just insane, and the cost of buses and trains certainly doesn’t help. This could be a really bicycle friendly part of the world (and probably was, many years ago), but that’s definitely less and less true.
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