Friday, November 09, 2007

Thankful for Transport

What modes of transportation are you thankful for?

The first mode of transport I am thankful for is the motorcar. I seem to spend a long time in my car each day, dropping off & picking up children, getting to sporting & fitness activities, going shopping. Christchurch City Council would like me to bike or catch a bus, but in this city with the terrible drivers, biking is just putting your life in danger. Buses are never quite at the convenient times & it would take too much time out of my day to be catching them with the boys & then catching them back home again, just to repeat the process in the afternoon. I have thought about it, because only this morning I found out that where I go to do my gym, the carpark parking price has gone up from 60cents an hour to $2.50 an hour in the space of 2 days. I am still spitting tacks about that.

I have to say I love the airplane. In a country like NZ, which is split by a peice of water that takes a good 3 hours to cross by ferry, a plane is a god send. A flight to Wellington only takes 45 minutes, whereas driving would be 6 hours in the car followed by 3 on a ferry. You can't beat a plane for getting you across water fast. It has opened up a lot of places in the world that would normally be too difficult to get to.

The last mode of transport that I am thankful for is shipping. Without shipping there would not be the petrol to fuel my car that I love to drive. All the cars that come into our country come on ships, plus a lot of other imports, as well as a lot of exports. Without shipping NZ would become a 3rd world country & I am very grateful that we aren't living in a third world country.

2 comments:

loonyhiker said...

This was great! I never thought about how things get to NZ (I guess I thought things just magically appear!). You put things in perspective with the flying and the shipping.

Unknown said...

Excellent choices and reasoning. I remember living on Guam where everything had to be imported. Makes you really appreciate what you have.