Friday, August 17, 2007

Buses at 200 paces

I love Sydney, I’m just thankful I don’t need to live there anymore. I doubt if anyone is actually allowed to enjoy the beauty of the city anymore, but way out in the western suburbs there are some who still find the exciting aspects of the place.

Unfortunately they are bus drivers. A group of adrenaline-fuelled private bus drivers have turned a bus tunnel in Blacktown into their own personal drag strip. Blacktown, when I was a boy, was the outer limits of civilisation. I enjoyed several years there in a semi rural kid heaven.

Since those times it has grown enormously and the bus interchange (we walked when I was a boy) is beneath a major retail centre. So side by side, they race down the bus tunnel underneath this shopping centre.

The game is to see who can record the highest speed down the 200m tunnel before screeching to a halt outside the busy bus stops, crammed with waiting passengers. I don’t think George W catches the local bus so there isn’t really much drama, but I’m not sure how they wind the lumbering beasts up that much.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

...but I’m not sure how they wind the lumbering beasts up that much.

Given enough distance, even a diesel engine can get a vehicle going at a pretty good clip--momentum is a marvelous thing. The problem, of course, is that somebody eventually going to crash in a way that takes out more than just a retaining wall.

Cartledge said...

Thought you might like that one :) I think the big problem is those bloody pedestrians on cell phones. How are they going to dodge a speeding snail?