Bus surfing

· mumblings ·

My bike still isn't fixed, so I'm suffering a bus ride every day. It's particularly packed on my way home from work, so most days I have to stand up all the way home. This is annoying but--as I always try to make a virtue of a necessity--it has prompted me to revive a sport I invented when I was about 8 years old.

I really liked the idea of surfing or skateboarding, but we lived too far from the sea, and my mum wouldn't let me have a skateboard. So--whenever I had to stand up on a bus or the tube--I would indulge in the noble art of bus surfing. The idea is this: you try to remain stable and upright solely by shifting your body weight around. When I was younger I didn't hold on at all, but frankly people get a bit impatient with a grown woman crashing in to them when she misjudges a corner, so now I maintain an 'emergency hold' on one of the poles--just in case. One of the keys to success is to read the road to predict the turns and changes in acceleration, but this is much more of a challenge on the tube. When you judge a section perfectly, it can be deeply satisfying. It's cheaper than surfing (depending on your route), you don't get wet, and you can do it every day and have a full-time job. You don't get a tan, though.