City to Surf - 12 Aug 2010
I made it! I got all the way from Hyde Park in Sydney to the glorious waves of Bondi Beach using nothing but bipedal action. I mostly walked, but there were a few jog-trots in there as well. It was slightly surreal, but exhilarating, to take over streets that are normally clogged with traffic. There were times when everything went very quiet – the spaces between loudspeaker music and Elvis impersonators – and it was just the sound of 70,000 feet on the road and cheerful chatter. Sunday also happened to be one of those dazzlingly bright days that Sydney can turn on, with the sun glittering on water.
But it was hard not to notice all the plastic cups. There we were, like cyclists in the Tour de France, receiving water from supporters on the sidelines. You'd grab a cup, have a slurp and then throw the cup down to join the thousands of others. As we passed through the watering stations, the sound of feet crunching over dead cups was really something. It was like kicking up autumn leaves, only crunchier.
Plastic cups are made of oil. We're running out of oil – and in the case of BP, wasting a whole lot of it in the Gulf of New Orleans – so the idea that we should be using plastic as if there were a never-ending supply seems a little crazy. The arrival last month of the Plastiki, the catamaran made of two-litre plastic drink bottles, drew attention to the craziness. Expedition leader David de Rothschild made the epic journey from San Francisco to Sydney to draw attention to the great swirling soup of plastic in the Pacific ocean known as the Pacitic garbage patch.
Maybe the City Surf needs to implement a two-tier system where the serious runners get plastic cups (because they're special) while the rest of us are forced to bring our own receptacles.
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A big thanks to the TAFE welfare students who released their report Walk Ride to the Future last Friday. It explored why fewer kids than ever ride their bikes or walk to school. BCCAN will be using the data to help devise a community campaign on this issue.