ring是什么意思unit3outofstep课文翻译综合教程三

2021年1月19日发(作者：firmament)
Unit 3

Out of Step
Bill Bryson
1

After living in England for 20 years, my wife and I decided to move back to the
United States. We wanted to live in a town small enough that we could walk to the
business
district,
and
settled
on
Hanover,
.,
a
typical
New
England
town
—

pleasant,
sedate and
compact.
It
has
a
broad
central
green
surrounded by
the
venerable
buildings
of
Dartmouth
College,
an
old-fashioned
Main
Street
and
leafy
residential
neighborhoods.

2

It is, in short, an agreeable, easy place to go about one’
s business on foot,
and yet as far as I can tell, virtually no one does.

3

Nearly
every
day,
I
walk
to
the
post
office
or
library
or
bookstore,
and
sometimes,
if
I
am
feeling
particularly
debonair,
I
stop
at
Rosey
Jekes
Café
for
a
cappuccino.
Occasionally, in the evenings, my wife and I stroll up to the Nugget Theatre for
a movie or to Murphy’s on the Green for a beer, I wouldn’t dream of going to any
of these places by car. People have gotten used to my eccentric behavior, but in
the early days acquaintances would often pull up to the curb and ask if I wanted
a ride.

4

“I’m going your way,” they would insist when I politely declined. “Really,
it’s no bother.”

5


“Honestly, I enjoy walking.”

6


“Well,
if
you’re
sure,”
they
would
say
and
depart
reluctantly,
even
guil
tily,
as if leaving the scene of an accident without giving their name.

7

In
the
United
States
we
have
become
so
habituated
to
using
the
car
for
everything
that it doesn’t occur to us to unfurl our legs and see what those lower limbs can
do. We have reached an
age where college
students expect to drive
between classes,
where parents will drive three blocks to pick up their children from a friend’s
house,
where
the
letter
carrier
takes
his
van
up
and
down
every
driveway
on
a
street.

8

We will go through the most extraordinary contortions to save ourselves from
walking.
Sometimes
it’s
almost
ludicrous.
The
other
day
I
was
waiting
to
bring
home
one of my children from a piano lesson when a car stopped outside a post office,
and a man about my age popped out and dashed inside. He was in the post office for
about three or four minutes, and then came out, got in the car and drove exactly
16 feet (I had nothing better to do, so I paced it off) to the general store
next
6
door.

9

And the thing is, this man looked really fit
. I’m sure he jogs extravagant
distances and plays squash and does all kinds of healthful things, but I am just
as sure that he drives to each of these undertakings.

10

An acquaintance of ours was complaining the other day about the difficulty of
finding a place to park outside the local gymnasium. She goes there several times
a week to walk on a treadmill. The gymnasium is, at most, a six-minute walk from
her front door.

11

I asked her why she didn’t walk to the gym and do six minutes less on the
treadmill.

12

She looked at me as if I were tragically simple-
minded and said, “But I have
a
program
for
the
treadmill.
It
records
my
distance
and
speed
and
calorie
burn
rate,
and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.”

13

I confess it had not occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in
this regard.

14

According
to
a
concerned
and
faintly
horrified
1997
editorial
in
the
Boston
Globe
,
the United States spent less than one percent of its transportation budget on
facilities
for
pedestrians.
Actually,
I’m
surprised
it
w
as
that
much.
Go
to
almost
any
suburb
developed
in
the
last
30
years,
and
you
will
not
find
a
sidewalk
anywhere.
Often you won’t find a single pedestrian crossing.

15

I had this brought home to me one summer when we were driving across Maine and
stopped for coffee in one of those endless zones of shopping malls, motels, gas
stations and fast-food places. I noticed there was a bookstore across the street,
so I decided to skip coffee and head over.

16

Although the bookshop was no more than 70 or 80 feet away, I discovered that
there was no way to cross on foot without dodging over six lanes of swiftly moving
traffic. In the end, I had to get in our car and drive across.

17

At the time, it seemed ridiculous and exasperating, but afterward I realized
that
I
was
possibly
the
only
person
ever
to
have
entertained
the
notion
of
negotiating
that intersection on foot.

18

The
fact
is,
we
not
only
don’t
walk
anywhere
anymore
in
this
country,
we
won’t
walk anywhere, and woe to anyone who tries to make us, as the city of Laconia, .,
discovered. In the early 1970s, Laconia spent millions on a comprehensive urban
renewal project, which included building a pedestrian mall to make shopping more
pleasant. Esthetically
it was a
triumph
—
urban planners came from all
over to
coo