Survival of the fattest

OK, here's one that shouldn't be lost in the miasma of the Internet: http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100718/OUTDOORS/7180315

Read it, or at least skim it. After you have, come back here. I'll wait.

Got it? Segway mountain hiking. Have any of you seen WALL-E? If not, part of the premise is that humans have left the Earth because we've poisoned the planet beyond use. We've left behind robots to make it habitable and plan to return within a decade or two (my memory is fuzzy on the details). But the humans stay away for hundreds of years because they're having too much fun being pampered by their machines.

As expected, humans balloon into gigantic proportions, unable to walk or even realize there's a world beyond their VR headsets. They spend all their time on social networks being fed (and presumably, cleaned) by robots.

It starts with the Segway. Not in the movie -- in reality. Some whiny person out there might claim that the Segway hikes are for physically challenged folks who can't experience a mountain trail. Yeah, that would be nice... it might even bring a tear to my eye... if it were mentioned in the story I linked above. Nope, Segway hikes are for people who don't want to walk it. Nice.

Oh, yeah, there's a quote in there about how the Segway is implied to be harder than walking (near the end of the piece). Bullshit. It's just that people aren't used to using their torso muscles to control a machine that only goes eight miles per hour. Eight! Twice as fast as walking, but oh so embarrassing.

If I were in charge of this little Segway expedition, I'd take a little further. I'd see how far we can really go before people become embarrassed at being so lazy. I'd start with diapers. Everyone on the hike has to wear one because "You never know what's going to happen," I'd tell them. There are BEARS out there and caves and bats and spooky things. We might run into bad weather and have to spend a few nights in the rough and what happens if the Segway's battery goes dead? Well that leads me to my next survival accoutrement -- a satchel with a hammer, hacksaw, and matches. 

"What could this be for?" our intrepid, darking hikers might ask. "For survival," I'd reply. Imagine being lost on the trail. Which way to go? Left or right? It gets foggy in those mountains and we could become lost, perhaps for days. We need to eat. Hunger will make you crazy and day or two without McDonalds or Burger King will certainly drive our brazen Segway hikers into a frenzy.

Someone must die so the rest can live.

The hammer will take them out. The saw is for obvious reasons; bone is not terribly yielding. And the matches are clearly for cooking, provided one of our cyborg outdoorsmen brought a portable gas grill. Otherwise, we're screwed. Certainly, wood abounds, but what kind of crazy talk is that? That would involve some kind of energy to expended. Surely, Segways haven't advanced to the point where they can gather wood and build fires. Not yet, anyway.

Stay tuned to the Discovery station. Sooner or later those survival shows will be replaced with Segway survival skills for the modern adventurer.

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