Cable cars are unnatural. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. You heard it first from me, unnatural. In fact what were people thinking when they first starting to built very high pillars and then put wheels on them and very thick rope on top of it and then cabins that went either in one direction only, or even worse, round that whole thing. Isn't that the clear sign of the devil?
To be fair, that groundbraking thought never struck me until recently, when I rode home on the bus and heard a woman claiming exactly that. She apparently had come home from a hiking trip where they hiked up a mountain. And she explained that instead of cheating with the devil's tool, she always goes up on feet. Which is nice. It is a very good excersize for you, you will feel awesome once you reached the top all on your own. I did that with my parents myself. And it does feel good once you reached the top of something. All in all, hiking is good and I really have nothing against it.
Yes, you felt the but coming miles away, because most of you propably wondered why I bothered to start talking about it the first place. First of all, natural is one of those words that tend to get stretched to the extreme. Just because something exists in nature "naturally", it doesn't automatically equal good. How come whenever people use natural to label something good they tend to forgot nature's ugly face? Yes, some plants have amazing abilities and we use them to our advantage. Like the Lotus flower. Its surface structure ensures that it cleans itself just by rain. Pretty impressive to me, who needs to add a whole bunch of shower gel to clean herself. Cranberries contain a high level of antioxidants, which prevent certain bactarias to flourish and can help preventing bladder infections. Very cool, indeed. There would be many many more great examples for great "natural" things.
Earthquakes are natural as well. I have never heard anyone praise them. Well, besides some religious nutters who are convinced that there are a punishment for whatever. Some might moan now, that's not what they mean when the say "natural". There are not talking of natural phenomenons, but a natural life style, eating natural food, stuff like that. Okay. Let's talk about that then. Let's talk about the death-cap. Yes, the clue is in the name. This little, harmless looking fellow will kill you slowly and once you are showing symptoms it is already too late. Welll, it used to be, until they invented those unnatural medicins that could prevent you from dying. Spoilsports. However, this mushroom is completely natural. Nothing artificial to it. Or lillies of the valley. Don't they look harmless and nice? Well as long as you don't mistake them with bear's garlic, you are save. Unfortunatly the leaves look very much alike. The difference. The latter can be very tasty, the first will kill you.
Coming back to the unnatural cable cars. Life in the mountains used to be very tough and certainly still is in many areas. And quite frankly, only tourists that hike up the mountain because they want to do sports during their holidays could be that ignorant to not understand what an achievement those things are. You can get up a mountain in ten minutes. Before it took you so much longer or was even impossible. Of course they don't grow on trees, but how on earth does that equal bad? I love cable cars. It is not just a cheat that somehow robs you of the experience. Quite to the contrary, it is an amazing experience. You are floating over the world and are still having a very good view all around. Me and my family used to go skiing in the Swiss Alps every April and we often looked down to the ground hoping to spot the first Groundhogs that came out after their long sleep. Because we were up in the cabin they were not disturbed by us, but we were still able to watch them.
And then I was in the cable-car in Medellin, Colombia, that was built in one of the most run-down areas in the city. That area was in the mountains and the houses were built rather chaotically. The streets are much too small and steep even for tiny busses to get up there. But as good infrastructure and a fast lane to the city is crucial to a better living environment, they built a cable-car. How cool is that?
I wonder if the lady from the bus would still stand up to her opinion when facing a women from over there, carrying her weekly shoppings and dragging her two kids along. That's the main thing about those those luxury eco-lovers that bugs me and makes me write long rants on my almost unnoticed blog, they possess zero empathy for those that would really need to those devil's works. Oh, and by the way, strange lady on the bus, busses really don't grow on trees.
