The Wow Factor

The Wow Factor


Edel Hackett

LAST Wednesday morning, I was walking to school with the kids, along with the many other mammies and daddies who have started to ditch the car for WWW – Westport Walks Wednesdays. As we turned the corner onto the Lodge Road, the conversation started about the many acronyms used to promote this growing initiative.
“Is it WWW or is it WOW - Walk on Wednesday?” asked my middle boy.
“Well in our case, it should be walk on every day or WOE,” piped up the eldest. Facing into the glare of the continental-like Spring sunshine I thought, well, on a day like this it’s definitely more WOW than WOE.
We do walk as a family almost every day, and it’s not always sunny. And the kids do complain.  The youngest invariably grimaces when I arrive at the school gates with the bike.  Pitted against the close by seven seaters, Mammy and her rusting bike is very bad for street cred. The other two have become more resigned and just load up the bags around the frame.  But within 10 metres, parental cringe factor is forgotten. By then, we’re into sport, politics, world affairs.
Paddy scored a class goal today. Muinteoir Colm says it’s good to vote. Why did the earthquake in Haiti happen? The everyday WOW factor in walking is that it gives you time – to listen, to ask questions, to laugh – before the relentless afternoon merry-go-round of homework, dinner or swimming takes all that time away.
Another advantage to walking or cycling, particularly for shorter journeys, is that you get there just as quickly, and very often quicker. There is a hard-to-admit satisfaction in walking past waiting traffic. When I’m on my bike in the morning, that satisfaction moves into the danger zone of smugness as I freewheel into town past the line of cars stretching back to the Statoil. The only way I can temper my smugness is to remind myself that at any minute a passenger door could open! 
If there is a downside to walking or cycling, it is safety. Unfortunately, many motorists don’t see you, or perhaps it’s more correct to say that they don’t expect you. But this is easily changed. The more people walk or cycle, the more motorists will expect you to be there. When we started to walk to school a few years ago, there were mornings when I felt that the children were sustainability’s equivalent of cannon fodder as we negotiated the Castlebar Road.