2024年4月22日发(作者：)

out of step课后翻译答案

Bill Bryson

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, N.H., 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.

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.

“I’m going your way,” they would insist when I politely declined.

“Really, it’s no bother.”

“Honestly, I enjoy walking.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” they would say and depart reluctantly, even g

uiltily, as if leaving the scene of an accident without giving their name.

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.

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 store6 next door.

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.

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.”

I confess it had not occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is

in this regard.

According to a concerned and faintly horrified 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 was 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.

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.

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.

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.

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, N.H., discovered. In the early s, 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 and take photos--but commercially it was a

disaster. Forced to walk one whole block from a parking garage, shoppers

abandoned downtown Laconia for suburban malls.

In Laconia dug up its pretty paving blocks, took away the tubs of

geraniums and decorative trees, and brought back the cars. Now people can park

right in front of the stores again, and downtown Laconia thrives anew.

And if that isn’t sad. I don’t know what is.

比尔・布里森

在英格兰居住了20年之后，我和妻子同意搬到美国。因为想要住在．二-个可以步行

至商业区的小城镇，所以我们同意移居在新罕布什尔州的汉诺威，一个典型的新英格兰城

镇，令人开心、宁静而紧凑型。城镇中心存有一大块宽广的绿地，周围就是达特茅斯学院

那庄重的建筑、一条老式的主干道和绿树成荫的住宅区。

总之，这是一个怡人、舒适的地方，适合步行去上班。不过据我所知，实际上没有什

么人这样做。

我几乎每天都步行回去邮局、图书馆或书店，有时，如果心情极好，我会在罗斯杰克

斯咖啡店喝上一杯卡布奇诺咖啡。有时，我会和妻子在晚上漫步至萨吉特剧院看看上一场

电影，或是至格林街的莫菲店喝一杯啤酒。我作梦都没想要过驾车回去这些地方。人们对

我的怪异犯罪行为已经习以为常，但是已经开始的时候，甜人们可以将车停在在路边，反

问我与否必须过桥。

“我和你同路，”他们坚持道，“真的，一点也不麻烦。”而我婉言谢绝。

“说实话，我讨厌步行。”

“哦，那随你吧，”他们这么说着然后不情愿地离开了，甚至带着点负罪感，就好像

离开了事故现场却没有留下姓名。

在美国，我们已经惯于事事用车，时时驾车，我们都没想要过弯曲双腿，看一看自己

的下肢到底能够搞些什么。我们已经步入了这样一个时代，大学生期望课间驾车回去听课，

父母可以驾车回去三个街区外的朋友家直奔孩子，邮递员在街上驾车在每一条私人车道上

来来往往。

为了不走路，我们愿意忍受最可怕的身体扭曲。有时甚至到了愚蠢可笑的地步。一天，

我正在等着接上钢琴课的孩子回家，这时一辆汽车停在了邮局I"1口，车门砰地一声打开

了，一位男士和我年龄相仿，他走下车冲进邮局。只在邮局里呆了三四分钟，他就出了邮

局，钻进汽车，开了16英尺(我也没什么事可干，正好用步子量了量) 到隔壁的百货商店。

情况就是这样的，这个人看起来身体健康。我坚信他会长走、可以踢壁球，参予其他

各种有利于身心健康的运动，但是我也坚信他可以驾车前往这些运动场所。

某日我们的一位熟人抱怨本地健身会所外很难找到停车的地方，她一周有几次会去那

里在走步机上锻炼身体。从这个健身会所走路到她家前门最多6分钟。

我反问她为什么不步行至健身房，这样在持球机上太少跑6分钟就行了。

她看着我，好像我是个可怜的傻瓜似的.，然后说，“但是步行机上有我的锻炼程序。

它记录我锻炼的距离、时间和卡路里的消耗量，我还可以利用它调整锻炼的难易程度。”

我宣称，过去我从来没意识到我对这个问题就是多么地思量不周。

年《波士顿环球报》刊载的一篇有点骇人听闻的相关社论说，美国在专为行人

作出的交通设施财政预算没全部交通财政预算的百分之一。事实上，使我吃惊的就是

财政预算数目还挺低的。至几乎所有近30年来发展构成的市郊走走看看，你可以辨认出

那里没一条人行道，很多时候连人行横道都打听没。

发现这个问题是在某个夏天，我开车经过缅因州，在一个购物中心、汽车旅馆、快餐

店林立的地方我想停车喝杯咖啡。看到街对面有家书店，我决定不喝咖啡直接去书店。

尽管书店仅在七八十英尺之遥，我却辨认出没任何办法可以步行过街，除非你能够在

汽车赶路的六个车道上左手挥右躲避。最后，我不得不返回车里驾车过马路。

那时，我觉得荒唐至极并且气急败坏。但是，事后我想到，自己可能是惟一一个想到

要步行穿过那个十字路口的人。

事实是，在这个国家我们不但现在不能步行前往任何地方，将来也不能步行前往任何

地方。而且正像在新罕布什尔州的拉哥尼亚市所出现的事情那样，谁必须使我们走路谁就

可以可恶。在20世纪70年代早期，拉哥尼亚市斥资数百万展开全面的市区扩建计划，其

中包含一个使购物更加开心的步行购物广场。在美学上这就是一次顺利之握――众多城市

规划者从各地赶来，相互交换意见并偷拍合影留念――但是从商业上谈，这就是一个非常

大的失利。由于从停车场不得不步行整整一个街区，购物者们退出了拉哥尼亚的中心城区

而转为市郊购物。

年拉哥尼亚刨掉了漂亮的路面，移走了一盆盆的天竺葵和用来美化环境的树木，带回

了一辆辆汽车。现在人们又可以直接在商场门口停车了，拉哥尼亚的市中心地区又恢复了

往昔的繁荣。

如果那不是可悲的话，我都不晓得什么就是可悲了。