Why No One Walks? I’ll tell you this, but you have to promise that it will get no further. Not long after we moved here we h

admin2019-02-25  27

问题
                            Why No One Walks?
    I’ll tell you this, but you have to promise that it will get no further. Not long after we moved here we had the people next door round for dinner and—I swear this is true—they drove.
    【B1】______Nobody walks anywhere in America nowadays.
    A researcher at the University of California at Berkeley recently made a study of the nation’s walking habits and concluded that 85 percent of people in the United States are "essentially" sedentary and 35 percent are "totally" sedentary. The average American walks less than 75 miles a year—about 1. 4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. I’m no stranger to sloth myself, but that’s appallingly little. I rack up more mileage than that just looking for the channel changer.
    One of the things we wanted when we moved to America was to live in a town within walking distance of shops. Hanover, where we settled, is a small, typical New England college town, pleasant, sedate and compact. It has a broad green, an old-fashioned Main Street, nice college buildings with big lawns, and leafy residential streets. It is, in short, an agreeable, easy place to stroll.【B2】______

    I walk to town nearly every day when I am at home. I go to the post office or library or the local bookshop, and sometimes, if I am feeling particularly debonair, I stop at Rosey Jekes Cafe for a cappuccino. Every few weeks or so I call in at the barbershop and let one of the guys there do something rash and lively with my hair. All this is a big part of my life and I wouldn’t dream of doing it other than on foot. People have got used to this curious and eccentric behaviour now, but several times in the early days passing neighbours would slow by the kerb and ask if I wanted a lift.
    【B3】______
    "Honestly, I enjoy walking. "
    【B4】______
    People have become so habituated to using the car for everything that it would never occur to them to unfurl their legs and see what they can do. Sometimes it’s almost ludicrous. The other day I was in a little nearby town called Etna waiting to bring home one of my children from a piano lesson when a car stopped outside the local post office and a man about my age popped out and dashed inside(and left the motto running). He was inside for about three to four minutes, 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 door, and popped in again, engine still running.
    And the thing is this man looked really fit. I am sure he jogs extravagant distances and plays squash and does all kinds of exuberantly healthful things, but I am just as sure that he drives to each of these undertakings. It’s crazy. 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. I asked her why she didn’t walk to the gym and do six minutes less on the treadmill.
    She looked at me as if I were tragically simple-minded and said, " But I have a programme for the treadmill. It records my distance and speed, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty. 【B5】______.
Questions 61-65:
Complete the article with the following sentences. There are two extra sentences that you do not need.
A. "But I’m going your way," they would insist when I politely declined. "Really, it’s no bother. "
B. I was astounded, but I have since come to realize that there was nothing especially odd in their driving less than a couple of hundred feet to visit us.
C. But they always looked so upset when I said this, that I gave in and accepted the lift. I didn’t have the heart to make them feel they were leaving me to my fate.
D. Nearly everyone in town is within a level five-minute walk of the shops, and yet as far as I can tell virtually no one does.
E. It had not occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard.
F. The fact is, Americans not only don’t walk anywhere, they won’t walk anywhere, and woe to anyone who tries to make them walk.
G. " Well, if you’re absolutely sure," they would say and depart reluctantly, even guiltily, as if they felt they were leaving the scene of an accident.
【B4】

选项

答案G

解析 由对话内容得知,该空应该填入作者再次婉拒后的情形。G项内容是开车的路人半信半疑地离开,前后内容联系紧密。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/kD8K777K
0

随机试题
最新回复(0)