Getting paid to exercise
I don't know how much it costs to join a gym these days. It's been about ten years since I last worked out in one, and back then you pretty much had to sign up for a year to get the best value and that cost me about $600.
To get a bit of extra money, Donna and I have started doing letterbox drops. To put it another way, we're delivering junk mail. We did our first delivery this morning and it was easier than I expected.
The area we're working in has the word 'Hills' in its name, and for good reason. It's also the middle of summer, so the temp was around 28 degrees Celsius. It's definitely not as bad as Victoria was a couple of weeks ago, so I can't really say I can relate to what it was like for Dogbait, but we were glad of the water and Gatorade we had with us.
One thing that occurred to me while we were out was that I'd hate to be delivering mail on a motorbike. Some people either don't realise how hard it is to access their letterbox, or they just don't care. A perfect example of this is the house I came across with a beautiful, metre high conifer growing right slap bang in front of the letterbox. There is no way the postie would be able to reach that while sitting on his bike.
After the first couple of cobwebs I also learned not to walk between overgrown trees and bushes.
Some people must be very pessimistic about the amount of mail they get, going by the size of their letterboxes. You'd be flat out fitting a postcard into some of them.
Despite the heat, the hills and the drizzling rain though, I think I'd rather being delivering junk mail here in Australia than in the UK. I've delivered newspapers in Hertfordshire before and part of our round had blocks of flats, meaning lots of stairs. Add to that the fact that the letterboxes are in the front door, not at the front of the property, it means a lot more walking.
On the very last street of our round today I was powering (yes even after two hours) up a hill to where Donna had parked the car and passed a couple of girls in their exercise gear coming the other way. I thought to myself, I'm getting paid to do what you're doing. Okay, it's not a lot of money, but it beats paying for the gym.
4 comments:
It's not a bad job huh Steve? Jill and I did it for just over a year and enjoyed it and the exercise. It's a bit tricky when the rain doesn't stop for days though! Pity it doesn't pay more. The people walking the beat are the last in line for the money, and probably get the least! - Dave.
Dave,
You're right, it's not a bad job. We're both a bit stiff in the legs this morning, but we worked in the garden yesterday afternoon, so the stiffness could also be from that.
The only trouble with doing the deliveries is that we have to fold everything first and that's quite time consuming. The uni semester started today and I'm doing three subjects. I'm hoping I'll have time to fit everything in. If not we might have to drop back to one delivery a week instead of two.
I met a couple out walking today and they asked me how long I walked on an average day. They nearly choked when I told them about 7 hours with only a couple of short breaks.
Another 38c day coming up on Friday. Want to join me?
I spent a day recently walking round Melbourne in 43C heat and all I was carrying was my camera and I was knackered. After that I went to Tassie to cool down. On the plane I read an item in the paper that said "Tassie Hottest Day Ever ". Now I'm back in the UK and it is snowing. Not sure which is worse.
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