Lower Wombley Bus Wins Championship After Completing Route Backwards
By Gary Opinions: The town’s new competitive transit league has crowned a bus that travelled entirely in reverse while politely missing every stop.
LOWER WOMBLEY, The number 44 bus has won the first Lower Wombley Public Transport Sporting Championship after driving its whole route backwards. Organisers confirmed the result yesterday. They had printed the route map upside down as a safety measure. The vehicle, called Biscuit Tin, beat seven other buses and a garden shed that had taken the matter unusually seriously.
The town’s Office of Recreational Commuting held the contest on a road briefly classified as a running track, a swimming pool and an administrative boundary. Judges marked speed, elegance and punctuality. They also assessed whether passengers felt they had arrived somewhere, despite the view outside remaining exactly the same.
Biscuit Tin reversed away from the start and kept going until it reached the start again from the opposite direction. That put it ahead early. It later made a careful three-point turn around a traffic cone, an exercise officials compared to complicated ballet with several envelopes involved.
“Its greatest strength is that geography has never interfered with its ambitions.”
‘We first noticed its potential when it practised in the depot facing the wrong wall,’ said Mirabel Quonk, chief referee and temporary assistant to the traffic cone. ‘Its greatest strength is that geography has never been permitted to interfere with its ambitions.’
The final brought potatoes into it. Each competitor had to stop at four imaginary shelters and collect passengers represented by painted potatoes. Biscuit Tin finished in 11 minutes. It did collect the same potato three times, and two rivals were left waiting at a shelter that had been relocated to the roof of the town hall.
Spectators also watched the traditional transit sprint, where contestants run for a bus stop before discovering they have been standing beside a decorative signpost. A single red umbrella won. It travelled faster than every bus by staying perfectly still while the road moved beneath it.
Biscuit Tin received a gold ticket for one journey to a destination chosen by the passenger, provided that destination is Lower Wombley and the passenger can prove they are already there. Next season, it is expected to defend the title against a railway carriage currently training by going round a roundabout.