There is a natural length to things. No, not those things - get your mind out of the gutter. I'm talking the duration of events, especially when they involve sitting on your rear end. Back in the cave person days, you didn't do a lot of sitting - it would be quite some time before the Barca tribe invented the chair. You either were standing (or running) or you were laying down sleeping. Cave people actually only had gluteus minimusses, as there was no real evolutionary need for much junk in the trunk. A little known fact: there is no cave person hieroglyphic for the concept of "a lap," so any cave women trying to make a living out of lap dancing were at a serious disadvantage. But flash forward thousands of years and we spend more time on our behinds and lo and behold they are maximus.
But that still doesn't mean anyone wants to sit all day, whether it is in a comfy cozy chair or some annoyingly uncomfortable thing like a bicycle or kayak seat. The Everglades Challenge is going on right now, a 300 mile boat race/expedition spread over 5-8 days depending on how fast you go. Those people are spending 12 - 16 hours per day sitting in boats. There are other shorter events, like the 90 miles over three days Adirondack Canoe Classic that Susan Williams did, which is more like 10 hours per day sitting in a boat.
I admire all those marathoners but for me I think the limits of the combination of my gluteal endurance and my mental strength limit me to about these durations of sitting:
- Movies: 110 minutes. Throw in lots of gratuitous nudity and car crashes, 125 minutes
- Concerts, by children: 5 minutes
- Concerts, by children other than mine: 1 minute
- Concerts, by any band with drums or electric guitars. or with "bOyZ" in their name: 30 minutes
- Concerts, acoustic/folk/blues: 90 minutes
- Bicycle rides: 5 hours
- Kayak trips: 4 hours
As Mr. Tony says: that's it, that's the list.
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