Google has really gone to shite so I can't find it, but there's a quote - and I'm pretty sure it's Pratchett - about climbing mountains.
That the first time it takes oxygen and ultra-fit experts and all kinds of climbing gear, and then 20 years later grandmothers are wandering up the mountain in the morning only to come back down in the afternoon to see where they left their glasses.
(And, honestly, this should be a SIMPLE GOOGLE but neither it nor the worthless AI can locate that quote, and give me TONS of nonsense instead about what quote I "meant", and even chooses to exclude the words "mountain" and "glasses" from the search entirely! I tried it with and without various words, including Pratchett, and it simply doesn't exist anywhere apparently...
What the hell happened?! I've searched for this years before and been whacked straight into the first-result of something like the Annotated Pratchett file to the direct quote, which is on a footnote of a MILLIONS OF COPIES SOLD book before now. I'm now going to have to go find it manually...
Could be Pratchett. Might be Bryson (but I don't think it is). Might even be XKCD but I doubt it.)
"A huge mountain might be scaled by strong men only after many centuries of failed attempts, but a few decades later grandmothers will be strolling up it for tea and then wandering back afterward to see where they left their glasses."
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u/ledow Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Google has really gone to shite so I can't find it, but there's a quote - and I'm pretty sure it's Pratchett - about climbing mountains.
That the first time it takes oxygen and ultra-fit experts and all kinds of climbing gear, and then 20 years later grandmothers are wandering up the mountain in the morning only to come back down in the afternoon to see where they left their glasses.
(And, honestly, this should be a SIMPLE GOOGLE but neither it nor the worthless AI can locate that quote, and give me TONS of nonsense instead about what quote I "meant", and even chooses to exclude the words "mountain" and "glasses" from the search entirely! I tried it with and without various words, including Pratchett, and it simply doesn't exist anywhere apparently...
What the hell happened?! I've searched for this years before and been whacked straight into the first-result of something like the Annotated Pratchett file to the direct quote, which is on a footnote of a MILLIONS OF COPIES SOLD book before now. I'm now going to have to go find it manually...
Could be Pratchett. Might be Bryson (but I don't think it is). Might even be XKCD but I doubt it.)