Today on the way home I had the following interesting encounters -
Approaching Wandsworth a Lewis Day courier on L plates pulls across the road turning right without any regard to me coming along at 20 miles an hour. Had to make an emergency stop to avoid hitting him. He had the nerve to gesticulate at me!
Whilst composing myself after that I spent a few seconds sitting in the slow moving stream of cars for five seconds or so. I checked for stuff coming up behind before filtering on, and saw a motorcycle and a cyclist approaching fast behind my right shoulder. Decided to wait for them to go past. Just before they did an unlit cyclist came from nowhere at speed from behind my left shoulder, whacked into my bike bounced off and whacked into the car I was waiting to filter past. He didn’t damage my bike, although daylight might reveal something. I think the very heavy bar end weight Piaggio supply with the colour matching top box caught the whole impact. The cyclist shouted “My hand!” immediately after the impact, so hopefully it hurt! Jackie tried to chase after him but he turned off down an alley and she lost him. He obviously is aware of Jackie’s reputation for dealing with confrontational situations!
Couldn’t see going up West Hill - a car had its lights on full beam - nobody could see anything as everyone was dazzled - Jackie and I both shouted at the driver of the small hatchback who looked oblivious to the hazard she was causing!
Finally, on the A3 approaching New Malden I was going over the railway bridge just before the New Malden Flyover when the N Reg BMW car in front started weaving erratically. He had probably dropped the phone of something because he hit the kerb throwing up loads of debris etc from the gutter. Fortunately he regained control and after weaving about a bit turned off towards Raynes Park. I kept my distance!
I have a nice easy comute most days, God bless flexi working, but today I too had four incidents with d*ck head car drivers.
Two didn’t like being overtaken and got sh*tty and noisy, one tried to push me into a traffic island as I was trickling past a long line of near stationary cars and the forth was obviously trying to get the Arrows exhausts part numbers off the cans.
All dealt with by simply ignoring them, but that’s not easy and getting harder.
I try to stay cool, calm and collected no matter what, but days like today are a bit tough.
It’s true - some days are worse than others and all you can really do is suck it up and move on, soldier.
But, as folks have indeed been trying to kill you, it does help to have a gripe about it, too!
On Monday, when it was widdling down so spectacularly, I found myself on the Westway, which was flooded in places. That didn’t stop the beemer/audi folk (you know who they are) from trying to remove themselves - and me - from the gene pool and it left me cursing the lot of them.
Twelve hours later, on Pentonville Road on my way home from work, a cement truck decided to sit right on my rear wheel. Nasty, slippy, wet night, so not really what you want. At the Kings Cross lights, I turned around, made a < - - - - -> ‘give-us-a bit-more-room-eh,-guv’nor’ gesture and the double thumbs up, so he didn’t jump down and thump me. It worked!!! Smile, thumbs up, dropped back.
Sometimes good things happen … just not that often.
People do seem to turn into utter twats at this time of year. To be honest that’s what made me put the bike in the garage this weekend for a couple of months and hit the trains. I hate the trains, (out of 5 journeys this week, 3 of them were delayed or cancelled), but after riding throughout the winter for many years I’ve seen too many close shaves to make it worth it.
Wednesday is A*sehole driver day. You always get the worst ones out.
The problem we have is there is a lot of people out there that don’t even have a licence or insurance so drive how they want without a care in the world.
Jackie was on her own bike. I didn’t move off straight away as I wanted ot b sure I hadn’t picked up any damage or injuries in the collision. Jackie who was behind me set off in hot pursuit. (What is cold pursuit?)
You know those stickers that the police put on abandoned vehicles with the words ‘Police Aware’, I sometimes wish I had a supply of stickers with the words ‘Suspect Driver-Police Aware??’ to slap on the offending cars. Of course that would be vigilanti-ism and entirely subjective on my part ;)but it doesn’t take a genius to spot these drivers- they are so bad.
‘Look No Indicators’ would be another one. Or ‘Beware this Driver will turn with No Warning’. Or ‘Lobotomised Individual On Board’ etc. etc.
I have to say that having a large and noisy trike helps control these divvies a bit. I’m sure that I have far less trouble than many a biker because of it, maybe because in their minds “triker=ugly greaser who won’t hesitate to turn uglier with a flailing bike chain”.
Another reason for loud zorsts, come to think of it - more people look as you pass, so if anything goes pear, more witnesses.
I often sit next to a cager and suggest they take their car back to the garage…when they ask “why?” I reply with the following…“Well, neither of your indicators work m8!”. They usually look stumped for a minute, by the time they feel like shouting at me I’m usually well gone.
Yep sounds like the usual bastard day commuting ! at least we can all be safe knowing that all the speed cameras are doing their job keeping death off the roads .
im gonna start doing that!! 