Wednesday 10 March 2010

Commuter rage...

I've been out on the bike a bit more now that the weather has finally started to ease up. I managed a 25 mile loop round by Farr and Ruthven on Saturday although there was still a heck of a lot of grit and detritus on the roads from when they were gritted. There's still loads of snow up there and it was gently thawing and draining on to the roads, so while it was all clear blue skies and no wind there was still an awful lot of water on the road. By the time I got back it looked like I'd been mountain biking not road biking!



Aaaaanyway. I've decided to commute to work to get a wee bit more training in. We've not long moved house and it's a bit closer to work and R's school. Today would be day 3 of commuting.

Day 1: Leaving work and someone decides that he's going to pull out and sideswipe me, fortunately he misses. Cue much swearing on my part.

Day 2: I'm about to turn right. I position myself on the road to get ready to turn off, I signal, I'm wearing a bit orange jacket, I'm 5'11", I am on the largish side, I have both volume and mass. So WHY does the silly cow in the blue VW Beetle waiting at the junction to turn right decide that regardless of this, she will pull out and drive right at me forcing me to swerve back left into oncoming traffic and nearly getting myself flattened in the process?!! Cue swearing gesticulating and general irritation on my part. Does she even acknowledge my presence? Does she 'eck.

Day 3: No incidents to report but I've just been given a free place on the Etape Caledonia sportive! Result! So it balances out in the end.

It seems even in Inverness cycle commuting is fraught with danger. Someone recently advised that one way to get motorists to 'see' you is to make direct eye contact with them. That way they can't come out with the old 'but I didn't see you mate' chestnut while you try and figure out why you've become embedded headfirst into the grill of a BMW X5.

3 comments:

Jo said...

Did you see the article in this weeks Cycling Weekly on this very subject. I'm still calming down..

Toby said...

No, I missed that. I'll have a wee look online and see if I can find it.

Unknown said...

Found you from a comment you left on The Croft blog. Go for that ride! I can still vividly recall a great trip we did down the West Coast in 1976. No internet in those days but some years ago I put up a site taken from my journals which you can find at http://www.bikeride.cankita.co.uk.

The guestbook doesn't work by the way, had to take it out as it kept getting hacked but you should be able to get a link from my id.