To the lady in the hire car on elizabeth st at five-twenty; please indicate and headcheck before you pull out into traffic.
To the guy on the bike in a’beckett st at five-thirty; don’t pull out into the bike lane and then stop, especially when you see someone coming.
To the guy in the audi on swanston st at five-thirty-five; i had my hand on your window because you were forcing me into a tram superstop, not because i didn’t want to ‘keep my hands off your f%^&ing car’
To the guy in the 4wd on rathdowne st at five-fourty; please make sure that there’s no-one in the lane next to you before you turn, and my girlfriend apologizes for inturrupting your text messaging.
And to the girl in carlton, who i dropped my last job to at six o’clock, with the pretty hair and the cute haircut; Thankyou. You made it all worthwhile.
yep, that sounds like any day, in any city, anywhere worldwide to me.
you should try and get published, wouldn’t even really need to change the street names, they seem to be fairly general all over
only did a half day today and still had the requisite 2 near death experiences.
Fuck… that sounds like a typical commute home! Hawthorn has the biggest contingent of 4WD’s in Australia and the worst drivers. They either are arrogant c.unts or dropkicks.
Last Friday, Glenferrie Rd… Black Audi, cut me off to get a car park space. Smacked the door and told him he was a prick. Then 20 meters further on… old guy, doing the " had one too many" shuffle steps out blindly, but I swerved around and told him, “look both ways old fella”. But unfortunately inhaled as I rode past him… phew!!. Those last few minutes are the most dangerous of my ride!
The worst I’ve had of late was some students unloading a hatchback on Swanston street.
What with the large expanse of foot path on one side of the bike lane and the trafffic island on the other they of course mingled about in the bike lane itself. And when they saw me coming they did the 'ol ‘move slightly to one side’ as opposed to the much more sensible ‘get off the road completely’
What was most amazing was that they seemed shocked when I shouted the latter option at them. Throwing in a few variations of ‘fuck’ where appropriate.
those bike lanes don’t seem to be as great as we all hoped. There seems to be pedestrians milling about in them a fair bit and the fact that cars have to cut across the mouth of them to turn isn’t great either.
but i think even for cars it’s a bit of an “out of sight, out of mind” sorta thing. Keep the bikes lanes on the road so they don’t forget we’re there.
the council probably could have put painted lanes all over melbourne for the same cost as the swanston st renovations.
that said I thought it was a fantastic idea when they were talking about putting it in. Tis a shame it doesn’t work too well, but I appreciate them trying.
To be honest people don’t seem to be milling about in the ‘Copenhagen’ lanes any more then they did/do in regular bike lanes. I see it all the time. Two people standing around beside a car chatting or somebody just walking up the bike lane with their shopping waiting to cross the road or somebody sitting with their car door open fiddling with their shoelace or some shit.
I wouldn’t mind so much except they look up, see you coming, and just go right back to what they are doing with out moving an inch.
Then when I zip past them at high speed with an inch of room to spare I get fucking yelled at.
Ridiculous.
(don’t even get me fucking started on the people that ride the wrong direction in the bike lane)
yesterday i was riding behind some fat douchepong who thought it was his responsibility to spit on any car where the driver had (in his opinion) committed malfeasance. thing was, 2 of the cars had to slam on the brakes to avoid broadsiding him as he gunned it down the footpath sailing through stop signs that any sane cyclist would have at least slowed for.
the fat dickhead will have us all painted with the same brush.
Its funny, I got cut off 9 times by cars and ped’s on Tuesday. Wednesday I just said ‘fuck it!’ Rode in the middle of at 120rpm with 53:16 ratio. Only twice yelled 'Oi fuckass! Sent the backpack into one ‘hardman’ that saw me coming, stepped out and tried stairing me down!
