g-boaf wrote:That's awful luck. I'm guessing your riding future has been decided.
I didn't ride yesterday because of the threatening weather and I'm certainly not riding today - it is completely pouring down.
So poignant ... so poignant, I have a thing about the date '19'. It has never been a very lucky date in my life, and now I'm here and surprised to this. I was expecting to add a report on my commute today, which was not really what would have qualified as a worthwhile
commute until today, because it would be less than a 1/4 mile round trip.
The reasons that I eventually decided to include this short, practically insufficient healthwise, jaunt to the shops across the road as a 'commute' were twofold. The positive reason was that I got rained on for the very first time since the Saturday morning I rode the big, heavy ten-speed Raleigh named Rose, with 8ft long single-wheel trailer from Elleker into Albany. It was August 18th, 2001. Veteran's Day at the London Hotel just off York Street at the bottom of the hill. I got drenched that morning for the third time in a 42 day tour along the coast from Perth.
I haven't had need to ride in the rain since then, and have been lucky to plan my days well enough in advance to avoid the showers for almost two decades. Today has been sporadic rain and sunshine in Perth, and I didn't bother to think of the timing for such a short ride. It doesn't really matter now. Like I mentioned to my mate at the liquor store, getting soaked on the way home is no big deal, because one can always change into some dry clothes when one gets home. It is getting
too somewhere that it is best to stay dry, because one will remain in wet clothes until one returns home to change them for dry ones.
This rainy day, it was one of some sort of bliss, to be wet from a bike ride for the first time in almost seventeen years. Knowing that I was only ten minutes from dry clothes makes it blissful to be rained on.
The other reason that I am considering using a bike for trips around the local neighbourhood to the shops etc., but no more on the highways, is that I have had a good, lucky run over these past nine or ten months when I didn't have any alternative personal transport. There have been a few close calls, and a few angry calls, but I'm still alive. Now I am not going to push my luck to the grave.
My fellow commuters in cars have generally become more courteous, friendlier, giving me more room and passing from a safe distance, mostly, since the new 1m-> rules commenced last summer, but there have been some occasional exceptions, the most notable being an offduty St. John's ambulance racing pass with a few inches to spare a couple of months ago, in my left lane on a dual-carriageway when I'm riding less than 12" off the kerb like I always try to do. Another SMIDSY statistic just waiting to happen.
There would be tears now, except that I have ridden to the bottle shop on this most recent commute, and beers are good for tears. I don't want to tempt bad luck and write this. I was not even going to write this at all, not today, or hopefully ever, except that I just got rained on for the very first time on a bike in seventeen years and that is what I wanted to share that was nice, and now it is too late.
Sorry. Reports I have read on anti-cycling in Australia recently, including articles about 'bicycle thugs' in the MSM, along with the general ethos herein about contemporary heavy-metal car drivers attitudes to contemporary light-metal (derogatorily known as lycra), cyclists cycling on Australian public roads, have been dwelling at the front of my mind for several months now, more warningly as time goes on, and I do not think that a man of my age would be thought of as anything better than a fool if he did not heed the warnings which are broadcast at him from every direction, mostly from media, but regularly in person on the roads.
Comparing the risk of riding my highly-vulnerable electric bike ten kays with the risk of driving my less-vulnerable diesel truck ten kays on public roads where there are growing numbers of wily bike haters in Australia, any sensible adult would have no logical conclusion than to take the truck. I am unlikely to live more than another fifty years at the longest, so it is not in my best interests to use clean transportation as much as it is in the interests of younger citizens driving around in dangerous weapons who hat cyclists and their children.
As much as I would like to, it is no longer politically correct to ride a bicycle on Australian roads in the city. I will still do my best to contribute to this forum, because cycling is one of my greatest loves, but as long as the truck has diesel in it, I have had to make the sensible decision to stop riding my bike in the city for the sake of the public health budget. This was my last commute... for now, in Australia.
PS: The song that Liam Bartlett from Kwinana High School played on the ABC 720am local radio at around 09:45+ (GMT+8) on the Friday morning before I road into Elleker from Denmark on the 17th was entitled
'Beautiful Day' by that Irish band called U2.
What you don't have, you don't need it now, don't need it now ...