In the summer, I visited a neighbouring town on my bike, to check out the market. As I approached the main street, I found it had been block paved, marked as 'access only - no through traffic' and a 15mph speed limit imposed. As the market was about 100 yards further into the road I thought it reasonable to cycle the distance to the market. On reaching the market entrance I slowed and put out a foot to stand on the kerb., only to find that there was no longer any height difference between road surface and pavement height, and me and the bike simply fell sideways onto the pavement in a heap of embarrassment. One of the stall holders came across to see if I was ok and help me and the bike back to an upright position. Apparently I was not the first cyclist to be caught out like this, and I think it proves my theory that we often look, and see what we expect to see, not what is actually there. I remember, some years ago now, that a 30 second clip of film was shown to 4 different people from different viewpoints. 4 different versions of what had taken place where duly recorded by the witnesses, and then what had truly happened was revealed to them all, which in fact was not reflected in any of the statements. An interesting social experiment.
