Why did I decide to start cycling?

[Thomk]

Sometimes it's difficult to know what you don't know. Riding through the rain the other day on a bike that's too good for me, with little clue how to fully control my direction and with an engine not yet capable of giving sufficient speed, the passenger of an overtaking blue transit van, I think his name was Stupid Git, opened his window and gave me a blast of a foghorn about 2 feet from my ear. Several things could have happened at this point. It's one of those pivotal moments in time where life (or death) could take different paths for me or for Stupid Git. The obvious consequence, at least to me where the glass is often half empty, was that I could have wobbled, fallen into the road and been crushed by a following German Panzer on it's way to the front. Stupid Git would have been prosecuted and sent to prison for life where he would have shortly been murdered by a sympathising bicycle commuter inmate who had fallen on hard tarmac times. In fact my brain wobbled but my bike kept going in an approximate straight line and I made it home.

Anyway, I now know that this is one of the reasons I have rejected my car and embraced by bike. Thanks to Stupid Git I have experienced something new, something scary and something raw. It's a bit like starting to grow your own lettuce (apologies for the obvious analogy).

 

[andrewsdad]

Sometimes it's difficult to know what you don't know. Riding through the rain the other day on a bike that's too good for me, with little clue how to fully control my direction and with an engine not yet capable of giving sufficient speed, the passenger of an overtaking blue transit van, I think his name was Stupid Git, opened his window and gave me a blast of a foghorn about 2 feet from my ear. Several things could have happened at this point. It's one of those pivotal moments in time where life (or death) could take different paths for me or for Stupid Git. The obvious consequence, at least to me where the glass is often half empty, was that I could have wobbled, fallen into the road and been crushed by a following German Panzer on it's way to the front. Stupid Git would have been prosecuted and sent to prison for life where he would have shortly been murdered by a sympathising bicycle commuter inmate who had fallen on hard tarmac times. In fact my brain wobbled but my bike kept going in an approximate straight line and I made it home.

Anyway, I now know that this is one of the reasons I have rejected my car and embraced by bike. Thanks to Stupid Git I have experienced something new, something scary and something raw. It's a bit like starting to grow your own lettuce (apologies for the obvious analogy).

You will not only find stupid git on a blue transit, but in any audi, bmw or any car sitting 2 inches off the road with an exhaust nearly as thick as the driver. There'll be excitement aplenty ahead. Have fun.