Buffalo & Doozerie - The mild musings of two grumpy old men!

loinnsigh wrote: »

Were you just north of Blessington at the time, or was that another banana-dropper? I swerved some lad's banana there this morning

If your incident was just before Brittas then yes that was me (though it might have been a banana minefield out there generally yesterday - cold cyclist hands and juggling food is a fraught combination at best). Thanks for sparing my food!

Mein Gott, closest pedestrian near-miss in recent history this morning. I'm still not sure how this girl didn't hit me...

Eastbound on Whitworth Road, line of car traffic, up ahead some kind soul is letting someone reverse out of his driveway, so I'm already on the brakes, slowing down. Girl on the footpath suddenly turns on her heel and steps out into me. I shout involuntarily, and I think that must have caused her to pause for the split-second I needed to clear her. She didn't hit the deck, and neither did I, and I didn't hang around for an apology.

Becoming a parent has led to my being introduced to the world of Richard Scarry through the books of his that my daughter likes. The world around me has taken on a new complexion as a result, I see characters from Busytown when I like around me.

Like one morning last week during my commute. I stopped at a red light where the road I was on was joined by a road from the right. Another cyclist stopped to my right and a little ahead. It was a strange place to stop, he had positioned himself in front of the line of stopped cars, but the fact that he had stopped at all was the focus of my attention. Few cyclists stop at those lights, apparently there is an invisible force field which prevents cars and cyclists coming from the road on the right from squishing you so most cyclists just barrel on through without any hesitation. I eyed him from the short distance away. It was a bit awkward, 'twas like being at a disco where everyone is merrily smashing the red lights on the dance floor and you spot the only other person there that doesn't seem to fit in. Should I go over and introduce myself as a kindred spirit? What do I say? "Do you fancy a green light from the bar" would just sound a but cheesy. What if I go red in the face, red means stop so that would mean we couldn't even talk. Oh, commuting is so tricky!

Anyway, he seemed to decide that being closer to the kerb was a better place to be so he started to roll his bike across in front of me. As he did so, someone else on a bike, Mr. Frumble himself, came wobbling along and tried to weave between us. Look out, Mr. Frumble! But Mr. Frumble crashed into the other cyclist. They both stayed upright, there was some muttering of apology though I'm not sure by whom, and Mr. Frumble continued on his way, through the red light.

Uncharacteristically Mr. Frumble cleared the junction without incident, but 20m ahead was another bigger junction, a crossroads, also with a red light. Watch out for the pedestrian, Mr. Frumble! But Mr. Frumble crashed into the pedestrian who was crossing the road. Mr. Frumble stayed upright, as did the pedestrian, but the pedestrian seemed cross and said something to Mr. Frumble while pointing to the red light. Mr. Frumble looked a bit dejected. He seemed to think twice about going through the crossroads, those cars were crossing left and right a bit faster than he'd like. So he waited. Well done, Mr. Frumble.

My light went green, Mr Frumble's light went green, and I passed him by a moment later as he wobbled along. He looked a bit down in the dumps. Poor Mr Frumble. Not to worry Mr. Frumble, you'll be back in your car tomorrow and you'll be safer then. If you survived the rest of your journey, that is. Good luck Mr. Frumble.

Had a long, busy, and stressful week in work this week, compounded by my daughter chirpily nominating 04h00 as "morning time" a few nights in a row. I needed a good night's sleep but for reasons that seem very dubious now I decided I'd watch The Bourne Legacy before going to bed "early". That was the plan. The plan developed a few wrinkles early on by the fact that it was nearly 22h00 when I sat down to watch the film and the film was over 2 hours long. I'll be grand, I thought, common sense having already packed itself away for its own early night.

Once the clock passed midnight I was struggling a bit, common sense roused itself briefly, had a sleepy look at the time, and muttered a "Jaysus, ya muppet!". I was anxious for the film to end, I felt like a barman at closing time - "Come on now, will ye wrap it up. Just kill each other so that we can all go home!". Ten minutes later and the main protagonists had still failed to resolve their differences. By now I was an assassin-on-the-ditch, watching proceedings and thinking things like "Feck sake, how could you miss? I'd have hit him if I were firing that gun!" and "Ah now, what's with the bar locks, just go straight for the vulcan death grip. FECK SAKE!".

It was eventually 00h30 when I got to bed. No panic, 7 hours sleep, breakfast, and out on the bike by 09h00. I went to sleep with images from the film, and the (far better) other Bourne films going through my head. It seemed like no more than 5 minutes after I'd closed my eyes than I was opening them again to a face hovering just inches from mine in the dark. CHRIST! As my brain considered its various panic options a voice much like my daughters cut through the haze. I glanced at the clock, 03h50. Feck sake! "I got a fright. I saw a monster", she said. Yeah, I know exactly how you feel, I thought. How would Jason Bourne deal with the situation I wondered. I decided he'd walk her back to her room, give her a hug, and settle her down for the night. But if he met any real monster enroute he was going to assassinate the sh1t out of them, that was for sure. Back to bed, and my brain started ruminating on the anomalies in the film. Was about an hour later that I finally fell asleep again. Feck sake!

07h45 and my daughter ran into the room, full of beans. She is clearly on drugs, I'd like some of those. I hobbled out of bed like an auld fella crippled with arthritis and limped around. My wife took pity on me and offered to sort out breakfast while I had an extra nap. My wife rocks! I eventually crowbar'ed myself out of bed, helped by a very chatty child, a little before 10h00. Over an hour later I was searching for my cycling kit. I couldn't find my base layer. It wasn't accidentally in the ironing pile. Definitely not. I checked everywhere. Twice. It wasn't in the ironing pile. Definitely not. …it was in the ironing pile. Feck sake! I left the house at 12h10. Feck!

I headed out via Enniskerry. There were loads of riders going the other way, probably almost home after their day's ride. I was nodding my head at people like a mad thing, 'tis a wonder it didn't fall off. Saw several more riders as I descended the other side of Enniskerry. The driver behind considerately held well back, bikes are quicker than cars down there. On the last downhill stretch a rider coming up the other way had a line of cars behind him. The lead car decided that overtaking uphill on a narrow road, with a rider coming straight down towards them at 50kph, was a perfectly sensible thing to do. I was left with about 1m of road to squeeze between the car and the ditch to my left. I yelled something non-complimentary at them, I can't remember exactly what, but whatever it was wasn't strong enough to convey my true feelings on the matter. I didn't have time to yell something else at the car behind it who decided to follow the overtaking car. I know you don't need a brain to drive a car, but, really, what the feck?!

The rest of the ride was largely uneventful, some other dubious demonstrations of driving and occasional lungs hanging out over the handlebars aside. I decided I hated myself so I turned up Luggala on the way home. The not so steep bit was worse today than I had anticipated, the steep bit was easier than I had expected, and I decided to make it even harder for myself to Sallygap but picking a relatively high gear for me. So it seemed like a fairly slow trudge up to the gap. As I neared it I could make out the silhouettes of cyclists stopped at the crossroads. As I got closer I was able to make out an eclectic mix of kit - various colours was all I could make out at that distance. Someone standing near one of the signposts, away from the others, had a particularly distinctive pair of shorts or tights on, they were pink at the back and black on the legs. I was tired, that's my excuse for staring until the realization hit me that I was looking at a bare arse. I was being unintentionally (I hope) mooned. It wasn't a half-arsed moon either, so to speak, both cheeks were on proud display, and by their flushed colour I'd guess that they were angry at being sat on a bike saddle for some period of time. As I passed, the female owner of the cheeks pulled her tights back up and re-joined the group. I try to blot the image from my memory, but it's annoyingly persistent.

I'm finally off to bed now, hopefully my dreams won't feature any of the more notable points of today, otherwise I may welcome a middle-of-the-night wake up from my daughter to save me from myself. In the meantime, sorry to the Internet, the length of this post has probably made it run out of ink.

Coming back from Clontarf seafront yesterday morning, stopped at the lights at the Malahide Road junction. Too lazy to trackstand, lean against a convenient lamp-post instead. This has the unintended side-effect of putting me well into the side of the road, which is not where I like to be.

Taxi pulls up just behind me, very close. He keeps moving forward, and his wing mirror close enough that I feel compelled to stick my arm out and wave a bit to make sure he's seen me. He keeps moving forward (at this point he's well past the stop line), and I have to lean in a bit to make sure his wing mirror doesn't clip me. Then he rolls down the window and tells me to get on the cycle track, amid other general abuse.

I've become so desensitised to this sort of thing that I forgot to call the Gardaí when I got home. I have his taxi plate number, debating calling today.

I was wondering though - do the taxi bodies educate their members on the rights of other road users? Was there a bulletin that said, "hey drivers, from 1st Oct 2012, cyclists can legally share the road, no matter what cycle tracks exists" ? I doubt it. Leo was on the radio this morning, talking about potholes, but never heard him publicising the above rule change.

For the umpteenth time recently a cyclist ran into the back of my bike while I was stopped, track standing, at a red traffic light. Like the previous times this was in daylight, I'd been stopped for a minute or more already, and the other cyclist had an unimpeded view of me for several metres as they approached, yet they still hit me. The most recent guy was instantly apologetic, and seemed frightened (I may have packed my DAFUQINFUQ? face that morning rather than my huh? face), fair enough, but how someone simply runs into something/someone in those circumstance defies any kind of logic that I am familiar with. It seems like the compulsion to break a red light overrides all common sense and makes people willing and able to completely ignore the information that their eyes and ears feed them.

This morning as I cycled to work, I spotted an SUV about 20m from where his side road (from a large housing estate) intersected with my main road. There was a large grassy area between us, so absolutely nothing to impede my view of him, or his view of me. I was the only traffic on my stretch of road at the time, which always makes me more wary. It was daylight though, and I was wearing a red helmet, a sky blue (not a colour commonly occurring in Irish nature!) jacket, and I was riding a white bike. Depending on your perspective I'm either very conspicuous, or a feckin' eyesore, but either way I'm far from invisible.

I passed the side road at the same time as the SUV got to it, keeping to the middle of my lane just in case (any further out and I'd have to contend with possible traffic coming round the blind corner ahead on the wrong side of their line since steering properly and staying within their lane seems such a challenge for so many on that road), and it's just as well that I did. He didn't stop, he didn't slow down, he just kept turning left as I passed within what felt like mere inches of the front of his Chelsea tractor. I had to swerve out and accelerate to avoid ending up as an ornament on his bonnet, but while that postponed the collision by a second at best it wouldn't have been enough, but thankfully he did finally hit his brakes and stopped with his SUV mostly turned onto the main road. He looked shocked and stuck his hand up to apologise, it seemed clear that he was completely oblivious to my existence until that point.

I don't actually need reminding that some people are in a bubble all of their own and choose to remain utterly unaware of everything around them no matter what the circumstances, but recent incidents have really rammed that home to me. Quite literally in some cases. I'd like to think that those people I've had the misfortune of encountering recently will have woken up a bit as a result of having caused an incident, but based on the reactions of some of them, and/or the utter stupidity of their actions to start with, I'm doubtful.

Mistakes happen, that's unfortunate but it's a fact of life, but my recent encounters or near collisions can't reasonably be described as "mistakes", I believe, they were the direct result of mindless behaviour on the part of the other other people involved - they put no mental effort in at all. In that sense the incidents fall under the mammy definition of "Mistakes don't happen, they're CAUSED!" and the mammies of the people concerned should grab them by the earlobe and flake them across the arse with a wooden spoon. In the absence of their mammies, I volunteer to do the needful next time round, and I might throw in a wedgie for good measure! I'd round off with that immortal phrase "Now go to your vehicle and think about what you've done!".

buffalo wrote: »

Was there a bulletin that said, "hey drivers, from 1st Oct 2012, cyclists can legally share the road, no matter what cycle tracks exists" ?

You are assuming they can read.

daragh_ wrote: »

You are assuming they can read.

ooh, that's a low blow! I did have a guy a few months ago who so nicely fulfilled the racist stereotype. I honestly didn't know how to react, except with stunned silence. Most drivers I have are regular folk, with some eccentricities, but this guy took the biscuit. And then smashed the biscuit into tiny pieces because it was chocolate and chocolate is black.

Anyway, I've since fired off emails to the DoT and NTA - keyboard warriors, UNITE!

dave_o_brien wrote: »

Worked for Germany...

Is this meta-racism?

buffalo wrote: »

Is this meta-racism?

Is that met-a-racist-ism?

doozerie wrote: »

Is that met-a-racist-ism?

So my point may have been made in a manner that was both tasteless, and undermined my original point, but it is surprising how quickly people adapt to unacceptable behaviour when their seniors accept it, either tacitly or by participation. I may have used an extreme, historical, and sensitive example, and for that I apologise.

dave_o_brien wrote:

So my point may have been made in a manner that was both tasteless, and undermined my original point, but it is surprising how quickly people adapt to unacceptable behaviour when their seniors accept it, either tacitly or by participation. I may have used an extreme, historical, and sensitive example, and for that I apologise.

My post wasn't having a go at you, I was just playing around with the words that buffalo used i.e. I wasn't calling you a racist, you just met one.