Two choices:
- Go out in the late Monday morning rush hour, and get in my first ride of the week, or…
- Don’t ride today (because leaving it later would mean it’s too hot), and wait till Wednesday.
As you might have guessed, I opted for number 1.
At the time though, I hadn’t factored in the whole rush hour / commuter nightmare. I didn’t think there would be too much traffic after 9.30 on a Monday. Especially a hot Monday. Surely everyone works from home in 2022, right? And even more so on a baking hot day.
Alas, no.
Plenty of people were out on the roads, and they were quite keen to take out their Monday morning frustrations on some schmuck on a road bike.
I ended up with three near misses today. The first, a blue BMW estate just cut in as though I wasn’t there. That was within 1.5km of home.
The second, honestly, I can’t remember. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? Says how much it happens that “ride incidents” are no longer that memorable to me. I do distinctly remember giving the verbal to three different people today though, so I know something happened, somewhere.
And the third was a car pulling across two side streets as I was tonning it down the middle of the road – that was a slam on moment. Some people just don’t care. Whatever.
Like I say, I kinda get it. Who wants to be driving to work, on a Monday, in the boiling hot heat? But it’s probably better not to add seriously injuring or killing someone to your todo list. Preaching to the converted, I’m sure.
Whilst I’m on this rant, what I’ve started doing is riding quite a lot more defensively. What this roughly translates too is that I don’t sit in the gutters / on the yellow lines. This is partly because the sides of UK roads, particularly country side roads, are a shambles. But also partly because I will decide when it’s safe for people to pass me.
Of course, this doesn’t always translate.
Some idiots, even today, will take it that I’m hogging the road, stopping them from making it to whatever destination they are so urgently trying to get too. Those people will overtake, on blind bends or whatever, and often cut so closely to me that you have to question what is going through their tiny minds to think their actions constitute sane ideas. But again, heat, Monday, preaching to the converted, yada yada.
Anyway, I got my 30km in. I baked. But it’s in the bag, and that’s what matters.
