It's rioting weather, isn't it?
That's my excuse for having finally failed to avoid a collision
after dodging five or six earlier today. I would surely have
been fewer near misses if the thunder had got here by now.
The one I failed to avoid involved wasting a person on a bicycle,
who passed me on the pavement while I was waiting at a red light
at a pelican crossing, and then hopped back into my path without
looking when I had already got up to speed after the light changed.
I couldn't have stopped before overlapping with him and I could,
just possibly, have managed to brake with my front wheel to the
right of his back wheel, but I didn't. I got the braking and
steering just sufficiently mixed up that my front wheel went to
his left, between him and the pavement, and in order to stay on I
had to flick his back wheel.
He came off in quite a spectacular way: I was amazed.
I didn't know you could do that to someone else's bike and stay
on yourself.
I was musing about how he would have fared had I been on a
r*c*mb*nt with a chainwheel at the front. Why aren't there
direct-drive r*c*mb*nts? Whatever happened to the recumbent
ordinary?
About fifty yards further down the road I met another person
on a bicycle, wearing an i-pod, mirror shades and silly grin,
coming up the marked cycle lane on the wrong side of the road.
There are going to be riots, tonight, aren't there?