Night Rider

I don’t often get to blog, mostly because I often find excuses to do everything but, and the same applies to my cycling. My best and most often used excuse is that after working for the day and then helping herd the kids up to bed, that it’s just impossible to think of doing anything remotely useful.

Tonight, in the wind and rain and temperatures dipping into single figures, probably wasn’t an ideal time to chose to launch my winter attempt at getting fit, but the other option was to stay in and watch Corrie followed by I’m a celebrity so on the bike I hopped.

As a rule, I don’t mind cycling in the dark as in the winter it’s the only time I get out. I got a few lights now, so why not get out and use them, but I do try to stick to the better lit roads around the town. The one draw back of this is that there’s a greater chance to mingle with my fellow road users.

Tonight’s excursion was typical of what happens. I’ve had people jump out in front of me and tonight I also had kids with no lights swerve out in the road not 3 feets from me, but it’s the interaction with drivers that I most cherish.

I was overtaken (not easy to do I tell you) by a shiny car with souped up exhausts. The passenger in a car leaned out of the window of the car and shouted out some helpful advice:

Get yourself a bloody car…

I’ll not pass too much comment other than to point out that 1) I do own a car 2) you’re the passenger in a car, couldn’t the same advice be given to you?

Not 3 minutes had passed when another car approached me on the road. No witty comments this time. No, this time I was helped along with a tooting of the horn.

What message could this signal possibly be conveying to me? Were the occupants expressing an admiration of my herculean efforts tackling the hill up the Newry Road? Or was this overweight Adonis clad in ill fitting lycra just causing feelings too powerful to hold within? (Please feel free to comment on what those feelings might have been :)

I think my wife hit the nail on the head when I told her the story. She pointed out that they were probably wondering what on earth I was doing out in the wind and rain and so were trying to persuade me to get off the road and go home…