I HAVE been riding my bicycle to work for the last couple of months. I love it. Early mornings in the fresh air, exercise without having to force myself out for a run or to the gym, saving money on tram tickets and petrol, and that warm glow that comes from being part of the solution, not the problem (right on, man).
It’s a 45-minute ride, and it’s a great time to let the mind unwind while the body does the heavy lifting. Well, to an extent, obviously. There’s a large part of your mind that stays understandably focused when you’re pedalling through the city at 8am. I dread the thought of the last thing I ever hear being the cheerful ”ding-ding!” of a tram. But as most of the ride is on a bike path along the Yarra, I’m free to a certain extent to enjoy the sense of freedom and movement.
There is one thing, however. Just one little thing, that I suppose I’d never really realised to the extent that I am now realising it: cyclists can be real arseholes.
I’m talking dyed-in-the-wool, rotten to the core, hole-where-the-heart-should-be arseholes. Sweaty, red-faced, gear-spinning pricks whose only joy in life is to make life a misery of nerve-fraying terror for those of their humble brethren who attempt to share the cycling infrastructure with them.
Now, bike paths are generally narrower than roads. There are lanes, however, showing which side of the path it is advisable for you to cycle on if you prefer, say, not to crash into other cyclists or force them off the path. Given the narrowness of the paths, it would make sense that these lanes are designed to be used single-file.
Why then do some riders feel that they can barrel down paths three-abreast? I mean, when you’re driving, can you just drive on the right-hand side of the road, chatting with your mate in the car next to you as he drives in the left-hand lane? With a third mate driving on the other side, half on the footpath?
There’s also an issue of speed. I get it that some bikes out there are pretty schmick. I understand that some people have the inclination and the income to purchase machinery for their morning commute that could just as easily be used to compete in Le Tour. But if I buy a Porsche, despite its obvious capacity for face-melting power, I am not able to fang it down suburban roads at top speed because that would be – aside from illegal – incredibly freaking dangerous.
So if you have a top-of-the-range bike – one of those that weighs less than actual air and has 12 million gears, each thinner than a human hair and made from a composite of Kevlar and the web of a spider – then although you are probably able to ride it faster than the speed of sound, common sense would dictate that doing this on a track crowded with other cyclists, joggers and even the occasional walker may be detrimental not only to your own safety, but also to all of those around you. Ninety-odd kilos smacking into a body at 45 km/h may not have the same devastating effect as one tonne at 70km/h, but it’s still going to do some serious damage.
The thing that really gets me though, is being told off by one of these maniacs for doing something like riding too slowly, perhaps, or breaching any other of the 500 tiny rules of bikeway etiquette that you’re not aware of, mostly because you’re sticking to the etiquette of Not Being a Knob. There’s nothing quite as surreally galling as having it intimated to you that you are behaving crazily by an actual crazy person.
It’s been an eye-opener, that’s for sure. I had thought that the main angst that I would face as a cyclist would be from drivers. However, they are for the most part courteous and respectful, as long as you’re doing the right thing and obeying all the rules. It’s the bike paths where the real battles occur, as the heroes and wannabes mix it with the rest of us in the never-ending battle to, what? Get to work first? It just goes to show, I guess, that it doesn’t matter how ethically or environmentally sound you are, you can still be a tosser.
Originally published in Age, HERE
