Mamil

I'm not sure about this bright colours - lights for sure, crucially important and I do like the reflective strips on my Ciovita socks and jacket but whether my jersey is black or red seems to me almost irrelevant. It's been debated many times on here on the hub but the "He was wearing dark clothing so I didn't see him" .... wears thin to my ears

We don't prosecute a plethora of other crimes so I don' think that's going to happen much as I agree that it should. I hope it doesn't stop you commuting. The other route to change is that more people are out on bikes. It really is so much better to ride the threekm to work (mine is about 2km). Participate in the intersecting routines of other people - it's a kind of village clockwork

Also, a.brief perusal of our.posts here will confirm just how immature we all are

32" wheels and 165 cranks The big circles are getting bigger and the small circles are getting smaller.

THanks @DJR, high praise indeed. Rereaeding the sentence I think hubristic would be a better word - the false pride that precedes the fall. From the little I know about Cervantes he was a literary genius. I also like Walter Mitty - the fantasist who lives in a dream world - I think those are valuable characters to have, the person who's significant or perhaps only strength is the imagining of another reality.

Most mornings I trackstand on the dirty pavement corner of Liesbeek parkway and Durban Road waiting for the lights to favour pedestrians. This morning 3 domestic workers, 3 green uniformed schoolkids and a bergie watched the endless stream of climate controlled lounge suites race through the intersection to back up at the onramp to the M3. Some of the drivers are texting, some are eating, one is doing her makeup. A rider in lycra and a backpack rides a fast tempo at the same speed as the cars, hugging the left hand side. I seem him often and recognise him from the local races. Sometimes we nod. Normality. When the light changes and the groen mannetjie comes on you can't cross because the last 3 cars are squeezing through - my inner chop wants to moer the bonnet of the last one as he last minute brakes for the schoolkids who have darted in front of him. Normal Yesterday, a taxi took the little loop past the fat cactus and the black sash offices and the Gear Change to join Durban road on the wrong side of the road, force his way across the turning lane to go straight on to the taxi rank in Obz - no-one even bothers to hoot. Normal normal normal. I make it across the road, I don't ride on Durban road, choosing the pavement on my orange gravel bike, and crawl along behind a group of construction guys who are shouting and laughing about something and don't know I'm behind them. One of them realises and pushes his mate aside - sorry gentlemen I say as I take the gap. My obsessive mind retreats from this scene and re-imagines it. I replace the absurd stream of cars with a stream of dutch commuter style ebikes. I turn one side of Liesbeek parkway into a grass and tree piazza with coffee shops, and cafes. I replace the taxis with tram cars on rails. At the Rondebosch common I stand at the pedestrian crossing at the traffic circle - 1, 2, 3, the fourth one stops but is almost rear ended by the one behind. More f@32kin normality. On the cycle path alongside the common while I worry about the mummy's in SUV's dropping the kids off and the likelihood that someone is going to pull over into the cycle lane to try squeeze past the car at the front turning right. Another scene I reimagine in a similar way. I think about an Ursula K LeGuinn quote about late stage monopoly capitalism. She says that once upon a time the divine right of kings was an unshakable reality that governed how power was distributed and now we scoff at the idea. It's comforting because it means that this unshakeable normality in which 3 okes riding abreast can be interpreted as "our worst enemy" and as "chops" can change and almost definitely will. It has to as surely as the divine right of kings had to change. Trouble is, lots of people had to die for that to happen. To me, the bicycle is a symbol of this change - a person, on a machine, connected to the earth, moving fast under his/her own power. It's part of the reason I love cycling so much, it feels subversive, it allies me with the domestics and the schoolkids, it connects me with what's happening around me. I can play my role in the community, I admonish the kids who drop their coke bottles and chip packets on the road. I tell them that the man who cleans the street could be their grandfather, just like a cranky old village curmudgeon should do. The car on the other hand seems to me an emblem of the disconnection of our era - the highly individualistic culture of late stage capitalism, insulated from the ground, isolated from the environment, controlling the elements rather than being with them, and belching out a trail of noxious fumes that chokes the air above every city on the planet. This makes riding a bicycle a subversive activity - no-one in a car sees the kids mooching to school, notices the comings and goings of the street, recognises the faces and the routines of the shops and the workers and the dog walkers along the route. The rider is forced to deal with the environment, respond to it physically, with effort and strength. The car bends the world to the driver's will, places him in the driver's seat, a dominant force, an emblem of status, a symbol of quixotic supremacy over the world. Normality. pah!

For sure Ja, if safe to do so

Logical so long as we are in the heuristic that assumes cars are primary and that I should not be delayed in my journey and that pedestrians, and people who do not have a few hundred kilowatts under their right foot should be on the tiny space to the far left of the road that the motorist centric assumption that dominates transport system design and the law permits them. In a properly designed, more sustainable, less aggressive culture, that motorist would wait patiently until it was time to overtake. His failure to do so would be condemned with the same vitriol reserved from the "chops" riding three abreast. Of course we don't live in that culture but this "We are our own worst enemy" seems to me to obscure the possibility and if we take the effect of hydrocarbon fuels on the environment seriously, urban mobility must start to prioritize non-motorised transport. If I come up behind three cyclists riding abreast, I turn the music up, notice that I actually wish I was sucking their wheel rather than steering mine and give them a 2 meter gap when I overtake them. More of us chops should do that and so should tour and my city busses etc.... To the bicycle really is a part of the solution to the global sh1tstorm we are in - whether that's 3 abreast or not. Just to note, I don't ride three abreast unless I'm in the middle of nowwhere and if I am am alongside someone, my radar warns me of a car and I move into single file... but then as noted, I am a chop.

You know the "All cretans lie" paradox? Are you also maybe a bit of a chop? 🙂'cos by your reasoning (all cyclists are chops), and mine, (There's a chop inside all of us and we have to control it and a portion of the population can't or doesn't want to) - you might be. Questions it behooves all of us to ask maybe include "Am I being a chop?" and "How would I know if I was being a chop?". Of course we can tell each other we're chops - "You a chop / n o you a chop" so that's not a reliable indicator...

This strikes a chord with my latent misanthropy but perhaps we can say a lot of people are c##@s and some ride bikes and some cars. 3 percent of the American population meets the diagnositc criteria for Anti-social personality. And that's just one of the personality disorders. Speak for yourself. That's like saying all people who wear green T shirts or who drive Renaults or who prefer cardigans over pullovers are chops. I try not to be a chop .... but deep down, I suspect I at least have significant propensities for it. I try to control him, but the inner chop is well .... a bit of a chop really.

Ya and I'm not part of that collective

You can leave me out of that 'we' thanks.

I.can draft an.email and send it to you.with.the.email address for.vetting

My inside source.at.the.city has.contact details of manager of.arts.and.culture. department who is apparently very positive towards initiatives like this. Jeez, might there be.benefit in not going ape on the guerilla methodology? if it got sanction from the.city it might be a permanent fixture?

I wonder if the driver got out of bed, looked at himself in the mirror and said to himself "I'm going to be in charge of a muli tonne MV on a multi use road where there are runners, hikers, walkers, cyclists, tourists and picnickers, I better be ultra careful". I know I said "Be alert and ride carefully" as I set out this morning and still I got buzzed by a motorbike doing 120 plus and close passed at over the speedlimit by a myciti driving like he was in a mini cooper. Those tour busses are often shocking - I've confronted Hylton Ross drivers and a Paarl Rock Tour driver for close passes at speed and been told where to get off in no uncertain terms. We don't know the full details but what we do know is that riders are dying at an alarming rate on the roads and because we ride all the time in the places where it's happening, we know WHY it's happening. Another f@#@kin tragedy

I'll be there

I've been thinking about what it is about Mcmahon's social media post and reply to @Zebras letter that makes me so angry and its something to do with his tone I read phrases like "this gentleman's fatal mugging" and nuances about where it happened relative to other incidents that sanitize what's going on - it's not a fatal mugging, it's a murder by a desperado displaced and alienated from any source of meaningful employment and existing in a kind of wild animal state on the fringes of a society in which he has nothing, has no prospect of ever improving his lot and sees people whizzing past him in climate controlled SUV's. Of course he sees someone on a bicycle as prey for a cell phone he can flog for 25 bucks and whatever reprieve from the hell of his life that will buy him. And those we elect into positions of leadership are either foully corrupt, inept, some combination of the two or like what I interpret McMahon's utterances to be, a kind of "there but for the grace go I", somebody else (Woodstock police, national government, transnet, anybody but me is responsible, let's stimulate the economy so trickle down economics can solve this" mentality. The reality of this context is that unless you are fortified behind bars with guards patrolling your street, or in an armour glass motor vehicle whizzing at speed to your destination you are vulnerable. As soon as you are on foot or on a bike, or living in a place where the toilet is outside and meters away from your door, as soon as you are in the public space and vulnerable you are a target and until people like Mcmahon and everyone above him in the hierarchy of publically funded mediocrity, corruption and incompetence is held accountable by us, the citizenry, it will only get worse.

I have one word for you - MUNGA

Yassus the poor young man. It makes me livid too - I keep having that NMT document that went out for public comment a few months back with the experience of riding in CT and the endless stream of attacks and deaths.

That's a truly lovely idea Zebra - I'll put 5k into that street art endeavour and challenge any other mamil to do the same. That's 1 and a leg ciovita apex bib. I've written a little "wolf in sheeps clothing" email to Rob Quintas, who is the councillor for urban mobility on the mayoral committee asking for an interview for my miniscule little youtube channel. I am sure it will be declined but if so I'll publish that ... We all predicted there was going to be a tragedy on that route and here is the first one death. Without strong action, there will be more. I am so angry and like most angers it is a cover for grief - grief at the state of things. It cannot go on. The DA is nominally successful in that they scrape into bare minimum category of what can be expected of government and we celebrate them as if they are accomplishing something special.

Theres a dance track my Spotify selects for me when I'm hurting on zwift 'All we ever hear from you.is.blah blah blah So all we ever do is.go Ja Ja ja And we don't even care about.what.you.say Cos its blah.blah.blah.blah Ja.Ja Ja Ja.'

Exactly - the castle route IS safer at the moment although I have noticed one or two characters taking an interest in comings and goings there of late. Also, from a traffic point of view, particularly coming out of town towards the southern suburbs it is a death trap.

There is no other route to the CBD that this rider could have taken without riding through a so-called hot spot. The place where this murder occurred is in itself a route that bypasses the hottest spot which is the cycle path to Paarden eiland. The authorities are doing little to nothing. The party line that hands are tied because of the legalities of land ownership is to my mind a fig leaf for the indifference and, I begin to suspect, incompetence around NMT.

https://web1.capetown.gov.za/web1/councilhubonline/councillorprofile?councillorid=1040

Here's mine email to him Dear Mr McMahon, I have some comments with regard to your comment on social media quoted here - : "Very sad about shocking attack and death of cyclist Dennis Hammar last week. Condolences to his family & friends and the broader cycling community. Transnet, the landowner for the stretch along the N1 near the CBD entrance have shared a status around their legal plans around the Eviction case for this stretch of land. It encompasses from Old Marine Drive near Culemborg to just past the WOMAG interchanged to Paarden Eiland, covering 10 different sites and includes over 400 individuals The next hearing is next week, which will hopefully set the main hearing date as DHA are joining the matter. We are hopeful that Transnet are near the end stages in resolving this area and safety can be restored to this key travel corridor. This sad incident has again rocked the cycling community and so I'm just sharing plans on what actions are being taken by the relevant landowners! Condolences again!" The attack and death are not shocking at all - they are predictable. Anyone who rides a bicycle from the Southern or Northern suburbs to the CBD knows that the cycle path is unusable and has been for a long time. The route from the waterfront past the CTICC is itself a workaround route to avoid the cycle path. The illegal use of the N1 to get to Paarden Eiland or to take the Church street offramp to Woodstock was a similar workaround route and is also now not usable. There have been attacks in places closely adjacent to where Mr Hammar was assaulted in recent history. The uniform experience of law enforcement's response to those of us who have reported attacks, is one of indifference and ineptitude. I know you are aware of the protest ride that was held how long ago now? And still the cycle path route is unusable and the surrounding workarounds are becoming progressively less safe. Given this, perhaps you can understand that those of us who commute and ride recreationally doubt the strength of the political will to deal with the lack of non-motorised transport in the city. Here's another example - the Riverclub development redesigns the roads around it in a way that gives zero consideration to bicycles. Not only is there no cycle path, but the development increases traffic volume and the new road layout creates a series of charming little pinch points which endanger the lives of riders. And this on the only viable cycling route into the CBD . At the same time, the city circulates a pie-in-the-sky NMT proposal that, given the state of the roads and the existing infrastructure, reads like it was knocked out by chatgpt in an optimistic mood. So I'm tapping out this message to you to indicate my displeasure at the situation, to predict that there will be additional attacks and probably deaths in the immediate future of the cycling community and that the general perception amongst us is that there is lip-service paid to addressing the multi-factorial crisis that underpins NMT in CT in general, but a dearth of real action. Yours in anticipation of more talk and signalling of intent, but no tangible result.