Winde has a standing invitation to ride with me through early Friday afternoon traffic from Camp's bay through to Southern suburbs - he can dispense with the blue light escort he enjoyed on his recent publicity stunt ride with the PPA and deal with the Clover truck accelerating towards the red robot as the cycle lane ends just outside the waterfront, and the SUV squeezing past in the cycle lane ...
The roads jammed packed with frustrated motorists in vehicles with obscene amounts of kilowatts idling in fumes of lung clogging diesel - the roads clogged like the arteries of the corpulent cayenne driver, whose rosy cheeks are patinaed with the telltale maroon lattice of high blood pressure the legacy of too many boozy business lunches while he hoots at the uber driver in his unroadworthy base model Toyota with broken mirrors and a scrape down the left hand door.
Meanwhile me and the frightened looking pick n pay e bike delivery rider, exchange glances in recognition of the danger each of us is in. He looks barely in control of his steed and very frightened of the mayhem blocking the intersection ahead of us. An indifferent traffic cop, himself looking like he'd rather be having another boerie roll, stands in the middle of the intersection, offering no indication of whether he's overriding the robots or just passing the time of day. His firearm is slung low on his hip which makes me think twice about telling him he's not really helping the situation.
What a mess.
Earlier I descended through Kommetjie and on the way out, completely unprovoked, an ageing hippie, scrawny and brown from too much THC and sun flips me the bird for no reason whatsoever other than I'm a mamil on a bike in what I think is a nice looking ciovita outfit. Clearly some cyclist or other has called him something rude before.
Later, on the Woodstock bridge, a little girl young enough to be my daughter flips me again cos I told her to wait one second while I filter to the left. I caught her 200 meters further on where the gridlock frustrated her progress again and told her she could be my daughter, and would she ride me off the road like that if I were her father. She gave some sassy retort, about me being old and I asked her where her mom was circa 2000 before leaving her behind. She overtook me again just as I entered my neighbourhood and I stopped next to her and gently reminded her to be careful who she flipped off because the next one may not be quite as nice as I am. To her credit she went red and coyly called me papa.
And I was thinking about Dale and the rider knocked over near Simonstown the other week and just how dangerous this is and how simply it could be changed if there was political will to do so - all the resources devoted to making sure that cars have space, roads, parking, and fuel and .. and and ... when our population could be reaping the rewards of cycling - the quiet, the health, the cleaner air .... all the benefits we all know.
rant off - it was a lekker ride for on my Friday off.
But seriously Winde - stop mouthing off about how muich you support cycling and actually do something.
