On today's cycle commute

[GuyP]

Doing my cycle commute, there were, as usual, plenty things to rant and rave about: Starting from Clearwater Mall, northwest Johannesburg area, the first rant was the (increasing?) amount of litter (and glass) at the INFORMAL Makro 'taxi rank' across Hendrik Potgieter from Clearwater. Luckily the sun was in my eyes so I couldn't see it all...

 

Then there was quite a beautiful ride in the fresh, cool morning air along Witkoppen. Just before the dome, I saw a house on the left had erected a new razorwire fence, top to bottom. That left me wondering what inspired that recent action. The rest of the way to Pineslopes was quite uneventful. On the short downhill to Main, a taxi tried to veer left over me. Then up the hill towards Paulshof I saw half a brake disc, not brake pad, half of the actual disc! Some taxi is no doubt driving around with wholly inadequate brakes again!

 

Turning left at Rivonia, and having another taxi trying to veer left over me, I carried on and up the dual carriageway towards Megawatt Park. It's a great hill to train on, but again, there was plenty of glass. I've seen LOTS of glass on the roads the last couple of months - what's happening out there?

 

Turning left down towards Waterfall Estate was great, all the way into the valley, where I stopped at that new brick bridge, which is actually not bad looking compared to all the concrete stuff out there. I looked down - the Jukskei was flowing nicely, but there was an awful amount of South Africa's national flower at the high water mark spoiling quite a pretty setting. I wonder how the estate managers in that expensive estate are going to keep that clean...

 

I carried on up the hill, over Allandale and into Vorna Valley, turning right into Le Roux and riding along the footpath. Geez, there was glass everywhere. Again, what's going on out there?

 

I turned left at BP and a while later, got to my office to start the day and reflect on the ride, 36Km later. As much litter and glass as I saw, getting to the office energised and ready for the day is probably the biggest rave of all. It would be so much nicer though if folks would just pick up after themselves, and keep their bottles to themselves too, although no doubt they're beer bottles thrown out of the car so that there's no incriminating evidence for the cops to use when they stop the idiots at a roadblock somewhere.