4°C, windy, some hail showers,
No ride, latent virus saps my energy so I am in rest phase. I can’t tell whether this cold will erupt fully or fizzle out losing the fight with my immune system.
Hoar frost on my car yesterday morning. The drive home was interrupted by three crashes. The worst stopped traffic for half an hour so I switched off and got my Murakami book out. Divers on the M6 don’t make the connection between tailgating and long delays after each collision.
Thu. 19°C, SW4, sunny. Nice day.
Why, on a nice day do some blokes lose their temper while driving?
My journey started with one and ended with another.
Near home, I pulled out onto a road where visibility was blocked by endless parked cars. Suddenly, a car appeared as I turned right. I cleared it by 2 car lengths and it stopped. He looked wild inside that car, stopped opposite and was shouting and gesturing inside. I don’t know what he said, both his and my windows were closed. Then, I saw in the mirror that he was reversing after me!
You can only drive so fast in reverse, he realised this and gave up.
90 miles later…
Near the end of my journey, a BMW zoomed up behind and cut in front, only a car length away. I blasted the horn in response to this threat. I was doing 40mph (the limit). Then BMW stopped in the road forcing me to an emergency stop. One brake light was out.
After too long, he sped off, well over the limit.
His advantage vanished at the next set of lights as I rolled up behind. In a futile repeat, he stopped again as the traffic rolled on through the green light. Again, another emergency stop for me. No, because he did it one last time before racing off towards Ormskirk. I turned, glad he’d gone the other way.
This and normal are distant cousins. Was it cocaine, or some mental illness? If he was in such a mad rush, why stop three times unnecessarily?
Almost there, there was a BMW with a brake light out parking near a church. Perhaps the road rager; was he a vicar?
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Posted from a mobile.
Rain showers, NW 4, sunny later.
Long drive home, 485 miles that took 10 hours not counting breaks.
Tey Bay Services.
This is surely the same shot I took last time. The weather wasn’t that different either.
Tomorrow, will be a good enough day to dry the tent in the garden.
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Posted from a mobile.
19C, heavy rain.
Collected some furniture from Bolton. There is the drawback of buying through ebay. The drive was not too far but it meant travelling to towns entirely unfamiliar. West Lancashire looks quite okay, not exactly “desolate” as the Tories think.
The satnav did not, however, cope well with a closed road in the town. It took me over circuitous routes, each time, back to the road closure.
The guy who sold it explained that he’d moved house recently and that his wife used it to “keep her unmentionables”.
18°C,dry later.
A record, on the morning commute, I counted four drivers texting (or using apps) as they drove. Another held a clip-board on the steering wheel to read as he drove. It started this morning because the first car was weaving as I tried to pass. The girl driving balanced a big phone, like a Galaxy, on her steering wheel. Without thinking, I tapped on the window and waved a phone shard with my hand. I only hope she was alert enough to wake out of her stupor.
16°C, fresh but dry.
I have ridden this route to. Oslo for ten years now. In that time, you get to know every pot-hole and other lines of hazard. In recent weeks, I have noticed the number of drivers texting at the wheel. This is probably the biggest threat to my life, texters are bigger killers than drunk-drivers, say statistics.
Today, a young woman was weaving a bit in her dark hatch-back on the approach to a roundabout. That makes of more cautious when overtaking. I was right to be alerted- she was painting her eyes in the reflection in the sun-visor. She hat a pot with a tiny brush to dab her eyes, or eyelashes, or something. I glared in silence then she quickly put the kit down.
She would look better without anyway.
1°C, dry cold.
Top temperature was 1°C today, mostly, surfaces were dry but ice was slow to melt. I rode in today with little to worry about, bar one thing.
Many drivers don’t clear the snow heaped up on their cars. They drive around with a white layer that looks like a new mattress or the sugary topping of a grotesque christmas cake.
As the car heater warms inside, the layer of snow becomes loose. It takes some nerve to leave the snow up there: at any moment it can drop onto the windscreen like an avalanche with no warning.
More likely though, the ice mattress will fall when the car turns, brakes or pulls away. Cars do this of course, on parts of the road where I, as a cyclist, need grip the most. Places like the apex of a bend, a roundabout, or a junction; they are the really critical spots. These are where the lumps of ice lay today.
I really hope the police start to enforce the law that promises 6 points on the lazy selfish drivers’ licenses.
7°C, light cloud. Chilly.
If you have time, when you get to work, let off steam about annoying drivers who got in your way. I did that this morning and a flood gate opens for others to relate their stories. In this area, many drivers who want to turn across a more majour road will pull out in front of on-coming traffic. I braked for one today in amazement. I have then a long emotional horn sound to “indicate my presence “. She reacted with an expression of her own, one finger plus a glare. It was almost as though she thought I had done something wrong.
Micycle 