A Lack of Intelligence.

Once again the Daily Mail has been on the attack against cyclists. The article by Petronella Wyatt has been discussed all over the place already, so we won’t go into it here, except to point out that after she attacks cyclists for being untrained and unpredictable, she goes on to talk about how she tried riding a bike once and,

“wobbled along London's roads, nearly hitting every pedestrian and car, riding the wrong way up one-way streets”.

It seems to me that she was worse than half of the cyclists she is attacking. I do agree with her that being able to ride to a decent standard is important if you’re going to take on London’s streets, but riding the wrong way up one-way streets just shows a certain amount of stupidity and lack of awareness, that you’d hope a professional journalist would be above.

For more slightly idiotic behaviour involving bikes I rushed over to the home of The Citizen, Gloucestershire Echo, Stroud Life, and The Forester, to find that a moped rider had been given a parking ticket essentially for parking on a pavement next to some bike racks. He has disputed the ticket as it didn’t say he couldn’t park there. The company that runs the Brewery in Cheltenham has ordered new signage to put this right, so expect to see signs popping up everywhere where mopeds can’t park, like, for example, ponds, on top of walls, blocking shop doorways and so on. Maybe someone should invent some sort of way to show where parking was allowed, perhaps even some sort of building where you can drive in and leave cars and bikes… Just having bike racks somewhere doesn’t mean that anyone can park there.

Less stupid, but still perplexing is the number of people who are filming bike rides around bits of London and then putting them on the internet. Here’s another one, in case you’ve not seen enough jerky videos of the back of cars.

Finally I’ve been wondering how to achieve my dream of making a smoothie while powering a sound system all while still riding. I have found the answers here. While I’m there I can also get some neon lights to brighten up my frame and experience the fun of “Taking a special someone out on the town”, on my bike.

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