Monday 20 November 2006

Juxtaposition

I took this photo when I was doing the Spring Cycle a few weeks ago. That big pointy thing in the middle is the ANZAC bridge, which I normally ride over every day on the way to and from work. It is a fairly tall bridge, so I struggled in the early days to get over it without much huffing and puffing. It is one of those climbs that separates the fit from the goats.


The Spring Cycle route didn't go over the ANZAC Bridge - instead, it went over an old "turntable" bridge almost directly below it - and of course you can't see it in this photo as the photo is too small.

I actually wasn't trying to take a photo of the bridge - I was trying to photograph people on bicycles and the great yard of freshly imported cars on the other side of the bay. You can just see a blob of white on the far right of the photo - they are part of a shipload that has just been unloaded.

I often think how quaint it is that I ride over a bridge that is three lanes of traffic in each direction (often bumper to bumper) and pass over the loading dock where a huge number of cars come in each week. There is a different car carrier tied up at this dock almost every day. I think, "Me on bicycle, surrounded by lots of cars". It's an odd kind of feeling - like being a carnivor at a vegetarian convention.

I tried to take a photo of the car dock with bikes going by, but I wasted a lot of battery power trying to photograph bikes that zipped through my frame before it would snap the shot. Blasted digital camera and it's delays. So what you get are cyclists heading for the bridge, with cars almost out of shot.

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