Bad Juju

Is there such a thing as juju? There must be. I had to hurry home from work the other day and the ride was ferociously bad - one of the worst I have ever had. Not tough or hot or windy - just a ride where I encountered more fool, dickheads and knaves on the road in one 30 minute session than ever before.

Most days, the ride in and out is pretty cruisy. I have selected a route that avoids riding on major roads, or crossing major roads at hairy spots. The thing about cycling is that it is not just riding on a road that can be risky - just crossing them can be pretty foul at times, even using traffic lights or a roundabout or a pedestrian crossing. Some intersections are clearly better than others, and my route is partly based around using the least risky crossing points. The other factors are hills (the fewer or gentler the better) and using bike paths. I don't mind doing nasty hills, but I like to warm up first, so my morning route takes a bit of a meander throught the flat bits of my suburb in order to warm the old legs and lungs up before tackling some nasty bits of geography.

Anyway, it didn't seem to matter where I rode - I ran into bad juju. The bikepath should be pretty safe, but I just about had a head-on with another cyclist who decided to take a notorious bend way too fast - luckily I had slowed right down and managed to avoid him. A bit further on, a woman let her dogs go just as I reached her, and they almost bolted under my wheels. Whilst in town, a bloke in a Range Rover cranked up his car just as I reached him and pulled out without looking - but I had spotted what he was doing and was well away from him when he made his move. A courier pulled up in a no stopping zone outside a pub, banking the traffic up behind him. Furious drivers then started pulling idiotic manouveres to get around him, and all of them would have ended up on top of me if I hadn't seen it coming and gone another way. Pedestrians ran out in front of me without looking.

That's just a small sample. All the way home, I was thinking, "Take it easy, keep your eyes open and don't push your luck", which was very annoying as I like to pedal close to flat out. Taking it easy is not part of my mantra.

But I made it home in one piece, and shook my head in amazement at what I had just seen. Is it the proximity of Christmas that makes people act so stupid? Is it the weather? What the hell is going on?

It's days like those that make you want to own a tank instead of a bike.