Shock! I have something nice to say about a taxi driver

I thought it would be a cold day in Hell before I said anything sympathetic about a taxi driver. Well, I guess the Devil must have gone skiing today. I was walking around town and saw this taxi and the truck in front pull up. The rear passenger door was bent and clearly not closing properly.

The truck driver, taxi driver and two passengers got out. The truck driver started abusing the passengers - a male and female couple in their early 30's perhaps - and the taxi driver walked around the car to inspect the damage. The female passenger had clearly opened the door without looking back and the truck had collected the door.

The couple just walked off. The driver was clearly saying to them that they were responsible for paying for the door - but they just casually left. If he'd made a citizens arrest, I would have stuck around to support him. Bloody hell - that's a turn up for the books.

I will now wait for Karma to send a nice taxi driver my way. All I hear from Karma at the moment is the sound of crickets chirping.

Thursday photos

It's been a week of early morning up and at 'ems for me - I haven't seen this many sunrises in a row for a long time. As usual, the clever 'lectric brain in the camera has made it seem much lighter than it actually was.

The blur of this jogger going past gives it away - the camera was open for a while and sucking in lots of light to get this shot. It's so dark, I had to stop to take shots - something I never, ever do. Except when it's nearly dark.

How glorious is that? Rowing into the sunrise. Except of course that none of the rowers can see it.

If it wasn't for the blasted trees, the view from here would be great.

If it wasn't for the blasted cars, the view from here would be great.

If it wasn't for the blasted cyclists riding through my shot, the view from here would be great.

This guy was a crack up. He was riding slowly and erratically through Pyrmont - I easily blasted past him. However, I heard him coming up behind me as I sat at a red light, and the bugger nearly crashed into me as he went careening past, half out of control. It was reasonably dark, and he had no light, not rear reflector and no helmet. When I went past, I found that he also had his headphones in, and was talking on the phone - I caught a blast of Arabic from him as I took off.

At least he kept his hands on the handlebars, and didn't wave them around.

I reckon he's a taxi driver that's lost his licence. He certainly cycled like many taxi drivers drive.

A couple of vids

Blogger's video processing engine stalled on me a few days ago - it simply refused to process the video in this post - I think it has finally emerged and is ready for viewing.

Here's the first in a series of short-short vids. This first is called "death by taxi". I wrote about it a few days ago. I was annoyed at being held up by the slow moving taxi in front of me, but I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decided against making any potentially suicidal overtaking moves. A cyclist coming up behind me thought he could safely overtake the taxi on the outside, but he was wrong. I know from experience that when cars go around this corner, they always go wide to the right. That's what this taxi did, and the cyclist almost got squished between it and a low concrete divider.

The second one shows a mum carrying a kid stepping out in front of me without so much as a glance in my direction. You can't see her head in the video - and I couldn't see it in real life either. Her kids head was blocking her view in this direction. Instead of looking around her kid, she just stepped off the tram platform. I've seen boneheads do this in the past when a tram has been coming along instead of a bike. Luckily for both of us, I saw what she was doing and guessed that she was about to step in front of me, so I stood on the brakes before she actually departed the platform. A more aggressive and less aware cyclist would have cleaned her up - along with the kid. Headlines would then blare "mother and child run down by insane cyclist", rather than "idiot steps in front of cyclist without bothering to look".