National Day
We are
celebrating our National Day today- hooray! – and people do seem to enjoy it,
although we have had a rather gloomy, unfriendly weather, with some snowflakes,
few and without effect on the ground, and I was quite pleased with my decision
to take the bike and brave it out anyway, against the indications that
suggested this is a day to use the subway – last night, as I switched channels,
they were postponing a soccer game because the field was so bad, covered with
water from the rain, that the ball would not travel in the grass…or water.
The ten
kilometers from home to the health club have been enjoyable nevertheless, and
the flakes, rare as they were, added to the atmosphere and the pleasure of
cycling with very little traffic, albeit, even when there are just a few
drivers, they can be obnoxious or outright dangerous, when they come within millimeters
from the cyclist, just because this is their idea of fun, they do not care,
sometimes they are just incompetent and in some cases, as the other day, they
do not see the bikes, claim not to anyway and it could well be, because they
feel mighty powerful in their steel shells and look out for dangers to themselves
and ignore whatever is not threatening, like a man or rarely a woman on top of
two wheels…
Some are
even ferocious in their approach, such as the one who was using the horn a
couple of hours ago, because he felt like the road belongs to him and cars in
general – this is a feeling which is widely shared among motorists – what the
fuck do these bikers want on our streets, how dare they? – which is not
accompanied by some humility, modesty or sense of inappropriateness when they
park their goddamn vehicles on the sidewalks and leave no room for pedestrians
or us, cyclists to pass…I mean, if we can’t use the alternative, we must then
chance it on the roads, right?
I was arguing
with an old lady at the health club, when she was all upset and against cyclists
– and she is right in saying that many act like madmen and I often see them
coming on the wrong side, when using the few (maybe fifteen in all) kilometers
of lanes for bikes –and telling her that we cannot use many areas that
rightfully belong to the rest of the population, because drivers just abandon
their cars anywhere, with the argument that there are so few legal places for
their vehicles, which would lose traction with time, for the tendency is to
eliminate many of them anyway and let people walk, use public transport,
electric scooters and other means for the centers of towns initially and then
for the whole cities in the future…
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