{"id":913,"date":"2014-11-12T16:25:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T16:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/?p=913"},"modified":"2015-01-16T09:52:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T09:52:43","slug":"friendly-wave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/friendly-wave\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendly wave!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"roadIt’s been a while since I’ve had a good rant about the shower of bastards I encounter on the roads. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not commuting\u00c2\u00a0through Cambridge itself any more, so I don’t encounter so many of them. \u00c2\u00a0Also, although my route is over twice as long now, it uses quite a few cycle paths of varying lethality, ranging from “sort of OK” to “wheel-fucking argh!\u00c2\u00a0clang<\/strong> oh shit I think I’ll stay on the road”. Of course, most of the people I encounter on the roads are boring sods who aren’t even bothered with me being there and show respect by passing\u00c2\u00a0safely. \u00c2\u00a0Yawn. \u00c2\u00a0How can I wake up in the mornings without the surge of adrenaline from a near miss? \u00c2\u00a0Some even pass\u00c2\u00a0on helpful advice, like the young man who veered towards me on his moped and shouted above the noise of his “bee farting in a tin can”-type exhaust that gwargle obbly wobbly. \u00c2\u00a0I asked a qualified aromatherapist about this\u00c2\u00a0later and discovered that he was correct. \u00c2\u00a0I’ll not bore you with the details.<\/p>\n

But there are\u00c2\u00a0still a few\u00c2\u00a0hilarious encounters with people who want to liven up my day\u00c2\u00a0by giving me a nice scare, shouting out of the window or expressing their complex thoughts about road safety, the role of the cyclist in the ever-more frenetic highway ecosystem\u00c2\u00a0and the merits of the primary and secondary road positions, by going “beep”. \u00c2\u00a0So I’ve tried a few different responses.<\/p>\n

1. \u00c2\u00a0Middle finger salute. \u00c2\u00a0Instant gratification on my part, but the driver\u00c2\u00a0usually responds\u00c2\u00a0in kind, causing gratification for him\/her too. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t want them to feel better as well. \u00c2\u00a0The last time I tried this, the scrote\u00c2\u00a0who had just carved me up waved his arms a bit and then slowed down further up the road, presumably to have another go at running me over when I caught up. \u00c2\u00a0Funnily enough he had to give it up when a white van roared\u00c2\u00a0up behind him and, with military precision, tailgated him\u00c2\u00a0at 1 millimetre’s distance\u00c2\u00a0until he sped up. \u00c2\u00a0The irony of his sudden change of place\u00c2\u00a0in the vehicular pecking order\u00c2\u00a0was probably lost on him.<\/p>\n

2. \u00c2\u00a0Stopping for a chat. \u00c2\u00a0Fun, but it’s quite rare for anyone to actually stop when I make pointing motions for them to pull over. \u00c2\u00a0It’s important to be friendly and cheerful to put them off their guard, because they’ll want a good shouting match. \u00c2\u00a0The only time\u00c2\u00a0I successfully had a chat, she explained that the reason she almost took my right elbow off and beeped was because my riding position meant she couldn’t overtake when there was a car going the other way. \u00c2\u00a0I pointed out that if she couldn’t overtake when there was\u00c2\u00a0a car going the other way, then maybe she shouldn’t overtake when there was a car going the other way.\u00c2\u00a0 She replied that I was lucky her boyfriend wasn’t there. \u00c2\u00a0She didn’t explain why. \u00c2\u00a0Maybe he’s really ugly and smells like rotting turnips\u00c2\u00a0or something?<\/p>\n

3. \u00c2\u00a0Smiling and waving. \u00c2\u00a0I’ve only tried this once, but it worked quite well. \u00c2\u00a0I didn’t\u00c2\u00a0get the instant relief\u00c2\u00a0of a nice rage hit but,\u00c2\u00a0on the other hand,\u00c2\u00a0the beeper got\u00c2\u00a0no gratification either. \u00c2\u00a0The complete failure to get her message across seemed to send her into spasms. \u00c2\u00a0“Beep!” \u00c2\u00a0Big cheery wave from me. \u00c2\u00a0Frantic hand signals from the beeper\u00c2\u00a0as she watched me in her mirror and weaved around the road slightly. \u00c2\u00a0Another cheery wave and a nice\u00c2\u00a0grin from me, and she disappeared from sight, still weaving\u00c2\u00a0around all over\u00c2\u00a0the shop.<\/p>\n

Or I could do what a friend of mine has done, and fit a car horn to my bike so I can beep back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good rant about the shower of bastards I encounter on the roads. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not commuting\u00c2\u00a0through Cambridge itself any more, so I don’t encounter so many of them. \u00c2\u00a0Also, although my route is over twice as long now, it uses quite a few cycle paths of varying lethality, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bastards-bastards-bastards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naich.net\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}