Naich's Crappy Blog

Category: Road rage

The road warrior who tucks his trousers into his socks.

  • Friendly wave!

    road rage 620It’s been a while since I’ve had a good rant about the shower of bastards I encounter on the roads.  I’m not commuting through Cambridge itself any more, so I don’t encounter so many of them.  Also, 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! clang 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 safely.  Yawn.  How can I wake up in the mornings without the surge of adrenaline from a near miss?  Some even pass on 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.  I asked a qualified aromatherapist about this later and discovered that he was correct.  I’ll not bore you with the details.

    But there are still a few hilarious encounters with people who want to liven up my day by 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 and the merits of the primary and secondary road positions, by going “beep”.  So I’ve tried a few different responses.

    1.  Middle finger salute.  Instant gratification on my part, but the driver usually responds in kind, causing gratification for him/her too.  I don’t want them to feel better as well.  The last time I tried this, the scrote who 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.  Funnily enough he had to give it up when a white van roared up behind him and, with military precision, tailgated him at 1 millimetre’s distance until he sped up.  The irony of his sudden change of place in the vehicular pecking order was probably lost on him.

    2.  Stopping for a chat.  Fun, but it’s quite rare for anyone to actually stop when I make pointing motions for them to pull over.  It’s important to be friendly and cheerful to put them off their guard, because they’ll want a good shouting match.  The only time I 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.  I pointed out that if she couldn’t overtake when there was a car going the other way, then maybe she shouldn’t overtake when there was a car going the other way.  She replied that I was lucky her boyfriend wasn’t there.  She didn’t explain why.  Maybe he’s really ugly and smells like rotting turnips or something?

    3.  Smiling and waving.  I’ve only tried this once, but it worked quite well.  I didn’t get the instant relief of a nice rage hit but, on the other hand, the beeper got no gratification either.  The complete failure to get her message across seemed to send her into spasms.  “Beep!”  Big cheery wave from me.  Frantic hand signals from the beeper as she watched me in her mirror and weaved around the road slightly.  Another cheery wave and a nice grin from me, and she disappeared from sight, still weaving around all over the shop.

    Or I could do what a friend of mine has done, and fit a car horn to my bike so I can beep back.

  • And another thing…

    Sorry, you’ve got me started on the Vectra now. The Vectra’s central locking has 2 “features” I’ve not seen on other cars – one press of the remote unlocks the driver’s door and you need another press to unlock the rest of the doors and the boot and filler cap. The reason for this is … absolutely no idea. It’s like it was put in just to piss me off. 95% of the time I have to press it twice and there’s no actual benefit that I can think of in only unlocking one door. Maybe they think that I occasionally want to lock out the wife and kids and go scooting off on my own? Actually… nah, let’s not continue that line of thought.

    The other feature is that if you don’t open the drivers door within 30 seconds of unlocking, it locks all the doors again. I can’t count the number of times when this has been useful because I’ve accidentally unlocked the driver’s door. I can’t count them because it’s 0. This has never happened with any car I’ve ever owned. I unlock the door because I want to get in, not on a passing whim or because I like pressing buttons. Any usefulness of this feature in the remote possibility that I might lose my mind and accidentally unlock the doors for no reason, is somewhat outweighed by the number of very real occurrences when I’ve unlocked the doors, been momentarily distracted by children and found myself and my family locked out again.

    Now, put these two features together and you get me, attempting to fill up the car and finding the petrol flap is jammed shut. After a few minutes of trying to pry it open I remember that I went out on my own, so I single clicked to unlock the car and only the driver’s door is unlocked. The flap was secure, and thank god it was – a petrol thief might have been passing while I was getting in, looking to empty my tank in the few seconds before I drove off down the road. So I lock the car up again and double unlock to get the flap open, I fill up (75 QUID!!!) and – buggery arseholes, the poxy thing has jammed open now. It’s banging against the lock and won’t close. A few more minutes of thumping and swearing and I remember that since I only locked and unlocked the doors to open the sodding petrol flap, the car has noticed that I didn’t open the driver’s door and has vigilantly locked itself up again, with the petrol flap open. Sure enough I have to unlock it (double sodding click) again in order to close it.

    Thank you Vauxhall, for making my life so much easier with your little helpful details. Sorry, I’m going on again aren’t I?

  • Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a dustbin?

    It’s my new bike.  Behold:

    My faithless steed
    My faithless steed

    She is a mixture of Taliban (wheels, front brakes, gears), Jedward (seat, pedals, mudguard, handlebars) and the skip-rescue bike, which I called Black Death.  In order to commemorate the unholy union of 3 shitty bikes, her name is Jelideath.  Let her name ring down through the ages whenever a shit bicycle is mentioned.

  • A bike called Jedward

    Sorry, I don’t really have anything much to say about curry at the moment.  It’s been ages since I had one and I think I’m beginning to forget what they taste like.  Tragic.

    But on to Ebay – I just put this advert on there, for Jedward my faithful steed:

    A bike called Jedward

    He’s called Jedward because he’s crap.  When I bought him he was crap.  The brakes didn’t really work in the wet – as I hurtled to my doom they made a distant mooing sound, like a cow in the next field.  The tyres were falling to bits and both the back and front wheels were buckled.  But then I found another bike that was going to be chucked in a skip and, using bits from another junker and Jedward, I managed to cobble together something that was rubbish but wouldn’t actually kill me the next time there was a bit of drizzle in the air.  Which leaves Jedward, who was crap at the best of times, and now even crapper than when I bought him because he’s had all the 1/4 decent bits taken off and replaced with the 1/8th decent bits from the skip-rescued one.

    So what are you bidding on?  All the bits that make up a bike are there.  All you need to do is tighten everything up and you’ve got yourself a death-trap that no-one in their right mind would ride without the legally-binding promise, signed by at least 4 gods, of 200 virgins waiting for him (or her) on the other side.  Seriously, you don’t want to ride this one home and I purposely left everything loose so he’s un-rideable.  What’s good about him?  Well, the frame and forks aren’t too bad and the dust covers on the tyre valves are in tip top condition.  Other than that, he’s crap.

    No panic bidding please.