BMX Bandit

Last week I went on safari on the back of a push bike .  We could have driven but you have to get out of the car a lot to see shit and when you’re in that bubble of air-con coolness it’s hard to convince yourself to go out into the skin-melting sun just to see yet another variety of antelope.  Let’s face it, all the Wapiti and Eland and Bongo whatever are just fancy names for antelopes with slightly different antlers.  For the sake of actually seeing animals at the zoo, it’s easier to get out there on some kind of foot-based transport.

Anyway, so the backstory is that it was the end of a five day camping trip waaaaay out in the country with some friends, driving through a lot of places with ridiculous names (Gwabegar.  Tell me how the fuck to pronounce that, please) and I hired a bike to ride around Western Plains zoo in Dubbo. Best idea ever.  Despite costing the same amount that I pay to hire proper fancy well-maintained mountain bikes out at the Newington Armory, it was just a very shitty fixed gear bike with back pedal brakes only, so I spent the first minutes freaking out every time I needed to brake and my hands kept squeezing at non-existant hand brakes. After that, I was fine.   I even had my own natural air conditioning thanks to the wind flowing past my face as I raced along.  I could ride right up to the fences yell "HAR HAR LOOK AT DA MONKEY!"" and then speed away again before anyone could say "Who’s that cool cat in the high-waisted shorts and imitation ray-bans who hasn’t showered for 4 days?".  

Oh, yeah, the shower thing…  um, well, see I was camping all that week up near Coonabarrabran and I did swim in a waterfall and I did have a bath in bore water at a bore water bathy thing but those things technically aren’t showers.  So I wasn’t toooooo stinky… I don’t think.

My friends walked around so I got to ride circles around them in order to make up for the difference in speed, and when I wanted to go see something else, I could just whoooosh off and then whoooosh back before they’d gone too far.   

Buying a bike has been on my to-do list since forever. When I find old to-do lists, the only relevant thing still on them is "BUY A BICYCLE", while every other item is something gay like "knit a scarf" or "learn Mandarin" or "become a ghost hunter" (oh I still will I suppose).  I came close to buying the perfect commuter bike from a person within walking distance of me on eBay but I got out-bid.  I always get scared of betting too much on eBay, ever since I spent 300 euro on a stylophone from Germany a few years ago.

Walking is great too.  When I was in high school, even the 500 metre walk to the train station was a pain in the arse.  Then I went to uni in the city and discovered pubs, and my tolerance for walking distances increased.   I don’t have a car and I’m too cheap for taxis, so walking distances have gradually opened up as I’ve found myself in random suburbs late at night when there’s no public transport.  Then I did the 25km 7 Bridges Walk, and decided that walking as far as I can go should be my own personal hobby.  If I go out on the weekend, it’s now usual that’ll I’ll walk about 5-10 km to get somewhere, and between 10 – 20 km to get back to the city to go home.  I listen to podcasts and daydream and take photos of the moon which never turn out and just get deleted the next day.  So long as I don’t have a heavy backpack, I can walk anywhere.  It still sucks compared to bike riding.

Trains and buses are okay in Sydney but I’m the only person here that thinks so.  You see, no one remembers every other day that the bus arrives reasonably on time or that the train doesn’t have to stop due to lightning-related signal failure, and no one considers the probability that across a city-wide network something’s bound to fuck up, so everyone thinks we have the worst public transport since India started putting people on top of the train carriages.  All you have to do is visit rural areas or even just Castle Hill to understand that something really is better than nothing.  But then seeing as trains and buses are only good in cities that have them, I guess it’s pointless to be too attached to them.  

While we out in the country, we were driving back from the waterfall place to Coona, and a lady in a white car overtook us when we were doing just above the speed limit.  Later on, we came around a corner and saw her car with the roof flattened in, the windscreen all smashed, tire marks up the embankment and all her stuff strewn along it.   Obviously  she’d gone off the road at high speed, driven up on the embankment which had flipped her over, rolling the car right over until it was right way up again.   We pulled over and I ran up to her car, a little scared at what I was going to find.  She was conscious, though bruised and covered in dirt from the hill she just rolled her car on and asked me to help her out of the front seat.  She freaked out about how she’d wrecked her car, because she was driving back to the Gold Coast from Ballarat and had no other means of transport but didn’t seem worried by the glass cuts on her arm or any other injuries.  By the time she rang her daughter to tell her what happened, I could see she didn’t realise what had happened.  She just thought her car slipped on gravel and drove into the hill.   She really didn’t believe the car had rolled, despite the look of its roof, which had a creepy bump right where her head would have been.  She also wouldn’t shut up about finding her cigarettes.  She was in shock so she didn’t understand why people didn’t think it was a good time for her to smoke.   She went through telling us how despite being diabetic she’d had a good lunch, despite being on a long trip she’d had a sleep at midday and then she casually mentioned in passing how she’d taken Panadeine Forte right as she got into the car.  Y’know, the stuff with codeine in it and the label that says "Causes drowsiness – do not operate a vehicle after taking this medication"

So cars are my least favourite form of transport.  For long distance trips or to go recreating about the countryside, they’re great; comfortable, fast, hold all your gear.  But for every other week they’re expensive as fuck, take up too much space and they’re somewhat dangerous.  Especially with other drivers who think it’s cool to take pharmaceuticals before they drive from one end of the mainland to the other.  They’re wasteful and polluting and Captain Planet wouldn’t approve of them.  I know I shouldn’t get a car for "occassional use" because once I have a car I’d probably just enjoy driving so much I’d drive it everywhere and never walk again.  Part of my son’s school playground has been cordoned off to create a new car park for all the fat stupid parents who drive their kids to school, even though barely anyone on the class list lives more than 3km away.

And don’t get me started on idiot motorists who believe that only cars should drive on the road. Do you know how far back the history of roads goes? The Romans built them.  Aztecs built them (or Omecs or Incas, I don’t know… they’re like the antelope things, they’re all the same to me).  This is way before cars.  Many different kinds of vehicles shared the road – chariots, donkeys, carts, carriages, rickshaws, people pretending to be wheelbarrows by walking on their hands while their friend carries their feet, and even bikes.  Then cars were invented and all the other vehicles had to share the road with this new fangled gadget, even though it was oversized and noisy and just plain retarded.   Now people go absolutely ballistic if they have to sit behind the odd cyclist for a km or two.  Frustrated by their undersized genitalia or their partner’s inability to satisfy them sexually or the fact they were passed over for that promotion to Super Duper Mega Sumo Marketing Manager, no one can stand to be held up 5, 2 or even just 1 minute, despite the fact that all the superfluous cars on the road hold everyone up way more than that, and costs way more in road maintenance and using up more space on more highways and pollution and noise and stinkiness and  … and … and…  I have a weird feeling I’ve done this rant before.   Many times.  Deja ranté.  

Ok, ok I use to love driving and I understand that the motor vehicle is one of the greatest technological development of our times, immensely contributing to our lifestyle and mobility and independence (until you become totally dependent on your car) and I know bicycles aren’t the perfect form of transport.   I just think most of the people who drive them are jerkbags.  Yeah, you heard me.  Get back in your rice rocket, jerkbag.  

Inb4 annoying anecdotes about cyclists who flipped you off and ran over your toe or said something mean about your grandmother or made a truck explode.