MACHISMO

I sometimes get a lot of hassle and animosity off of other persons on bicycles. I know, hard to believe that I could upset people in such a way, but it is as much a fact as anything else you might read on the internet.


The simple reason for this seems to be my incredible, cutting edge super bike, which is a pedelec. This means it has an electric motor that gives me a boost uphill when my ageing 43 year old body needs it, especially when I can be carrying over 20kg extra weight in my awesome Bikebin panniers. 


I have almost lost count of the times lycra clad psyhcolists have screamed "cheat!", "you know that's cheating, don't you?", "you're on a lazy bike, you lazy c**t!" at me as I have whizzed past them. They seem to be under the misapprehension that I give a shit about them, and that I am only there because they are, whilst in reality I am just trying to go home from work.


Once I had a very mental run in with someone who's machismo was way off the scale. I was happily minding my own business, pedalling away like the madman I am, going up Prior Park Road in Bath. This is a long, steep, picturesque climb of over a mile. About half way up I drew up behind a rather out of shape looking man on one of those fold-up bikes with teeny weeny wheels. The rush hour persons in cars were roaring past us, so I couldn't overtake him, but strangely he started to speed up, his wobbly legs moving in a crazy blur. Oh well, I though, he's just trying to get a move on and not hold me up, how considerate. I just stayed behind him, trying to look for somewhere else to look other than his jiggly arse.


When we were nearing the top he suddenly slowed, and as it was safe to overtake, I sped up to carry on my merry way. As I came along side of him he turned to me and said something that would have filled me with horror, fear and despair if it hadn't been so stupid.


"I'm...not...racing...you...any...more" he wheezed. His face was the brightest shade of purple I have ever seen on a humanoid. Veins stood out on his twisted face like shiny blue snakes in a ugly swamp. Puffy and sweaty, looking like a angry baby tomato, his fiery eyes focused on my bike.
"Oh...you've...got...a...motor, you...cheat!" he puffed with all the venom his swollen head could manage. I stayed silent, it's best just to let these macho psychos just blow it all out of their moronic faces.


Then he said something which I couldn't help bursting out laughing in his bulging, blubbery, slimy face
"I...am...my...own...motor" the swollen one spluttered. I am my own motor? What in Zeus' name does that effin' mean? If he was his own motor, he was one motor that definitely needed to have a large cooling fan, some seats, four wheels, an exhaust, a steering wheel and go-faster stripes attached. His head looked like a giant shiny purple bell end, and I wasn't about to hang around as he shot his anger stuff all over my face.


I'd had enough and zoomed off up the hill.


About five minutes later, when I was pootling along the flat plateau at the top of the hill, minding my own business, thinking thoughts that only I can think and going past Ralph Allen school, the same purple machopath shot past me at an incredible speed. He blurted something unintelligible (probably something unkind about how I was a rubbish person or something), cut across traffic coming in the opposite direction and turned off into the sports centre, presumably to further prove his manliness by getting sweaty with another man by whacking their balls about.


Still, he sure showed me who was the better man.


Oddly enough, I have NEVER had anything other than cheery "Hello!"s and "oooo, tough hill!" from female persons on bicycles. I wonder why that is?

These guys need to grow up.

DRUGS

Riding to work today was greatly improved by being drugged to the eyeholes.

My fear had vanished as I smiled serenely at my grumpy looking car driving friends whizzing past me. I think this may have had a rather negative effect on some of them as they were very aggressive with their language and hand gestures. Still, I am so pumped full of emotion numb-ers that I really couldn't give a fudge. 

I am now back on my bike full time again after an extended Christmas/injury based holiday. The postings will resume tomorrow....

Neck

I have done my neck in again, and will probably be on medication again. I couldn't look over my shoulder whilst riding to see my possible impending doom racing towards me on the streets today. Ignorance is bliss, but a neck injury is a pain in the...er...um...ne...no...er...arse! Yes, ARSE!

I AM ON HOLIDAY (special)

I do not like going on holiday. I like working and staying at home and stuff. Holidays are for chumps who love to waste their money on fleeting things and feeble memories of forced happy times. Saying all that, I still have to go on holiday sometimes, but I have found a holiday that even I can stand. Centre Parcs, and I have got to say that it is AWESOME TO THE MAX.

Number one: I get to take my bike with me. Everyone is forced to ride bikes, even big fat 4x4 driving important business types who look like walruses having sex with a metal  super skinny supermodel with wheels as they puff red-faced up the almost vertical hills. 

Number two: Cars are banned, and anyone found driving one there is nailed to the road and people on bicycles can ride over their groins over and over again.

Number three: All the animals there are alive and not flat with their insides outside and they run up to you and talk and stuff.

You just crossed the line Flatso!

Number four: it has the best swimming pool in the world. It is just a shame they get all shirty when you try and ride your bike down the rapids when you've had too much booze. Those life guard guys have no sense of humour.

They really should put a sign up to say you can't do it, the fiddlewonkers.

Number four: if you live in a tiny crap hole like my house, well the Centre Parcs chalets will seem like a fonking mansion. They have everything you need and are so lovely I have to be pulled kicking and screaming outside every morning I am there. I will admit that is a bit like when I am at home, but then I am being pushed outside to face the horrors on The Route (to work).

Number five: No Dogs.

Number six: No Crusty Jugglers (they can't afford it. Anyway their whole life is like one big holiday at tax payers expense, eh? Am I right? Yeah, a holiday with very little food, no hope of an end and constant misery, like that time I was forced to go to Minorca.)

Number seven: There's a big sports thing there to if you're into that kind of shit. I stay well clear because that is where the very few undesirables who have slipped the net somehow and got in, hang out, drinking and hitting balls with sticks.

Number eight: The Pancake House. If you try and tell me there is a better place to eat on this bollock ball of a planet you are a liar who should stop lying, because people are starting to notice.

House of heavenly delights, sex with eggs.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

SWEARING

WARNING: This bit below contains offensive language of an offensive nature that could cause offence if you are offended easily because you are a fonkin spangwinkler.

Hello. I have a rather chilling tale to recount to you now. It's more chilling than a freezer on the moon and at least twice as pointless. 


If the rain comes down hard on the canal path overnight, the exciting bottomless pot-holes which keep me on my toes can become filled with cloud diarrhoea. This not only has the added benefit of hiding the cavernous earth-cracks from my eagle squinty eyes, but also satisfyingly splashes brownly all over the place as I career through them at dangerously cool speeds, looking like an awesome advert for something fast and cool and dangerous.

I like to pride myself on my total consideration to other path users (I got all 'A's in my own questionnaire (see an earlier blog entry)), so I will always slow or stop for a Person Walking, or tinkle my tinkly bell as a warning that I am carefully coming up behind them. On this particular day I was just riding along what is possible the most puddle-strew, but also the widest, part of the path, when I saw a young woman walking towards Bath, going in same direction as me. 

She seemed to be carrying everything that she owned, countless bags and rugs and shit, all topped off with a cheap crusty acoustic guitar. She was also dragging, in a careless way through the dirty smeg-ridden water, one of those crappy suitcases with those stupid tiny wheels. I duly rang my bell hard, like a teenager in the shower, to warn her of my approach. It had no effect.  Odd, I thought. I slowed down to a fast walking-pace style speed and went right onto the grass in an attempt to go around the wide-load. 

As I pulled alongside her majesty, she made a sudden start, like I had just gone for her and theatrically stumbled into a nearby skank-pool. 

"Ooooo, are you OK? Sorry didn't mean to startle you, I rang my tinkly bell in the direction of your earholes, but you must have not heard, sorry, sorry." I spluttered in what I attempted to be an apologetic tone.

"Piss off you fucking arsehole! I've got wet boots now 'cause of you, you wanker!" she spat with a crazed look on her crazy face, "I've got to spend all fucking day with fucking wet feet now cause of you, you fucking twat. Piss off, go on, just piss off you piece of fucking shit!"

She was only getting started.

"Sorry, but I really didn't do anything." On reflection, this was probably not the best thing I could have said at this point. 

What followed next was a stream of consciousness style swear-athon, which painted a picture of me that would probably win the Turner prize.

Then something happened that finally pushed her totally out of Sane Town and into Wack-job Woods. Three Lyra-clad Psycholists came tearing past her at full pelt, all, one after the other, splashing her with muddy stuff as their wheels passed. They raced on, without a word.

I have to say that my heart went out to the poor waif at this point, as the top of her head flew off and lava shot out of her skull.

"Kind of put things in perspective doesn't it?" I cheerfully announced.

I told the hospital staff that they were dog bites, I don't think they believed my lie, but they gave me the rabies jab anyway. 

"Bite me, lady muck!" Some people take things so literally.

 

THE TAPPING OF THE CROW

If the weather is crisp and fresh like a new packet of Golden Wonder (and not a pack that has been in a convenience store for 15 years and you were in such a hurry you forgot to check the sell by date and now you feel robbed and are having to eat bendy 'crisps'), nothing can be better than pedalling along the frosty canal path on the way to work. One such early morning presented itself recently and I saw something rather peculiar on that morning that I just mentioned.


I had just gone around a bend and into a rather secluded area of the canal, when I saw a very ramshackle excuse for a boat floating perilously in the black, thick waters, tethered to the bank. From the front of the boat, which was furthest from me and so hidden from my view, I could hear a strange, hollow, eerie tap tap tapping.


As I drew closer, in a mix of horror and fascination, I saw a large coal-black bird rapping it's beak on the glass at the front of the floating Crusty Jugglermoblie. With hideous trepidation I pulled up alongside of the demonic Crow, which ceased its ceaseless tapping and slowly swivelled it's head to stare at me, with it's unblinking jet eyes. It locked me in its feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animal gaze, opened it's beak-like mouth and then uttered what I can only describe as a croaking laugh. 


Was the monstrous Omen star laughing at me? Laughing at my face filled with horror, fear and despair? Laughing at my stupid bike gear I am forced to wear so funt-heads can see me on the roads? Laughing into my very soul, mocking my existence, echoing around the void in my heart?


My questioning was suddenly interrupted by the hatch opening on the boat and a hairy thing emerged clutching a bowl in it's claw.


"There you go, Russell, I've got our Sugar Puffs for you." and it handed the bowl to the embarrassed Crow.
All I can say is that I had the last laugh that day, a full ten minutes of laughing and pointing before the police arrived.

Who's laughing now? Not you, you Budgie banger! It's ME, Person on a Bicycle!