Yesterday was a rather nice day, so when one of my favourite YouTubers, Mr Safety, posted a video of him riding around his town and encouraging others to do the same, I thought I'd join in. The first spanner in the works for this plan was that I hadn't ridden my bike in ages so the effort was likely to kill me. The second problem was that because I'd left the bike idle for so long, both tyres were flat. So the first part of the ride was actually a walk as I went out to find a service station where I could pump up the tyres.
This wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. The first one I reached had no air hose - apparently someone had stolen it. After walking about a kilometre I reached one that had a working air hose. It also featured a sign saying to not use the air hose for bikes. Fuck that shit. So finally, I had the tyres pumped up and i set off on my ride towards St Kilda Beach.
It was quite windy which is something the microphone on my little camera can't cope with. As a result, I couldn't use any of the insightful commentary I provided on the ride because it wasn't actually audible. The fact that most of it consisted of heavy breathing and me saying "I'm so out of shape, this fucking headwind is killing me," is besides the point. The plus side of this is I used my Angry Aussie theme music as the soundtrack for most of the video rather than my laboured breathing so, if you are interested in such things, you get to hear more of nsgmusic's stellar work in all its glory. The negative side is that you don't get to hear me getting really angry at the idiots.
The first idiot was some tool who opened his car door right as I passed his car. This was in a busy street so it was remarkably hard to avoid hitting his door AND avoid being killed by traffic at the same time. I have no idea if my assertions about his parentage were actually true but I stick by my shouted opinion. Then there were the fucking pedestrians. I swear I'm going to do a pro-pedestrian rights blog post at some point because I'm worried I sound like I blame pedestrians for everything. Let me make this clear: I only blame stupid fucking pedestrians for their own stupid behaviour.
Riding along the St Kilda Beach bike path is one of life's simple pleasures that I quite enjoy. Walking along the walking path is another enjoyable past-time that intend to indulge in regularly now daylight saving has kicked in (preferably while enjoying a white chocolate ice cream in the company of my lovely lady.) But the bike path and the walking path are two different paths. So the fucking pedestrians should stay the fuck off the fucking bike path. For their own safety if nothing else. Getting whacked by a bike is unlikely to injure you seriously like a car would, but it isn't gonna tickle.
You'll get a pretty good idea of how many of these morons there were if you watch the video. This wasn't even a crowded day (probably because of the wind and the rather mild temperatures) but there were morons all over the bike path. The worst thing about them is they're totally oblivious. They are completely unaware of their surroundings - every time I went by one of them they seemed totally amazed that a bike was going by them. On a fucking clearly marked bike path.
I'd be less angry at these morons blocking the bike path if they didn't have a designated walking path. I'd even be slightly less angry at them if the walking path was a long way away and they couldn't be bothered going over to the proper path. But most of the time the walking path is within a metre of the bike path. If the cretinous fucks would take two steps in the appropriate direction there would be no issue.
I started off by just doing a running commentary for the video as I approached the idiots. A quiet "look at these dickheads," - nothing they would hear. Then I graduated to commenting as I passed them "Another moron who can't be bothered to walk on the walking path." Then I reached the tipping point and started screaming as I approached them: "THIS IS THE BIKE PATH GET OUT OF THE WAY!" The looks I got in response were quite amusing. You could almost see each individual thought crawl across their stupid monkey faces.
(1) What is he saying? (2) How does he know this is a bike path? (3) Oh, that big sign there. (4) And the markings on the path. (5) And that other sign says the walking path is just there. (6) So I should be on the walking path, not blocking this attractive man's bike path. (7) How did he get to be so much smarter than me? (8) Why doesn't anyone ever come to my birthday party?
So here's the video of my ride:
I expected to be really sore today from this ride but maybe I'm not as out of shape as I feared because I don't have the aching legs and arms I anticipated. Mind you, I'm still suffering from a bizarre thing I did last night before getting into bed. I had an itch on my calf. Now, I could have simply reached down and scratched it. But instead, I stood on one leg and tried to scratch the itch with the big toe on my other foot. Then for some reason I twisted around a little on my one leg and my body screamed out "you're 40, you idiot!" Then my hip gave out and I collapsed in pain.
My hip still fucking hurts today.
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