Other folk

Cycling to work would be fine if it wasn't for other people.  Finally ran out of excuses why not to get on the bike to get to work today and hopped on at 7:30am with the intention of merely pootling in.  Good job really, given it was a really heavy gravity day - heavy legs, heavy bike and particularly heavy head courtesy of half a bottle of Chardonnay last night.

I get really irked by other cyclists who pull alongside me when I'm sat patiently at red lights and then pull away while it's on the pedestrian phase.  We're traffic.  Not pedestrians.  Most irked of course when they do this repeatedly as I catch up with them at the next set of lights and we have a yo yo thing going on.  Worse still if I actually have to keep pulling out into the traffic to go round them between lights.  Working for who I do, I really don't think disobeying the highway code is an option for me when on the bike.  Having said that, I'm the kind of woman who wouldn't flaunt the law knowingly anyway.  Red lights mean stop, the pavement is for pedestrians.  I have moral standards to uphold. I just wish other people had the same standards.

Just one near death experience today so that's a good day of cycle commuting.  Manchester has some beautifully marked out cycle lanes, and there's one of these which takes the cyclist around a parking lane which becomes a left turn lane, and it can look / feel as though you're somewhat in the middle of the road.  But the lane is beautifully marked out.  Bright green fresh paint, white paint marked cyclist logo things and a white line either side of the lane.  It's clear.  It becomes even more clear, I fancy, what it is when there's an actual cyclist in the lane.  That would be me.  However, apparently not clear enough to the corsa who felt that they should venture into the lane and attempt to  physically push me out of it.  It was somewhat close, and I can't help but wonder what they thought they were doing, why they felt it was OK to physically intimidate me.  Worse still, because they came from behind me it was completely unexpected and I really wasn't ready to have a car so close to my arse as it attempted to nudge me over.  Hell is other folk.