Wednesday 9 January 2008

Someone needs to scrub our roads

Had a filthy job to do over the weekend - clean the bike chain. It's been months since I wheeled out Bhopal (my chain degreasing kit) and gave the thing a scrub. Ugh. The chain was 4 parts gunk, 3 parts metal. It looked like I had been doing some off road work, when the furthest off the tarmac the bike goes is 10 feet across the lawn when I wheel it in the back gate to its nightly resting place.

All the gunk has come off our roads and bike paths. Dirt, grit, ground up stuff, dog shit - you name it. Why don't we employ people to go out each morning and sweep the bike paths? Surely there are enough stinking hippies sitting at home on medical disability benefits that could be frogmarched out the door at 6am for an hours work with the broom? It's not work for the dole - it's work for proles.

Commuting by bike has gone down the crapper so far this year - thousands of people seem to have made a new years resolution to get fit/lose weight/produce less CO2 and they've pulled the bike out of the shed, dusted off the cobwebs and hit the road. That's all very nice and whale friendly, but all these new fuckers are getting in my way. I nearly had a head on collision last night with one sandal wearing lentil eater and have had to brake whilst going uphill to stop myself from running up the date of a hairy legged, cheese avoiding vegan.

I wish all these people would do something useful like fuck off to Antarctica and strap themselves to a harpoon or something. Or get back into their cars.

I just need to be patient. By February, they'll all be driving again. Only the mental manage to stick to commuting by bike over the long term.

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