Wake up summer time! This is getting ridiculous — nearly three weeks of constant drizzly cool weather — it was 14.5 °C today at noon!
This afternoon I ran a bit of a sanity-check through my journal, my bike ride notes and my website. Still not sure who the intended audience is of any of these, my writing in the paper journal has dropped right off, some of it due to me writing more here, some of it due to less time by myself. I guess there’s some truth to the saying that diaries are only written by the weird or the lonely…
After much procrastination I’ve finished going through the scrawled notes that I took during January and the blank places in my journal, and written up the rest of our New Zealand bike tour. After emailing a guy in the UK who is going to NZ, I’d referred him to my trip — then decided I’d better finish writing so it all made sense! Unfortunately there are way too many places where I’ve obviously left myself a half-empty page — to be filled in later — and then never got around to it.
Melbourne motorists
Do I laugh or cry? The motorists on the ride home… First was my attempted murder by the idiot driving the 2-tonne truck, Victorian registration ###-###
, turned right straight across my path at the lights of Malvern road and Darling road — he nearly had bike and rider embedded in his door at 40km/hr. My shout should have been loud enough, but he was blissfully unaware, mobile phone glued to his ear. At least the ambulance parked right next to me would have been able to render assistance.
Five minutes later, still fuming, I got to see the funny side of the motoring idiot. On High street there’s traffic lights for a pedestrian crossing, a gap one car length, a railway crossing, then the lights over the freeway. While I’m sitting at the pedestrian crossing the next set of lights went green, the 4WD Pathfinder next to me started up and drove straight through the red lights of the crossing, then the driver realised and stopped just before the railway lines. Then the level crossing lights came on, then the boom-gate slowly came down. Lower… and lower… then — BONG! — as the gate hit the bonnet. Only then did the driver put the 4WD into reverse and leap backwards like a startled cat! Myself and a few people on the footpath couldn’t help ourselves, and burst out laughing.