You have to watch out for those idiots in tin boxes, a girl tried to run me over last night… backwards. She couldn’t fit in a parking space and reversed out, then stopped. I was stopped a metre behind her, lights on, bright yellow jacket on, trackstanding and trying to work out whether to go around her on the left, the right, or just wait for her to drive off. Surprise! She decided to drive backwards down the cul-de-sac and shot straight at me. Somehow I managed to leap to the side, belting the side of the car as it passed.

Then this morning, you wouldn’t believe it — some idiot tried to reverse into me at high speed! He came backwards down the service lane of Dandenong road, then reversed around the corner, backwards through the stop sign I was sitting at! If it hadn’t been for the stupid girl last night, I wouldn’t have been paying as much attention and he’d of hit me.

The media have latched onto the Critical Mass ride through the Burnley tunnel and rants are growing louder and louder, for and against… It’d be fun to ride through there, but leaving work at 6:30, it isn’t possible. Instead I had my own little cruisy ride, deciding to take an extra few kilometres in the cool of the evening. Along the way the usual number of idiots abounded. I was:

• Spat at and screamed at by bogans in a Barina. Maybe the spitting was accidental and they were just frothing at the mouth…
• Squeeezed off the road by someone who resented me passing them three times, so much that they passed me and then ran their wheels into the kerb in front of me. Hated being shown that the MTB was as fast as a car — so much that he ruined his wheel alignment to show me…
• Narrowly missed by a falcodore that shot through a giveway sign in my path, motorist with phone against the ear. What’s $165 and a three point penalty anyway…
• Terrorised by an RACV truck driver zigzagging his way up Chapel street, I thought at first he was deliberately trying to ram me into parked cars … no, he was reading the Melway on the seat next to him.
• Blockaded by cars driving up the bike lane on Church street.
• Blocked out by cars parked in the forward bike box at traffic lights.

Yep, just an ordinary Friday evening, the motorists were as well behaved as normal. There didn’t seem to be any exceptional malice or abuse, just the everyday accepted malice and abuse…

After all that, I met up with the Critical Mass on Swan Street, they were heading back towards the city as I was riding home. Had to laugh as I pulled up alongside the woman in the Barina — must be a night for Barinas — parked in the forward bike box at the lights. She was staring open-mouthed at the bikes on the other side of the road and blissfully ignorant of the green turn-arrow for her. The taxi behind was beeping its horn, she was ignoring this too! A polite “‘scuse me lady, you’ve got a green light” and she crunched the car into gear and drove off.

Must be a bicycle kinda day. At lunch time I sent off my bike speedo to the Australian importer. My call lodged at Sigma’s website resulted in an email asking for me to return the unit to Norco Australia — the local agents.