As some of you might know, during June of this year I bought myself a bike. After some serious deliberation and some serious fights (my dad was horribly against the idea) I got my way and bought myself a Buell Lightning CityX.
Initially I was quite terrified of the whole biking idea, since I had a rather unfortunate experience from biking during my childhood. Falling off a big-ass scrambler repeatedly can cause that type of thing. Unfortunately the traffic on a daily basis was becoming extremely unbearable as well as influencing my daily life. After sitting in the traffic for 90 minutes you are hardly in a mood to do anything except shooting someone. So I did the only thing I thought would solve the problem. I went for some riding classes and bought a bike.
During my riding classes I was pretty nervous, but since it was only a 125cc scrambler, it did help to offset my nervousness somewhat. I was done with my riding classes when I got my bike, which, to say the least, was significantly bigger. Getting on a 1000cc V-Twin that had a reputation for the amount of torque available and the ease that it popped wheelies, even unwanted ones, was very much akin to getting on a wild horse. You have no idea how its going to react.
That evening I got home successfully and started to relax just a little bit. Still I had this nagging thing about falling every time I got on the bike, never quite relaxing. That Sunday after I got the bike, I had a lesson with my instructor where he was going to just ride with me and tell me the ins and outs of city riding. Then the inevitable happened. It happened simply because I kept on telling myself that it is going to happen. About 10 minutes into the lesson I managed to drop the bike. She had less than 100km on the clock and I felt like a royal twit. Anyway, my instructor got the bike back up on her wheels and we inspected the damage. That was minimal, unlike my the damage to my dignity, pride and person. After gathering my nerves we got back on the bikes and proceeded to complete the rest of the lesson. Ironically, that first fall made all the difference. I started gaining confidence quite quickly after that, not dreading the fall as badly as before and soon I started to relax in the saddle and enjoy the ride.
Pretty much a few weeks after that, you needed no reason to get me into the saddle to go somewhere. As it is still today. I love riding and my only regret is that I never started earlier.
Now for the things that have started to irritate me lately. Mostly because it is interfering with the joy of riding. About 3 weeks ago, I came off the bike for a second time. It wasn't voluntary. On the Thursday just before the Rhino rally I was traveling home at about 18:30 the evening. Traffic was reasonable, everything moving along at about 30km/h. About halfway home, I saw a white Tazz jumping in between lanes. This guy was trying to get to the front of the congestion, one car at a time. Now as anybody who has traveled extensively in traffic in Johannesburg will tell you, this is not getting you anywhere any quicker. Not even by seconds. Just due to the fact that sometimes the middle lane moves a bit quicker. Then the fast lane moves a bit quicker. You get the point. The best of it though was the part where he was switching lanes... He had this single-motion-thing going for him where he would initiate the lane change and put on his indicators as he is merging with the other lane. Not what indicators are there for. Also, the distance in front of the other cars is there for safe braking, not to jump in between cars. I was careful as I approached the vehicle, but apparently not careful enough. As I was about to pass the idiot (I was about a third into his car with the front wheel, fully in the middle lane, not lane splitting even), he pulled his party trick. I managed, according to the BMW driver behind me, a very impressive endo before getting my front wheel knocked from under me. All of this fortunately happened at low speed, so the damage was minimal and I could walk away from the accident with a blue toe and a bruise on my hip. Minimal damage to the bike still amounts to R5000 worth of damages according to the quote from Harley. And I am paying since this fuck-head lives in Thembisa, was driving his sister's car and has no insurance. Now I could have pursued this legally, but that would in all probability cost me more in legal fees and I would still not have gained anything, much less the money for the repairs.
Now, he stopped next to the road after he knocked me off. I was quite hot under the collar when I parked my bike behind him. His excuse? He didn't see me. Holy Mary and Josef. I had effectively been riding behind this cunt for the better part of 5 minutes observing his actions. How in fucks name could he not have seen me!!? Unless it was the obvious, the answer I also gave him in no uncertain terms. Yes, you fuckhead, you didn't see me. You never fucking looked!! Enough of that before I have a coronary.
Last week, Wednesday, a friend of mine was coming to stay over. She was visiting from Bloemfontein and I hadn't seen her in a while. I went to fetch her from her aunt's place in Johannesburg, with the car. On our way back, just after William Nicol, I was traveling in the fast lane doing about 130km/h. It was already lightly congested, closing in on afternoon traffic at 16:00. I observed a car closing at about 150km/h in the fast lane since the traffic had opened up slightly behind me. At the same moment I observed a bike coming along a way behind her. Probably doing about 160km/h. Illegal speed, but not dangerous in the current circumstance. Traffic was quite open behind me. I check in front of me to see if there was any break in traffic coming up and considering to get out of the way of the car coming on behind me. Traffic was pretty much not going anywhere more rapidly than the speed I was moving at. In front of me there was basically just a safe braking distance. Apparently the driver of the vehicle behind me decided that that would be enough to fit her vehicle in. To get just in front of me. There was no going anywhere else after that. I managed a glance in the rear view mirror. The bike was already passing her in the middle lane preparing to lane split. She never even glanced. Just a loud thump and the only excuse is that she didn't see him. For fucks sake... He wasn't even behind her. She hit him with the front left fender of her car. Fortunately this was one lucky fellow. He slid through 2 lanes of traffic, coming to rest at the side of the road. The only injuries, a broken collar bone and some road rash. The road rash only because he wasn't wearing protective pants or shoes. I stayed at the scene of the accident till the paramedics took him away. I was so pissed off I could kill.
The final straw of course came the next evening. A friend of mine moved to a different house and I went to check the place out in Queenswood. It was cloudy, but I did not think that it would rain. While I was at his place, it unfortunately did. Not really badly, just enough to really wet the roads. On my way home on the road in front of Unitas hospital, there is an intersection with 2 lanes turning right after a long straight. As I approached the intersection, there was a car slightly in front of me. The robot was green and I was braking, getting ready to turn. Because there were two lanes, under normal circumstance if the road wasn't wet, I would have under-braked the car and exited the intersection before it did. Thank God for wet roads that evening. Because the bitch of a driver, yes, once a gain a female, decides to make a u-turn. A u-turn from the fucking left lane in a double intersection... Had I under-braked, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. The best of it all is as she turns, she looks at me and stares at me like what the fuck am I going on about. As if I was doing something wrong by being in the lane that I was in and she continues on her merry way. I was fucking dumbfounded.
In my six months of riding the bike I have found that female drivers are about the stupidest fucking things alive. Of all my really close shaves, it was mainly female drivers. This goes not just for biking but cycling as well. Good lord, I have nearly been knocked down several times while on my bicycle as well. Not to say that some male drivers are any better, some of them are bloody spiteful. In the case of spiteful, I have sort-of adopted a habit to take a mirror with me. If you purposely endanger my life, I will damage your property. I mean, if you just drive normally, I'd pass you without incident and we can both be on our merry way. If you feel somehow aggrieved by the fact that I am on a bike and getting somewhere quicker than you, sell your fucking BMW and buy a bike. Simple as that.
One of my pet-peeves are of course 4x4s. Not all of them, but most. My opinion is that you need to take a special course on driving such a large vehicle. Most of the idiots driving the things do not have a fucking clue as to the size of their vehicles. So they have no idea of their position in a lane at any time as well. Then you get the ones that try to use their vehicles as fucking battering rams.
Taxis for the most part aren't too bad on the bike. Because of the stupid way they drive, they are reasonably aware of what is going on around them and I have had only one or two incidents involving a taxi. In one incident I took a mirror and rode off. It was a close call and I was rather aggravated after a bad day at work, so save me the reprimands about how he could have shot me, etc. I had a similar incident in the car some time back when one fucker took my left mirror off. Payback is a bitch.
I love my bike and love biking in general. No car can compare to the freedom involved in riding a bike. You either love it or hate it. If it just wasn't for some of the drivers on the roads...
[/rant]
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