Today was the day I got back on my bike.

And today was the day I nearly fell off my bike.

Repeatedly.
Including just getting out of the driveway.

Despite it being three months later, it took putting my bollocks either side of a bike seat to discover the vertigo is not completely vertigone.

But I will be back out there tomorrow.

I’m not going to let a silly little thing like nearly hitting a bridge or swerving all over the place stop me.

And it’s not because I’m some closet hippy who cycles to avoid using gasoline, in some vain attempt to save the planet.

No.
The planet can go fuck itself.

I just really fucking hate driving in rush hour traffic.
Really, really, really.

And I know you’re thinking -- doesn’t everyone? -- so let me remind you that I grew up on a farm. Rush hour there consisted of a couple of hundred cows, two dogs and a motorbike.

The nearest town was a little hicksville some distance away, with a car population of 16. Visiting to buy supplies was stressful enough for me.

Imagine my distress when I once ventured out to the region’s Big Smoke (a very small city: car population 102 cars) and got chased by three cop cars.

I was leaving a spacey parlour when the law turned up to deal with some punk-ass homeys who smashed a window.
I did a U-turn to avoid going past them, because it was night time and I knew one of my headlights wasn’t working and I didn’t want to get a ticket.

They started following me, but they didn’t have their red and blue lights or sirens going, so I just kept driving.

I tried losing them, but I only succeeded in getting myself lost, what with all the going down dead-end streets and going left when I should have gone right.

I finally made it to the city limits when they decided to pull me over.

They laughed when they found out where I lived:

“No one-way-streets where you’re from, are there?”

What the fuck is a one-way-street?!
Apparently I’d done my U-turn on one…

“No officer. No traffic lights either.”

And they let me off. And they didn’t notice the busted headlight. Sweet.

Then there was the time I first drove to NZ’s largest city, the one I now live in.

I was on the motorway and people kept beeping at me and giving me The Finger.

That night, I was telling my Auckland cousin how fucking rude fucking Aucklanders were, and recounted my motorway experience.

He asked me what lane I was in.

“Dude, you were driving that piece of shit car ... that can’t even go the speed limit ... IN THE FAST LANE! That’s why they were pissed off!”

What the fuck’s a Fast Lane?!

These days, I must admit, I do get great amusement travelling with cow cockeys in Auckland and watching them freak out.

“HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK’S THAT THING???!!!”

“It’s a roundabout”.

“WHAT THE FUCK’S THAT FOR???”

“For scaring hillbillies”.

(To be fair, the roundabout in question is the country’s biggest and worst for accidents. It’s sort of like the Arc de Triomphe, except the people most commonly having the accidents speak Chinese and not French).

:)

The irony of all this is that, when I was living overseas, I had a pretty cool job, driving high-performance cars.
And they paid me!
50 pounds a day !!

The other drivers had been sent to Germany to train at the Porsche tracks. In Porsches.

The only comparable training I had done was a day-long advanced driving course at an Auckland racetrack. (Although I did manage to pull up my 2.4lt petrol Kingcab Ute in a shorter emergency stopping distance than all the other drivers there, including those with ABS cars.)

I think they liked using my driving services because I was “trustworthy”.
Which is ironic in its own sweet way.

I was insured for a million pounds. Although it would have been interesting to see what the insurance company would have said had I written off a Ferrari and they then discovered that I hadn’t had a valid drivers licence for the whole final year I was driving.

I think we may have just touched on a little of the irony I was just referring to…