It was a hairy ride through the city to the station this morning. There's an area going down Elizabeth St towards Victoria St (for the locals), where the two left lanes, out of three, turn left into Victoria. I want to go straight ahead. I have two choices - one is to stick to the left and try and make my way across to the right most lane in the last few meters. The other choice is to get into the right lane from the previous set of lights and travel a block in that right lane. Generally speaking I prefer the second choice with cars both overtaking and undertaking me. So that's what I did this morning - it was the WRONG call. On the right of me was a truck, and I was conscious of not being run over by it, so rather than being in the middle of the two lanes, I was more to the left, which the car in that lane didn't like. So I had both the car driver and the truck driver abusing me - probably with justification, but it was a case of once I had made the decision I just had to ride it out (ha ha!) until I came to Victoria St.
After going straight ahead, I came to the next set of lights and was behind another cyclist who decided to try to get to the front by going in between the aforementioned truck and another car. That was ambitious and I could see her being stuck under the truck. In the end she got off her bike and walked around the car to the gutter. At the following set of lights, which was a right turn from the left lane we have here in Melbourne due to our trams, she felt a need to stop and abuse the driver of the car who was waiting to turn right in the left lane (don't know why). She stopped quite suddenly, causing me to have to swerve to avoid her!
I realise that this explanation is convoluted and probably doesn't make sense to anyone - but I just had to get it out there.
On the more comfortable side however, I bought a pair of padded bike shorts to assist my sore bum. They are the normal looking shorts with the padded inserts. I reckon they did make a difference. I think I am going to have to invest in riding gloves now as this morning my fingers nearly froze!!
There's a lot to this riding thing.
