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Ah yeah, fair enough. You're not mis-representing yourself as having had cycle training, but Mark has mistakenly assumed that you have. Anyway, good response. I hope he amends his opinion of cycle training based on this (he he).
I think it's a shame that all this has to boiled down to either being for infrastructure or for cycle training, as a binary choice. There's really nothing wrong with doing cycle training and also campaigning for better infrastructure simultaneously, and it weakens all of us to have this kind of internecine squabbling - q.v. bojo saying that elephant and castle doesn't need to be fixed because it's "fine if you keep your wits about you", for eg.
bothwell
Woah wait, here's my quote:
To answer your question, no I didn't do cycle training. 4 years ago when I decided to just go out, jump on my new "fixeh" and take off on the road and see what happens, I genuinely didn't know cycle training even was a thing. This is my point, would I have taken it then if I knew it existed? Instead of learning how to actually use a road the hard way all on my own, probably obliviously nearly get killed a lot? Yes.
4 Years later, I've had one traffic incident with a vehicle (someone tried to park on me) and two verbal bust ups. I don't cup people up, piss people off, get beeped at, flashed at, shouted at by other cyclists, I just go with the flow in my own line and not put myself into the path of any madness.
I've never said I'm a good cyclist, I never will, I just personally feel safer on main roads with fast moving traffic. For e.g Me and a mate did the West Way after work/before SE's this Tuesday just for laughs because we hadn't done it since summer. It's a cool fast road where we can be free amongst it all without busses pulling out/peds etc. Just cars going in a straight line, lots of fun, kept us on our toes.
In answer to your other q about my whip skid, yes I could have handled this differently, probably a lot better if I had cycle training.
And no you don't sound like a dick, I think you're super cool and I get you for calling me out.