This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Ride in was not too bad on the whole but one incident has wound me up more that it probably should have.

I was at the last set of lights northbound on Walworth Rd before E&C, sat in the middle of the bus lane with a motorbike to my right (still in the bus lane) and then a stonking great tipper truck in the regular lane. All nicely behind the line and waiting at a red light, which was fine. Until some fucking idiot decided so loop around the front of traffic from the left and plonk herself over the line in front of and slightly to the right the motorbike. Ordinarily this would just be a dick move and ignored but she had put herself right under the front left wing of the tipper truck. I wouldn’t have even sat where I was if I didn’t know we would all be moving off straight ahead but she was in the single worst place possible in relation to the truck. If she had have stayed there and the truck moved off quicker than her, should would have in the best case been knocked to the side, worst case I would have probably need some PTSD help.

So, with the events of last week at Lambeth Bridge running through my head I rolled forward and said “that’s a really fucking dangerous place to be, he (pointing at the truck cab) can’t see you and you’re right in front of him”. A little aggressive possibly but we were about to move off and I was a little panicky. She turned instantly defensive and pointed blame at the motorcyclist saying he shouldn’t be in the bus lane, which proved she was just making a point by moving to the front like that to get in his way. There was a bit of back and forth, my adrenaline jumped up so not sure of the specifics apart from one exchange that went “You’d be surprised to hear I can make my way around London on my own thank you very much” and I think I said to that “not for much longer by all accounts”. Then she started to say that if I didn’t stop (trying to save her life) she would report me to the police for harassment.

At this point I just thought fuck it and left her to it. We all moved off, she had shifted to the left a little during the argument and we went on our way.

Unfortunately we were going in the same direction until St George’s Circus and during this short trip she jumped two red lights and rode the pavement around the road blocks. When we got to St’ George’s Circus, I was well ahead and walking my bike around the road works when I heard “excuse me” from behind, turned round and she had ridden up behind me and held her phone saying she was going to take a picture and put it on Facebook and out me as a harasser. I’m fairly sure it was a bluff so I said I would take one of her for riding on the pavement.

We parted ways after that and I probably shouldn’t have been as wound up about it as I was but she wasn’t half being a prick.

tldr – I need to leave people to fuck themselves up