This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Lovely ride in this morning, fresh but not cold, quiet on the roads and only a few chopper twats on cs7, must be the Easter effect. No doubt it will be shit again next week.

chopper twats

middle aged men in leather on Harleys?

?

List of whoppers on choppers -

1. Norman Jay
   

Blackfriars was oddly quiet. Suspiciously so.

Had a nice ride out to Sutton and Wallington.

Has @edscoble been talking to this kid about rear tyre pressure, or is it just badly, erm, chopped?

Choppers are a close relative of nodders, their identifiable characteristics are chopping from line to line whilst cycling, wearing football socks and riding road bikes with flat pedals in trainers. I think they are often called Josh, Matt or Tom.

Novelty firsts, was yelled at by motorist for not using the 200m of cycle lane at a new junction thingy. Appears he wasn’t able to bust the 30 speed limit through the traffic calming section as I was in the way. Blew him a kiss, not sure that was what he was after. Rode on calm/10 :)

New brake pads on the CX bike yesterday, first ride today & was in a bit of a rush so didn't have any time to bed them in. Unfortunately, my commute starts with climbing & there was a headwind today.

Headwindy, rubbing brakey, climby start/10.

Saw a chopper matching that description exactly this morning, came to a stop in front of me at the traffic light and blew a massive gob out of his nose on to the ground.
Come on mate, it's just a commute, no one wants to see that on a friday morning.

That chopper was a gobber

My friend may need to do a few more rides down south in future

Heading back Bizzle way for Bespoked weekend.

On way home last night, on my street with is narrow and has parked cars staggered along it. Broad daylight, a car behind me I get to my driveway and slide off left into it, at which point the car behind shouted I should have signaled. I wanted to ask him why, he couldn't overtake me because of the parked cars, and I just exited and got out his way.

^^ boring response but signalling would have told him you were slowing down, especially if you’re on a super sweet fixeh where the pedals go round the whole time.

Sunny and lovely on the way back now

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So many people stepping into the road today or just not looking. People are slowly coming out of the winter coma and walking the streets like zombies

crank arm fell off, did the remaining 8 miles or so 1 legged, most likely the rain water has done further damage to the BB but made it to work just 10 mins late. will deal with the mechanical consequences on lunch. yay for mondays

How does anyone let a crank get to the falling off stage without noticing it's heading to the falling off stage?

Doesn't notice wobbly crank.
Rides 8 miles with one leg.

Brawn > Brains.

Chapeau though.

It didn't feel noticeably wobbly!

Really misty this morning, got even mistier as I cycled with it building up on my glasses. Not ideal!

The traffic light gods were looking down on me this morning, didn't hit one red from Shooters Hill to St Paul's! Roads pretty clear too, guess everyone's on holiday or the train!
soggy bottom/10

Yeah it was eerily quiet from Catford to Farringdon. I checked my watch, as I thought I'd fucked up and accidentally left early or something.
/csb

Usually I take the CS7 bypass around E&C, but today I gave the newer infrastructure a go - the lane behind the bus stop, over the lights, then off towards Borough.

Now I remember why I stopped using it - I used the seg lane that spits you out into the bus stop, and lo and behold a bus was bearing down on me as I exited the lane. Worse than that, the driver didn't wait, and edged her bus closer and closer to the kerb - closing the gap on me while I was still on her left and forcing me into the gutter. For some reason she was angry at me...

Spent the rest of the commute thinking about how I should have stopped and snapped a photo of her and her driver number.

Edit: Raised a complaint with TfL about the layout design at that location and northbound at Oval. Suggested a simple timing change on the lights would do the trick there - an extra 5-10s for the cyclists to clear the bus stop before the buses get released.