This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Where the fuck does this wind keep coming from?!

Yeah I'm starting to get a bit tired of 35mph gusts at the end of a long day too... but it looks like it'll continue off and on for a while still.

Fucking hurricane on the south coast again this morning and Nation drive your car to work day too.

Checked the weather for the week before I set off and it's just wind and rain with an extra bit of snow on Thursday apparently. Can't wait to feel knacked by Friday.

The Fucking Stupid Cablecar was frankly terrifying this morning in those winds. It was closed when I arrived at it, but just as I was walking away in a huff they called me back and let me on. Kind of wished that I’d had to go via the foot tunnel instead as that was a bit too hair-raising for a Monday morning.

Landing at Gatwick at half seven this morning was pretty exciting too. Much turbulence, very wobbles. It was enough to wake me up.

Following a particularly sphincter clenching crossing, I once enquired of the staff at what wind speed did they shut the thing down.
'18 mph' came the reply.
What's the wind speed today? I further enquired.
'18 mph'.

Move to North-east London--you get the headwind in the morning and it's fairly effortless at the end of the day. :)

Not today!

Whereas in SE London you get a headwind in the morning and a headwind in the afternoon. Somehow.

Thank you, someone else noticed this. I think it's just an unfavourable crosswind though.

The Fucking Stupid Cablecar was frankly terrifying this morning in those winds.

Turn out I can’t use my Freedom Pass on it, even more FSC.

There’s obviously such a thing as too much freedom...

Considering it’s being sponsored by an expensive airline.

(Also fustrasted by it not being accepted on a hire bike).

Dubai owned airline tho, innit? Freedom’s not exactly on brand for those guys.

Deep.

Coming over Tower Bridge this evening was a bit sketchy.

Got called a “fucking prick” this morning by an old guy on a Boris bike. My crime? Giving way to him when it was his right of way. Made me laugh!

A very wary morning. Sleet in the air and roads feeling like could be a patch of ice any second.

Maybe 18mph is as high as their dial measures

Camberwell, yesterday 8:15 ish. Rider knocked off by falling bed.
Bed base and mattress blown onto road. Rider got up, obviously in pain holding wrists. Assisted by passerby's. Hope it wasn't too serious.

Burst water mains! Green Lanes and Great Portland Street. Very busy

Awful commute this morning. Some prick in a Mercedes pulls out to undertake after neither indicating nor looking, leaving me nowhere to go. Thankfully managed to avoid coming off. So I confront the guy at when he's stopped at traffic & he's exactly what you'd expect - arrogant & ignorant - winding up the window after I start telling me how dangerously he's driven.

So I ride on through two sets of lights & on the next red another cyclist comes up to me & tells me that the driver has just done a similar thing to him, & that he's driving aggressively to catch me up. Thankfully by that point it was bus lanes & the pedestrianised bit in the centre of Leeds. What a complete tosser.

It's so frustrating that our lives are at the hands of people who massively overestimate their ability to drive even to the complete minimum standard (safety), & how little we can get through to people like that, as they immediately go on the attack when they're 'threatened'. They just don't have any empathy.

Points to the guy in the lift from the parking level in the office, who'd just got out of a massive Jaguar & tried to emphasise with my plight this morning with a story about being cut up skiing.

Got to my desk & realised that I had forgotten the key to get my laptop out, so had to head back out again. At least it wasn't raining, eh.

Why do sketchy situations always look less worse on camera when I look at footage the day after?

Wide angle lens?
It gives a bigger field of view, but makes close passes look further away.

It's so frustrating that our lives are at the hands of people who
massively overestimate their ability to drive even to the complete
minimum standard (safety), & how little we can get through to people
like that, as they immediately go on the attack when they're
'threatened'. They just don't have any empathy.

can emphasise here, glad you managed to put some distance between you and them.

Had an incident similar to this a week or so ago, gave him a knock on the bonnet to wake him up at the lights as he didn't seem to react to anything (including other cars), he gets incredibly arrogant and aggressive. From this point I decide to take another route to avoid him doing something silly, but he follows and throws a full 2L bottle at me (was fine, anticipated it when i saw him in my peripheral)

It's irritating because unless you spend a few hundred pounds on equipment to cover yourself for even a chance at prosecution, you're just at the mercy of drivers getting out the right side of bed