BBC1 19.30 tonight

You can certainly do the sort of manoeuvres that the courier did if you understand junctions well enough quite safely. But it is exactly this sort of manoeuvre that makes people look down on cyclists, as they somehow think that you have to make it. The courier's earning a living, however, and other people just leave home too late to get to work on time.

*A blend of strategy and speed is essential for the messenger to have any chance of making riding a worthwhile enterprise, we could liken it to the movement of a chess piece across the board, stopping strategically to pick up and drop off parcels with one destination constantly in mind yet never straying far off the closet course possible. Techniques like drafting vehicles, bypassing through the centre of lanes and running red lights alongside environmental conditions like road quality and weather need constant adjustment and anticipation for efficient transit, and a daily basis this “heightened awareness of risk may itself lead to a desire to take risk” (Lupton, 1999,p157). Other potentialities like blind cornering on green lights and sheer speed put this activity into a category distinguished by its risks, like various other adventure sports such as rock-climbing, mountaineering or mountain-biking all of which involve “Courting of danger, the active taking of risks for the excitement and sense of achievement that they bring with them” (Lyng, 1990,p33), lapses in concentration by a messenger can mean disablement or death, its’ this interplay of control and exercise of skill under pressure that leads to pleasurable experience. *

*Bring it On, *
*I wrote that ^ a couple of years ago. *