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@hms
This morning, coming up the West hand side of the Isle of Dogs.
There are roadworks going on and contraflow traffic lights around a particularly massive hole on the other side of the road. The lights changed to red as I approached and stopped at the front of the queue. The contraflow is only a hundred yards or so long, dead straight and a line of cars start coming down immediately.
The lights have been red for a good ten seconds when a older guy - bald on top with long curly grey hair behind - steams past me on a black mountain bike. He has clearly seen the oncoming cars but reckons he can still make it up past them by riding in the left hand gutter. A third of the way up he sees that there is a van coming further along and realises that it is too wide for both him and it.
So he jumps up onto the pavement and keeps pumping his cranks at full tilt past the van, only to clip a wheelie bin that has been left on the pavement and fall back into the road. When the van clears the contraflow I see him and the bike in a heap on the floor in front of a very shocked driver who has just done a full-on emergency stop in her vast Range Rover..
Fucking lucky guy..
Incredibly stupid, but fucking lucky.