Displaced rage

I'm bothered and annoyed.

By the BMW sports car driver who cut across in front of me in the bike lane and stopped, so as to take a parking space.

By the pedestrians who don't look and just step out in the road in front of my bike (unless they're old - then I stop for them to let them cross).

By drivers who need to rev loudly and drive past me very fast and close, to let me know my bike is in their way.

By the driver who blew his horn at me for stopping in the right hand lane to turn right. I only have 2 hands to hold onto the handlebars while I brake on a steep downhill. I'm sorry I didn't have a third hand to indicate with. Truly sorry.

Fair to say, I'm more bothered by things when I'm riding - at the moment it brings out a kind of road-anger (rage is too strong).

But I was also negatively inclined to those four twenty-something girls in the cafe with their matching outfits and over-straightened hair, oozing that aura of self-absorption, privilege and superiority, who were totally unaware of the couple with the pram trying to squeeze past their chairs, while I was squishing my chair as far into the wall as possible to try to give them room.

I'm bothered by the state in which the previous tenants left the walls of this flat. And the state of the oven they forgot to clean.

And I'm annoyed that the leak in my bathroom ceiling is still unfixed after three months due chiefly to uncooperative neighbours.

It wasn't always like this. And these are pretty trivial things to be annoyed by. They should just wash over me, and It doesn't improve my life one tiny bit to be holding these thoughts. Quite the opposite.

So I have to ask myself, what is it that I am REALLY bothered about, hmmmm?

fatigue

Some days are like wading thru mud.
The gears on the bike don't go low enough on that hill
And the builders next door start banging at 7.29 am. They don't want anyone else to sleep in either.

City To Surf

7pm Saturday: Listening to the hum of the helicopter, scoping the area, practising for tomorrow.

6am Sunday: Lying in bed listening to them towing cars in preparation for the City to Surf.

11.30 am: My trusty bike lets me slip past the traffic jams, through the police blockades, and weave thru the random, messy pedestrians to get back home, while masses of race finishers and friends stream out from the beach along Campbell parade.

12 noon: Hearing the clippety-clop of mounted police on patrol.

2.30 pm: Listening to the fairly incessant hum of that TV helicopter finally flying away.......No, wait, it's back again.

From the Bay to Breakers in SF in May--where I went along for the sport of spectating, lured by promise of fantastic costumes--to the City to Surf in Sydney in August--where I pass thru it just to get home; a commuter now, no longer a tourist.