People are the most unpredictable of obstacles
Only when you ride a bicycle do you realise just how truly flippant the human spirit is. Sometimes it seems that people are going out of their way to walk backwards across an entire footpath simply to collide with you, and then blame you (me) for riding on the footpath in the first place! What, are they crazy?! I'm not going to ride on the road! That's dangerous!
And you start to create gross generalisations about people's ability to use their peripheral vision, audition and spatial sense. Men are generally more aware of the bicyclist whose path they are blocking and who is squeakily grinding to a halt behind them than women. People on mobile phones are the least aware of all. This possibly says more about the prejudiced bicyclist (me again!) than about the pedestrian.
And you start to appreciate the true complex randomness of human nature and movement. Free wills, erratically stumbling their way through life, or automatons following a complex but fixed predetermined path, have it as you will - the dance is truly beautiful. Just annoying.
Labels: Bicycling, Self-Absorbed
posted by Daniel @ 2:17 PM
2 Comments:
Welcome back to the blogosphere! I have a question: "audition"? Is this really the correct reference to the auditory sense? I'd never heard it!
Pleased to hear that you have a bicycle. I'm going to be getting one myself ASAP (ie: as soon as I can conquer my fear of riding it on the road). I don't think I'd get away with footpath-ing it here: we have too many fines for that.
God, and dictionary.com, seem to be with me on "audition". Which is lucky, because I didn't check before - I was just stuck for a word and went for it.
A bicycle is the most valuable asset a person can have in Tel Aviv. It is the quickest way to get anywhere with no traffic problems (save those mentioned in the post) and no parking problems (other than the anal man living in the building next to me who didn't like people chaining their bicycles to the fence of the apartment in which he lived and whom I have decided to hate forevermore but park my bicycle elsewhere). Which is why they get stolen so often. Well, that and because I guess everyone thinks that the police are so not interested that they probably don't report thefts, and even if they did, probably nothing would happen (hence the hesitancy to waste time on reporting). It's a cycle of apathy. No pun intended.
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