Life (and death) in the fast lane
Travel in the modern world is, with a few exceptions, a pretty dreadful experience. Away from magazines whose pages have a glossy petrochemical sheen that makes you doubt their recyclability (unless its into other glossy magazines) and who link travel with first class air tickets or expensive cars, your average journey is usually just the dull bit between setting out and getting there.
Even the most luxurious modes of travel try hard to convince you that you are not actually travelling. Seats on aeroplanes now fold into beds to fool you that you are in a very small dorm room and allow you to studiously ignore the couple having sex in the next bunk, while cruise liners do their very best to pretend they are not ships at all but merely hotels with hulls. Why else would a ship have a pool? You’re in the ocean! The ‘this way to swimming’ signs should be pointing over the side.
Even if you’ve got an incredibly posh car, it’s unlikely that you’ve got a private motorway and so you are likely, at some point, to be stuck in roadworks, counting cones and watching the family in the car in front squabble. Luxury cars are not designed to make driving a pleasure, they are designed to make driving that bit more bearable.
The only way to really enjoy travelling is to be on a boating holiday where the whole objective is to get from A to B as slowly as possible, punctuated by many visits to waterside pubs, or get a push bike. The bicycle is the best travelling device ever - something that allows you to move swiftly from location to location while feeling gratified that you are getting their under your own steam. It also means that, unlike car drivers, you can have a flexible attitude to the interpretation of the Highway Code with especial reference to mounting pavements, haring across green spaces and being able to go up and down stairs.
The mode of transport I’ve never been able to understand is the motorbike. The motorbike seems to combine all that is worst about a bike - exposure to the elements, lack of a glove compartment, vulnerability in traffic - with all that is crap about a car - can only go on roads, costs lots to run. As I see it, the only reasons for owning a bike are: you have a beard and need an excuse for it, you are a man over 40 and as such the only leather you are now allowed to wear is a biker outfit or a gimp mask; or you have just turned 40 period.
Bikers have always annoyed the hell out of me - either as couriers in town or, worse of all, the way in which they thread between slow or stationary traffic on motorways. Maybe there was a time when a bike could do that and not be a nuisance but today, with bikes roughly the same size as an overstuffed sofa, it means that you have to move your car to let them through.
I recently learned the secret of surviving traffic - snacks! The last time I was in a traffic jam I had a cool box stuffed with crisps, chocolate and cold drinks. 45 minutes sitting in the fast lane? No problem, just listened to some tunes on the iPod and consumed about 40,000 calories. If I had not been thus occupied and, it’s true, reduced to a dazed state by all the fat and flavourings I was getting down my throat, I would probably have been able to register annoyance at the behaviour of the occasional biker shooting left and right of me.
This then, is the most probable explanation for the murder of a biker on the M40 last weekend. A biker was shot and the whole motorway was closed for a few hours. Inconvenient for those in the traffic, very inconvenient for the biker. Police think he may have been shot as the result of a biker feud after attending a biker rally. Me, I think that the guy spent a weekend with his biker mates and, on a high and considering himself king of the road, undertook and overtook and pulled all sorts of cheeky manoeuvres on the way down the motorway until he pulled that shit on somebody with a short temper and a long barrel on their illegal firearm.
Police intend to spend the summer visiting biker rallies and will probably complete the investigation short of suspects but with plenty of new gear for the cycle cops. As a line of enquiry it’s a pretty good one, certainly better than working on who has a grudge against bikers - they can start with pretty much the entire DVLA database. Me, I’d look for the car with the sticker on the side in the shape of a silhouette of a biker’s helmet.
Even the most luxurious modes of travel try hard to convince you that you are not actually travelling. Seats on aeroplanes now fold into beds to fool you that you are in a very small dorm room and allow you to studiously ignore the couple having sex in the next bunk, while cruise liners do their very best to pretend they are not ships at all but merely hotels with hulls. Why else would a ship have a pool? You’re in the ocean! The ‘this way to swimming’ signs should be pointing over the side.
Even if you’ve got an incredibly posh car, it’s unlikely that you’ve got a private motorway and so you are likely, at some point, to be stuck in roadworks, counting cones and watching the family in the car in front squabble. Luxury cars are not designed to make driving a pleasure, they are designed to make driving that bit more bearable.
The only way to really enjoy travelling is to be on a boating holiday where the whole objective is to get from A to B as slowly as possible, punctuated by many visits to waterside pubs, or get a push bike. The bicycle is the best travelling device ever - something that allows you to move swiftly from location to location while feeling gratified that you are getting their under your own steam. It also means that, unlike car drivers, you can have a flexible attitude to the interpretation of the Highway Code with especial reference to mounting pavements, haring across green spaces and being able to go up and down stairs.
The mode of transport I’ve never been able to understand is the motorbike. The motorbike seems to combine all that is worst about a bike - exposure to the elements, lack of a glove compartment, vulnerability in traffic - with all that is crap about a car - can only go on roads, costs lots to run. As I see it, the only reasons for owning a bike are: you have a beard and need an excuse for it, you are a man over 40 and as such the only leather you are now allowed to wear is a biker outfit or a gimp mask; or you have just turned 40 period.
Bikers have always annoyed the hell out of me - either as couriers in town or, worse of all, the way in which they thread between slow or stationary traffic on motorways. Maybe there was a time when a bike could do that and not be a nuisance but today, with bikes roughly the same size as an overstuffed sofa, it means that you have to move your car to let them through.
I recently learned the secret of surviving traffic - snacks! The last time I was in a traffic jam I had a cool box stuffed with crisps, chocolate and cold drinks. 45 minutes sitting in the fast lane? No problem, just listened to some tunes on the iPod and consumed about 40,000 calories. If I had not been thus occupied and, it’s true, reduced to a dazed state by all the fat and flavourings I was getting down my throat, I would probably have been able to register annoyance at the behaviour of the occasional biker shooting left and right of me.
This then, is the most probable explanation for the murder of a biker on the M40 last weekend. A biker was shot and the whole motorway was closed for a few hours. Inconvenient for those in the traffic, very inconvenient for the biker. Police think he may have been shot as the result of a biker feud after attending a biker rally. Me, I think that the guy spent a weekend with his biker mates and, on a high and considering himself king of the road, undertook and overtook and pulled all sorts of cheeky manoeuvres on the way down the motorway until he pulled that shit on somebody with a short temper and a long barrel on their illegal firearm.
Police intend to spend the summer visiting biker rallies and will probably complete the investigation short of suspects but with plenty of new gear for the cycle cops. As a line of enquiry it’s a pretty good one, certainly better than working on who has a grudge against bikers - they can start with pretty much the entire DVLA database. Me, I’d look for the car with the sticker on the side in the shape of a silhouette of a biker’s helmet.
Labels: Bicycles, M40, Motorbikes, Motorways, Murder, Police, Traffic
2 Comments:
I used to have serious road rage, but I've made a conscious effort to "not give a crap"...Of course, by not giving a crap, I annoy every other assertive driver out there by pulling out when I want to (regardless of who's coming), going the speed that I feel like driving, and basically doing whatever I want regardless of the rules of driving. I've found that it's way more fun to make other people mad than to actually give myself a blood pressure problem...of course, the real problem is going to be when I get shot like that biker. If i can only make it until I've got white hair I should be in the clear. You never hear about Granny getting shot on the highway.
Well done. Tyler Brûlé would be proud.
Post a Comment
<< Home