Sat morning ride - 29/11

Out the door before the sparrows farted this morning to rack up some miles and ride with my group.

Fairly uneventful morning on the traffic front, to be frank, just the usual little niggles around South Brisbane/West End I'll touch on later. Some people were genuinely courteous, which is just plain confusing!

Guess that's the advantage of getting it all done before 8:30, all the dickheads aren't out of bed yet. There's almost this grim focus of drivers and cyclists before dawn - deep down, no-one really wants to be out there, they're just dealing with the task at hand, and interactions are minimalised. Cabs, delivery drivers, shiftworkers - a "just the facts, ma'am" sort of respect - I won't fuck you up if you don't fuck me up. Sounds fair, let's do that.

The usual niggles mentioned above primarily relate to the West End Market. Montague Road is a major part of the River Ride, so on Saturday mornings you tend to get fairly large groups of cyclist at pretty decent speeds heading past the markets, and I don't think drivers and pedestians quite realise that fit cyclists on decent road bikes can travel at 40 to 60km/h without much trouble. So, you tend to see people crossing the road getting buzzed by cyclists because they've left crossing to the last minute, and cars pulling out looking for parking just propping in front of groups. Seen a couple of near misses there although it was okay today.

The main thing bugging me this morning is the state of Oxley Road at the moment - inbound at Chelmer the left side of the road (i.e. where bikes tend to be) is cracked and coming to pieces, and out bound from Sherwood they've installed a number of new asphalt sections which have sunk below the level of the main surface. I suspect the recent heavy spell of rain has probably caused this, but tell that to my arms and arse.