Biking

So, I've been learning to ride a motorbike, which is both great fun and absolutely bloody terrifying in equal parts. There's nothing quite like flying down a dual carriageway at 70 mph, clinging on to the handlebars and buffetted by the wind, bumps in the road, passing vehicles and, well, everything really. It's exhilarating!

You really become aware of just how vulnerable you really are - the tiniest slip of concentration, loss of balance, maybe you accidentally let the clutch out too fast, and the bike will jerk and you'll suddenly lose that nice comfortable feeling of stability. Other road users become a constant hazard: one of my instructors once said that when you're driving a car, you look for boxes - car shaped boxes - and your focus is on fitting your own car shaped box in between the other car shaped boxes. A bit like Tetris, really!

Unfortunately bikes don't fit in to this way of thinking, and the sad fact is that most car drivers either have a complete blind spot for bikers, or they don't understand how bikes move and what the biker is thinking. Or maybe they just don't care. Either way, I have the following gratitude to bestow upon the lovely car drivers of Berkshire and Surrey:

• Thanks to the car driver who failed to see me at the spiral roundabout in Oxford - pushing me into the next lane is exactly what I wanted, as I love steering my quarter tonne mass in front of a 4 tonne BMW
• Hooray to the moron in the silver car who cut across lanes without indicating and nearly pushed me off the road
  
• Cheers to the boy racer chav who was racing us in the national speed limit zone, tail gating me at 60 is always fun, and cutting up four bikers in a row is guaranteed to make them happy and cheerful. And thanks to the Mercedes in Oxford for doing - yup, you guessed it - exactly the same thing! A round of applause there, I think.
  
• Hats off to the guy who nearly didn't stop in time when I was waiting for the traffic lights - I'm sure you didn't need me to inch forward into the cycle lane in front, and I'm sure the half foot gap between your front bumber and my rear tyre when you finally did stop wasn't really necessary.
• It's amazing, but somehow the white Transit van on the Tesco roundabout in Oxford completely failed to see the 5 learner motorcyclists in the middle of the road wearing high visibility gear with their lights on, so again - a big thank you to you, special people that you are.

All this has left me with a lot of respect for bikers, as you need to be a much better driver to ride bikes on the road. You need to be super hot on observations, looking not just one or two cars ahead, but as far ahead as you can, and looking at people inside the cars to try and figure out exactly what is going through their heads, as they are protected by several tonnes of steel and crumple zones, and you are protected by probably 1cm of leather and some polystyrene head gear. Yeah, you have crumple zones too - your arms and legs!

Other than that - what a rush! I highly recommend it to anyone - you need a huge pair of balls to commute to work every day, but if you're taking it as leisure, maybe going out on Sunday mornings when the traffic is light, then brillliant!

Highlight of the day: Chocolate spread with bread sticks
Lowlight of the day: Tesco Finest thick cut ham, which tastes exactly like spam
Currently Playing: Tina Dico - Boys and Girls