Tag: cyclists

Poorly timed giraffe danger warning

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I’m going to look at some wildlife this weekend. I hope, anyway. Wildlife is exactly that: wild, and sometimes it doesn’t want to be looked at. Mostly, when it doesn’t want to be looked at, wildlife hides away, but sometimes, wildlife fights back and even the most unlikely of wildlife can be deadly.

I’m not talking about lions, hippos, rhinos or elephants here – you look at them and you think DANGER! Teeths, tusks, horns, speed, weight, bulk. DANGER!
But tall isn’t scary. When you look at a giraffe, you just see bewilderingly puny looking legs and neck. Giraffes don’t look dangerous. They look like one of those string and wood toys that you push the base on and they collapse. You let giraffes play with your kids’ cuddly toys:

No. Giraffes aren’t dangerous. Or are they? Because here’s what was waiting for me on the pisspoor TimesLive site this morning:

Cyclist trampled to death by giraffe

The giraffe probably got irritated by some typically arrogant RLJ’ing behaviour.

A Sunday afternoon cycle ride for Braan Bosse of Nigel, on the Far East Rand, ended in his death when he was attacked by a giraffe at the Thaba Monata Game Lodge, in Bela Bela, Limpopo.
Lodge owner Marily Abatemarco believes Bosse, 46, was trampled to death.

Rather unusual, though, right? I thought so too.
But then, somewhere deep in my memory, I found this:

Seventy-year-old Schalk Hagen died without telling anyone exactly what happened to him. Now the prime suspect in his death is a giraffe.

I was quite ready to cower away from the lions and the elephants this weekend. Now it seems that I have to hide from the bloody giraffes as well. Seriously?
You don’t get this sort of danger in the UK – sure, you might come across a vaguely irritated badger or a mildly disgruntled fox, but they’re not going to smash your skull in, eat you or jump up and down all over your rapidly spatchcocked corpse just because they’re anxious to be seen to be living up to their “wildlife” moniker. I didn’t move here for this – if I’d wanted constant animal-related danger, I would have chosen Australia. (Spoiler: No, I wouldn’t – it’s full of Australians.)

Anyway, my new plan is to stay in the short scrub, where there is limited danger of unforeseen giraffe attack (aside, of course, from the extremely sneaky limbo giraffe) (but fortunately they’re pretty rare in the Western Cape).

Slow puncture

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My bike seems to have a slow puncture. (If you’re wondering about me and cycling, you need to read here.) I say that because a few days ago, my back tyre wasn’t flat, and now it is. This isn’t a huge issue, because, for the moment, I can ride on it and then I can pump it up before I ride on it next time. This will, however, get rather irritating and I can see that I will have to repair the puncture. For this, I will require a puncture repair kit. And therein lies the problem. Because that means going to a bike shop and buying one.

But I’m not an expert on cycling and the people in the shop are. Not a good situation, because here’s what will happen (but with cycling terminology, obviously):

Even The Molton Brown Boys – who, admittedly, are more into cycling than I am – regularly dazzle me at dinner with their chat on what CO2 bombs and patching compounds they are buying these days (apparently, these are things that help repair punctures while “on the go”). I don’t need such fancy, schmancy stuff though. I just want something firm under my bottom, simple as. 

Careful now.

So, yes, I’ll go through the rigmarole of asking for a puncture repair kit. And I’ll get laughed at because I’ll choose the wrong polymer or the incorrect hardening agent. Bleugh.

In the meantime, I’ll be taking the boy out for another long ride this afternoon.

Punctures permitting.

Of bike racks and number plates

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Observation: There are huge numbers of cars on the roads of Cape Town and the routes down to Cape Agulhas which have cycle racks obscuring their rear number plates.

This is obviously illegal (if I had a better internet connection, I’d lob in a link to the specific law here, but I don’t, so I can’t), but that doesn’t seem to bother these motorists, presumably for three reasons:

Firstly, the old South African belief that rules are there for someone else and don’t, for some bizarre reason, apply to you.
Secondly, the complete lack of enforcement – because why should you give a toss if the local police don’t?
And thirdly, because of course the majority of these people are cyclists and don’t give a flying fishcake for the rules of the road anyway.

But then, I got a cycle rack for Christmas. And yes, given my stance on cyclists generally, that probably deserves some explanation.
And the explanation is this: Boy got bike for Christmas, boy wants to ride bike all the time, especially on the dirt roads, sand dunes and annoyingly snake-riddled tracks of Cape Agulhas. Being seven, he cannot do this alone. Two bikes in the back of a car just doesn’t work. And there will be a third just as soon as Miss 6000 realises what fun her brother is having.
Thus it had to be done, but my son (and daughter) will grow up cycling the way I do: obeying traffic signals, being respectful to other road users and not wearing lycra. Oh, and none of that stupidly expensive bike business, either, unless they’re going to do it for a living.

The cycle rack did give me a bit of an issue though – namely the number plate one above.
Presumably, extra number plates are hugely difficult, time consuming and/or expensive to get hold of, otherwise, all those individuals with bike racks would surely have just given a nod to the establishment by getting one and sticking it on the back of their sideways bikes. And here I group them with the Jaguar drivers that “can’t afford” hands-free kits for their cellphones and the Audi owners who “can’t source” car seats for their unrestrained children.
Yes, those dickheads.

And I only had Friday to sort it out – Wednesday and Thursday being public holidays and Saturday (today) being the day we were leaving. Where to start? Well, firstly, I looked in the Yellow Pages, found a shop that printed number plates and got one made in 5 minutes for R100. Then… well… actually, that was it.

Suffice to say, I now have even less time and respect for those cyclists who hide their plates behind their R30,000 bikes on their R3,000 racks on their R300,000 cars, because they’re obviously just arrogant, lazy, tight-fisted, lycra-clad tossers.

Norwegian cyclist video to inspire Chappies stunts?

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We’ve had a pop at cyclists and their errant behaviour before here on 6000 miles…, but we’ve yet to see much that  could equal this for sheer bravery stupidity. Here’s Norwegian nutter Eskil Ronningsbakken – Scandinavian cycling’s answer to Jonny Knoxville – riding his bike down Trollsigen.

Backwards.

Did you see that car passing him at 1:08? He was never a metre away. Arrest that driver!

Because our local cyclists are ever so edgy and like to do dangerous things, like riding in the dark with no lights and whizzing through red robots, I reckon it’s only a matter of time before we see this sort of thing happening on Chapman’s Peak Drive, possibly with less success than Eskil.

I foresee a lucrative scrap metal business opening up on the east side of Hout Bay.

Music is Lindsay Stirling’s Elements. Nice.

Cyclists must now “stay alive at 1…”

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Ooh. Cyclists. My favourite people.

The new cycling laws come into force in the Western Cape today, and the biggie is that, as a driver, you must allow at least 1 metre between the side of your vehicle and any cyclist or you will be a criminal. I’m not sure that this will make cyclists feel any safer, given that people generally completely disregard any other traffic laws with impunity anyway.

I’ve done a handy PDF version of the new regulations for you.

Quite what happened to the mantra of “Cyclists stay alive at 1.5”, I’m not sure. Presumably, around 33% more cyclists will not be making it safely back from their ride now. Obviously, this is sad.

Also, drivers are now allowed to cross a solid white line to pass a cyclist as long “it is safe to do so”, which is a bit weird, because if it was safe to cross the solid white line, then there wouldn’t be a solid white line there, would there?

What is quite interesting is that there are some rules for cyclists included in the new regulations as well. Obviously, the cyclists are up in arms about this (the discussion on the new laws is taking place in the “Rant & Rave” section of the local cyclists forum), because they’ve been reminded of all the rules that they should have been obeying anyway.
Have you got a front and rear reflector on your bike? Didn’t think so.
In addition, predictably, the laws for motorists apparently don’t go far enough and the laws for cyclists are too strict, ill-thought out or just annoying. Sample quote:

I will no [sic] be complying with the provisions of this law which I feel do nothing to improve my safety.

Of course you won’t, because we can all pick and choose which laws we want to comply with, can’t we? Idiot.

No. Don’t be so silly, because what these new regulations do is reiterate the rules which both drivers and cyclists must abide by, reminding road users that everyone needs to be responsible for their own safety and the safety of others, and that can only be a good thing in the efforts to prevent unnecessary road deaths.

With that in mind, obviously, if a driver breaks the law, by, say, going withing 95cm of a cyclist, then you can report them by taking down their car registration number and informing the authorities.
Equally, when you see the lycra-clad peloton of cylists going through the red traffic lights at Kalk Bay six abreast on Sunday, you can… erm… you can… right. You can’t.

Hmm.