Monday
The morning ride. Rounding the corner onto Plunkett, I accidentally made eye contact with the electric unicycle guy. I thought of that essay by Annie Dillard, where she makes eye contact with a weasel: ‘It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. . . . I tell you I’ve been in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine.’ It wasn’t like that, is what I’m saying. We stayed firmly in our own brains.
Jammed on brakes when a Spark car reversed directly into my path from a driveway.
Enjoyed the sight of the always-magnificent crane near the university rearing up into a gloomy sky.
I was feeling cranky as I rode along, because I was mourning the weekend – I’d spent a lot of it not out riding my bike or loafing around with a book, as I would’ve liked, but working. Working! I feel very grateful for my work and what it gives me, but at times it eats me alive. For some reason when I am on my bike, in between places, my disgruntlement comes ballooning up, and I imagine riding past work and just keeping on going and riding down the train station then getting on a train and fleeing the city. But what would I do after that? I’d have to get a train back then ride back to work and apologise.
Rode home after work in rain. Legs unenthusiastic. I engaged snail mode and inched up the hill in my lowest gear.
Tuesday
Rode up Raroa to meet my friend Harry at the cable car cafe. A sunny morning. White blossoms. I felt a surge of appreciation for the bike racks outside the cafe. I love a sturdy, well-positioned set of bike racks. It’s like coming home. Another set of bike racks I’ve recently enjoyed are the ones on Brandon St that are planter boxes but also bike racks.
After work, at around 6, I rode into town to go to a reading. Afterwards, dreading the uphill slog, cycled home. A strong wind and a chaotic feeling in the air. Some wiry young runners sprinted frantically through the night with head lamps on. Some young guys on e-scooters blasted back and forth through Aro Park. Thought about stopping to get ice cream at the dairy but didn’t. The thing with stopping is that it’s a faff – there’s the business with the lock, the helmet, the gloves and head scarf – but then you get home and you don’t have ice cream and you regret everything.
Rear light died on Mt Pleasant. Then – good grief – front light. So I hopped off and pushed the last bit.
This was a hard ride – it only took about half an hour, but seemed to take more like an hour – but all the stars were out.
Wednesday
Rode into sunny windy morning, running very late, legs still waking up. A van on Raroa Rd passed too close and fast, as if incredulous that I was there. To be fair, I was in snail mode again.
After work I rode into town to go to yet another reading. At an intersection on Victoria I waited behind a police motorbike. As soon as the light turned green the cop honked impatiently at the driver in front, though the driver was waiting for a pedestrian to cross on the green man. A police motorbike’s honk has a metallic, aggravating sound – like the buzzer that starts a swimming race. Anyway, it was kind of odd, and I did the usual ‘outstretched hand of disbelief’ at the motorbike.
After the reading I had another night ride home, with both lights in good health this time. The sky was very dark and eerily windless. Stars out. Cherry blossoms glowing in the streetlight on lower Raroa. From Mt Pleasant, the houses always look tiny inside the huge hilly darkness.
Thursday
A work-at-home day, so there was no morning ride, but I rode into town at lunchtime, for sandwich reasons. Very windy, the sort of wind you can feel going through your eyeballs and into your brain. The ride home was a struggle against the wind but I ploughed on.
Saw a massive dead rat on the road. Whenever I see a dead rat on the road, I remember when I was very young and a strident animal rights’ activist. My best friend and I asked each other whether we would squash an ant for a million dollars. Neither of us would, we promised. We asked my friend’s mum – also a vegetarian – if she, too, would save the ant, or if she would squash it for a million dollars. ‘I’m sorry, but I would squash an ant for a million dollars,’ she said.
On twitter I saw a clip of the UK broadcaster and cycling activist Jeremy Vine having a run-in with a van. In response someone remarked that Vine is ‘the Larry David of cycling’: ‘increasingly convinced jeremy vine is willing to die in defence of the highway code. it’s not even that he’s wrong, it’s that he refuses to yield his right of way on principle, at enormous personal risk to himself. the larry david of cycling’. Acknowledging how brutal it would feel to be described as the Larry David of anything, I’ve been trying to figure out where I land on this. Jeremy Vine posts clips of good interactions too, as well as even sometimes clips of his own mistakes, and it seems to me he uses his platform largely for good. But yes. Posting a heated incident on social media amplifies the furore, and I wonder what’s helpful about that, in the end, especially when the driver has acknowledged he made a mistake and apologised.
On the other hand, if I were Vine in that situation, I would have adrenaline and disbelief and rage coursing through my body, and I too would probably punch the van. I don’t wear a camera around, but there are times when I have been so enraged at bad driving, so determined to have it be known that I am right, that self-preservation goes out the window, and – like Larry – I will become obsessed with the incident and ruminate on it at length and fantasise about vengeance.
Recently I saw a car with a cock and balls scratched into the boot – it was magnificent – and I liked to imagine that a disgruntled cyclist had done it.
Friday
A sunny and incident-free morning ride. Occasional stabbing sensation in my knee, which I am choosing to ignore.
Rode into town – wind, spitty rain – after work for dinner. Got stuck behind a slow e-bike whose rider wasn’t pedalling at all – just cruising along. If I had an e-bike I would be going at top speed at all times.
Riding home up Victoria St afterwards at night, I made sudden unexpected eye contact with my friend who was waiting at the bus stop. We both shrieked as I flew past. I don’t know why very brief, unexpected eye contact when zipping past is funny to me, but I continued laughing all the way up the road.
My third night ride of the week, and it was a good one – starting out freezing cold then rapidly warming up – with a full belly, and a dark sky and moon-coloured clouds moving slowly through it.
As the squishy party, I reserve the right to take every precaution. This often means unreservedly ceding my rights. These rubber-boned, piss'n'vinegar TikTokkers might get the clicks - and even effect some changes - but it's often by way of coroners' reports. Old fisherfolks don't shake their fist at the sea.
You say nothing happened but like... Thinking about poetry-weasels superimposed over electric unicyclists, and people's Mums squishing theoretical ants for a million dollars... What else is literature for, if not for that?