cheese on a bike! #1

I have been a keen cyclist for several years now. 'Keen' doesn't quite catch the fullness of the cycling part of my identity, however; I have in the past toyed with the titles of 'militant cyclist' and 'cycleterrorist', which although too nasty to actually adopt, do capture a larger part of how I look at it. I used to be an advocate of Critical Mass (1); now I am not so sure about it, partly agreeing with my friend Ern who has recently decided never to do another Mass "because there are too many nutters" eager to be confrontational with motorists and the police. The fact is, I do often feel that to be a cyclist on today's roads is to be at war; it's just that I don't want to get pulled into whatever battle the nutters within the Critical Mass decide to launch us all into (and I have this concern about the Direct Action Movement as a whole, unfortunately).

This was the reason I decided to begin a series of blog posts dedicated to explaining why I often feel that to be a cyclist on today's roads is to be at war; the immediate cause of me initiating this series were a couple of events. Yesterday I cycled home from university in the sweltering heat. As I pulled up at a set of traffic lights (halfway along the stretch of the A525 known as Pooldam), a blue hatchback pulled up alongside me with the windows wound down. A man in the backseat pointed a foghorn at me and blasted me with the sound. Today I cycled to university from home, and as I entered the university car park, passed a minibus from which a crowd of schoolkids were pouring. One girl shouted "Cheese on a bike!"

People frequently feel the urge to shout at me as I cycle past, whether they are on foot or in a car. I don't know why, and I don't really care, even though the inexplicability of it does irritate me. I'm just trying to do my thing; I'm not harming or threatening you by doing so. Nothing more to say.

References:
1. Critical Mass describes itself as an "informal and anarchic celebration and promotion of cycling" http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html