Thursday, April 22, 2004
Today I nearly died three times on the way to work. And that’s only slightly more than normal when you ride a bike around Dublin.
Today I nearly died three times on the way to work. And that’s only slightly more than normal when you ride a bike around Dublin.
First was along the quays when a Transit van was passing me in the bus lane (where he shouldn’t have been anyway). The lane narrowed, but he kept his position and his speed, squeezing me against the kerb.
I banged on the side of the van, and fortunately the bus ahead of him stopped, so he had to stop, and I could extricate myself, with him yelling at me for daring to touch his van.
Next came on O’Connell Bridge, when I was going straight along the north quays. The lights changed, I went through, and saw piles of people crossing the road there in front of Freebird Records.
Most saw me (and the car behind me), but one guy just had his head down and was definitely not going to see me. ‘Look!’ I shouted, and he pulled up just before I would have run into him.
‘Get into the fuck away out of that!’ he said.
Finally I was going straight on at a crossroads near the East Wall Rd. A couple of cars had turned right across me as I approached, and a third just followed right behind them, not even seeing me. I slammed on the anchors and avoided him.
I’d been meaning to blog about cycling to work for a while – it’s something I’ve done almost every day for big chunks of the last ten years. I expect scrapes like that, and don’t really let them bother me, but just once I wanted to get them down in black and white.