Be Excellent To Each Other

Hahaha - no, actually. And that engine is shot

Common problem. As soon as you put a number on something, everyone wants the high score.

+1

Flat out would be top speed - the road to the east runs for about 1.5 miles in a perfectly straight line.

I see you have been precision driving around the fields as well - YOU HOOLIGAN!

Similarly, I'm finding it hard to avoid thinking of the "Time to Major Junction: X mins" usage of motorway Matrix signs as a challenge.

I want to see what it displays if you go through at more than 100, given it can only show two digits. Also, a copper on the M5 was clearly loving the pathetic overtaking his cruising at 68mph was causing on my way back home last weekend.

I just drive at 77mph when they do that.

It's quite nice of them to do that, I think, rather than sticking their (accurately calibrated) cruise control on 70 dead and stopping anyone who overtakes.

Er... Is there some significance to 77mph? I heard that the cops are told to either drive 10 above or below the limit on motorways to avoid a problem like this.

Limit + 10%, based on the idea that speedos are +/- 10% (which they aren't, they have never under-read).

Some drive almost bang on the limit, I came across one the other day.

I have never been pulled over driving at 80mph. It just isn't worth their time.

Chances are you are doing closer to 72-74mph anyway.

The other week I nealy took out a chav on Cowbridge Road. He was crossing on his tiny BMX at the bottom of a hill where cars are speeding up after slowing to the usual 20-odd for the camera they've just passed. He was misjudging the speeds they would achieve because he was watching them some way off and basin his judgement on that. He weaved between cars on the opposite two laes and came to rst in the outside lane in my direction, Iwas in the inside and figured if a car was coming outside me at speed, he was a goner. I glanced in my right mirror and saw a clear lane, so he was safe. Or he would have been had he not in that moment decided to cross my lane. I slammed on the anchors and came to rest with his FUCKING FOOT ON MY FRONT BUMPER, he sneered and cycled off, while I sat there catching my breath and being beeped at by the cars behind me, which had been accellerating post camera.

Which made a change, as it is usually lasses with prams who do this there. If they want to cut road deaths they'll put in place some system instead which fines/bans pedestrians who throw themselves in front of your car. Like it is or was in Germany - a ticket for jaywalking in sight of a designated crossing. Who the fuck lets them on the roads? They don't even pay for them!

Last night a girl was strolling slowly down the middle of the road outside our building, utterly oblivious to the cars queueing behind her or her friends on the pavement trying to tell her to get off the road. Until the car immediately behind her thrashed past shouting a racist comment. Then the girls all carried on down the middle of the road.

Sometimes I'd like a Monty Python foot, and a license to use it indiscriminately.

Idiot! Stomp! Racist! Stomp! Idiotidiotidiot! Stompstompstomp!

That happens with drunk people around here occasionally, I find that slipping the car into neutral and revving the shit out of your engine gets them moving.

Until they come back and dent your car.

Pedestrians are just thick cunts sometimes.

Yesterday I was on Westgate Street in front of the stadium, and there was an entire family - father, mother (with pushchair), kid, creaky grandparents. There are TWO crossings, about 150 yards apart... and this collection of idiots was crossing at precisely the middle point between them. They were in the middle of the road (which means, standing in the middle of the lane for traffic coming the other way) watching me to see if I'd stop. Which I decided I had better.

I was travelling home yesterday on a main road with two lanes. I got to a set of traffic lights and filtered through, but couldn't get past the front cars, so neatly pulled in behind the one in the outside lane.

The lights turned green, and the cars pulled away, the Toyota in the inside lane being a bit quicker.

Then out of the blue, with about six inches of clearance, the Toyota pulled into the outside lane without indicating and with NOTHING IN FRONT OF IT FOR MILES TO OVERTAKE, causing the car in front of me to slam on.

I passed the cars, turned my head and glared at the driver to tell him what a tosser he was, and he just sat there cruising at way under the speed limit, flashing his headlights and beeping his horn.

What the fuck?

It wasn't me, before anyone says it.

It had to be, who else drives a Toyota?

COLLEAGUE: I really like that... Toyota, whatsit, Avensis!

ME: This thing?



COLLEAGUE: What?! THAT'S the Avensis?

Yep, there wasn't a big dent on the side (what has happened regarding that, by the way?), and I couldn't see Michael J Fox in the car with him.

I forgot to mention that while on my way to Nottingham I was overtaken by some berk in a blue MX5 who then slowed down massively once he got off the sliproad and onto the M4 itself, which was annoying.

Had some quotes for the repair, ranging from £400 to £550. Gonna end up costing me £419 I think, which is a bit depressing but it has to be done.


That took me a while. 73%.

Some people just NEED to be first. For some reason.

On a bike it's nice to be first, given the acceleration. Which makes it all the more infuriating when some stupid tart in a shite Citroen/Peugeot/Ka moves into the outside lane at the lights and then the enormous 7.5 ton truck on the inside lane still out-accelerates her when the lights change

heh, aye. Or, you filter to the front, lights change, so you peg it, and at the next lights a mile down the road, when the carrs catch up, driver on inside lane goes apeshit at you.

That's where having a massively tinted visor is nice. You just tilt your head at them, and they go beserk at something they can't gauge the reaction of.

One of my favourites is, at a zebra crossing, come to a stop, and tilt my head and the second the person waiting to cross puts a foot forward, rev the bike up. I got a woman 3 times in a row with that last month.

You're a bad person

<whistles>

Yes, that's daft. If you're going to filter to the front, you keep your bike in gear, and you damn well keep your attention on the lights. As soon as they change, you go, quickly.

People already have a massively negative view of bikes, so I'd rather not inconvenience anyone. I'll give a wave of thanks to anyone pulling over slightly to let me past; hopefully they'll be as kind to the next bike, and the same in return.

I've had a couple of wanker signs thrown at me though. That's when my one-handed clutchless acceleration with the left hand flipping them off comes in handy.

The Stig should so have his own show. It would be great.

I filtered past the queues a couple of months ago, trying to get into Formby Forest (or whatever it's called).

Near to the toll booth, a vicious, vapid Scouse whore wound down her window and shouted abuse at me for skipping the queue. She threatened to knock me off my bike and get her mates to beat me up* before throwing a bottle of beer out the window at me.

So I rode up to the toll both where a nice copper was very interested in what I had to tell him, before screaming after her on a quad bike. I've no idea what actually happened to her; I didn't see her while out and about afterwards.

Funny thing was, though, bikes don't go through the booth or pay at all. There's a separate free parking area for them opposite the booth, so I wasn't skipping the queue at all!


*why do they always threaten to get their mates? Beat me up yourself, you coward.

When I went to see the BTCC at Silverstone, I filtered up past miles of queue and then slotted myself in one from the front. Good it was.

I like going there - it always turns out nice.

I didn't really get to see or do much there. I was stuck with all my bike gear, which isn't the best attire to walk around in. I'll go back when I get a back box to store it all in.

It was really cloudy, too, so the light was massively diffused and boring so I didn't get any good photos either.

Boo-urns.

You may have missed a joke, there.

I think he just tried to ignore it.

I miss every joke.

today, waiting patiently at the lights, there was a fat bastard on a scooter a few cars back waiting. When the lights changed, I immediately heard a deafening roar as this guy revs his laser printer-engined ride to the redline and screams past me, howling off down Wood Street, leaning practically onto his side to swerve around a bus turning into the bus station.

A few months back, when I was driving my red Celica, I was at the front of the queue at traffic lights by Morrisons here in town. Two lanes, I'm in the left lane to go straight on. The right-hand lane turns right into Morrisons.

On the approach to these lights, a Fiat Cinquecento had been right up my arse, and he pulled into the right-hand lane and sat at the front of the queue in the lane next to me. I thought he'd turn into Morrisons.

The lights changed to green, and immediately he revved the shit out of his engine and shot off the lights and then cut me up as I was accelerating. It sounded like a particularly angry wasp trying to escape a jam jar.

He then immediately turned left, so there was no point whatsoever in him doing any of this other than bragging rights. Twunt.

This sort of thing really pisses me off. See also - aggressively overtaking at high speed, only to turn off the road a few hundred metres along.

What the fuck is the point? Wooo - your car can do 70 mph. How rare.

Also overtaking me at high speed, then pulling back across in front of me and slowing back down to slower than I was going before.

Aaaha - that usually = got scared.

In my experience, it's "can't bear to be shown up by attempting to overtake, failing, and dropping back in behind".

Or "Was overtaken by a Corsa and manly pride couldn't take that".

I have that happen all the time late at night, poshmobile or sports car doing 75, I pass at 85, they go round me immediately at 95, pull in, and drop straight back to 75.

Are people's penises really that small?

I often find carloads of chavs in utterly shit cars come alongside at the lights and rev or even shout over demanding a drag race. I'd rather not (especially as I will likely out-accelerate them and incur their wrath) so I just pretend I have my earplugs in and cant hear them.