13 March, 2008

What a week. Since Christmas I have been recording my bike trips with a little handlebar mounted camera (ATC2k Action Cam) and last week I finished a compilation and uploaded to YouTube. It was pretty funky as I cut together the more interesting near misses where drivers had simply cocked up in a big way. I emailed my friends who also cycle and it sort of spread a bit. The Press got in touch on Sunday to do a story about it after the journalist saw the video. It was quite fun and fairly low key. It was published on Monday and by 9:30am I had emails coming in for interviews with TV etc. Lunchtime was a TV3 interview which was okay but went on a bit long and I ended up scoffing a plum before back into two hours of teaching. Folks from CloseUp came to school and asked me to come to the studio for a live interview. Some lame excuses later they offered to send a taxi to pick me up and drop me off (must be some money in TV then). A few more lame excuses from me and I ended up going in. I am happy to say I was scared shitless. The preparation was okay (the makeup woman didn’t need to do much for me and said so … something I take as a good sign) and the people were friendly…obviously used to dealing with flight-risk interviewees. The actual interview was pretty lame and I got the feeling Mark Sainsbury wasn’t a particularly interesting person. I hope I’m wrong for his sake. Following that the YouTube views went nuts as did the comments. I went into hiding.

I am absolutely knackered now as teaching AND that whole media butt-slamming has been full on. Still, I counted myself lucky that despite it all I came through okay, with style and grace and haven’t been knocked off my bike in years despite the best efforts of others… until today.

I have had a weird feeling something was going to happen the last few days and today it did. A mother and small child ran out in front of me leaving me with the choice of munching the wee boy in my spokes (he was small enough I’m confident he would have been killed) or braking hard and taking the fall. Being the wonderful teacher and role model I am I took the later and ate asphalt. Continuing the teacher theme I (rather calmly all things considered) explained why we have lights and crossing systems and that the young boy was very lucky to be alive and how the mother would feel if I or her son had been badly injured. The only insult is that my camera came off the bike and shut off losing the footage in the process. It would have been great footage and given me an outlet for the frustrated anger I am currently feeling. How can people be so stupid and have such a distinct lack of survival skills. It’s become ridiculous how nonchalent we have become about life and living.

Thankfully the YouTube thing has faded and the media have moved on to other things. People are still driving like idiots and oil just broke the US$110 mark. We are in a shitload of trouble very soon and we are not ready for it by any stretch of the imagination.