Bike Path Rules. Ok?

As someone who used to drive public transport as well as years spent on the road as a run of the mill car owner, I recently had what I thought was going to be a lucky break with Sydney traffic. I moved into a house a few metres from a bike path that ran to within a few hundred metres of my workplace. This is almost unheard of. How many people in Sydney can genuinely commute on a bicycle using only bike paths?

In the first instance, the path was simply too good to resist. It was a chance to safely put one in the eye of one of the banes of modern existence: traffic.

Secondly, it beats the gym. Sometimes I find the idea of exercise off-putting simply because it gets in the way of other activities. Also, if structured exercise is all I’m doing (unlike a sport) I tend to concentrate on how uncomfortable it is. Lastly, my image. Alone on the path, I could ride without being mistaken for one of those Critical Mass turkeys.

I used to ride as a teenager and would go serious distances fairly quickly because the bike represented economic as well as actual freedom. No bus timetable or fares. As a teenager I would think nothing of riding tens of kilometres to then play a sport, and ride home again. I was hit by cars on two occasions and had doors opened in front of me more often than I can remember. I walked away from every incident with barely more than a scratch.

So let’s peddle forward few years and imagine a man closer to 40 than 30, a man who while not an eco-nut, wouldn’t hate reducing his clod-hopper like footprint. A man who actually quite likes the way bicycles look and appreciates the leaps and bounds the technology has offered the transport. To be honest, a man who also likes spending money on gadgets, and bikes offer an almost limitless opportunity to throw money around.

So I started commuting to work over a route that was 99% bike path. It hasn’t been perfect. I had to step off my bike the other day at a measly 24 km/h. How so precise? I was looking at the speedo rather than the trench – I didn’t even fall, just decelerated on my feet. I was laid up with a badly sprained ankle for a week. It was also another one of those in-your-face-mortality moments. I used to do that as a joke, now I break.

After regaining my confidence and more importantly the ability to walk, I jumped back on my bike and on the first morning out, the very first, was bitten fairly comprehensively by a dog. The owner had one of those retracting reel leashes and didn’t have it on the lock position. As she waved her arm in the air ineffectually she looked more like she was fly fishing, with her mongrel as bait. She managed to land a punctured and angry bicycle commuter.

After regaining my confidence and the normal shape back to my right leg, I set out again to ride to work the economically and ecologically friendly way. While the following incident didn’t result in injury, it did leave me looking around for the camera crew from Australia’s Most Violent Home Videos.

I was cycling on the left as a man and his child walked towards me, on my right. I slowed and made my intentions clear- I will be over here minding my own business, you should stay over there and do the same.

I got to within six feet of this super genius when he turned side on to me and looked back at his kid. In the normal course of events, someone side-on presents less of a target. Not, however, when they are carrying a trombone. An instrument measured in units of bike-path.

So it is with a series of accidents and incidents that I present to you my rules and observations for the bike path, garnered from real life experience.

1. Tai Chi is healthy. Tai Chi is not healthy when you sway hypnotically into the path of the oncoming cyclist.
   

2. When a cyclist approaching from behind dings their bell (as they should) this should not be taken as a signal to panic, dart to the right, back to the left and then freeze in the middle.
   

3. I don’t care what rich heritage your European home country has, it has no place on the bike path. And we do it on the left here.
   

4. Dogs; man’s best friend. Probably woman’s too. When you hear that ding, your animal needs to move with you. Stretching the leash across the path is funny in that WWII-movie-unseat-the-Nazi-motorbike-rider kind of way. Not when you need to arrive at work conscious.
   

5. Kids are cute too, the way they wobble around and their helmets are too heavy for their giant heads and the way they fully comprehend concepts like left and right, slow and fast, near and far…
   

That’s it, no more from or for me. I’m back in the car with controlled temperatures, my iPod, my phone and I’m arriving dry and in breath and… okay, one more go on the bike.