Rob's Blog
You might think that the hardest transition between driving a car and riding a motorbike would be be going from four wheels to two wheels. Or from one brake to two independent brakes. Or from hand operated gears and a foot operated clutch to a hand operated clutch and foot operated gears...
... but the most difficult thing I've found so far is getting used to the attitudes of other road users. The worst thing is that they're so utterly unpredictable.
a) Some of them are scared of you. They signal me to overtake them regardless of the fact that we're doing 30 in a 30 zone and there's solid white lines in the middle of the road as we approach a blind corner. I even had one guy pull in to 'let me' overtake at the crest of a blind hill. Trust me, I'm probably going to overtake you if it's safe, legal, and necessary for making good progress. But that's my job; not yours.
b) Some of them seem to need to prove they're faster than you. On two occasions recently I've been overtaken by people who have just joined the road and almost immediately tried to pass me in stupid places at ludicrous risk to their own lives. On both occasions they slowed me down and blocked me from overtaking almost as soon as they've finished their suicidal endeavours. On these winding country roads I'm almost always going to make better progress on two wheels than you are on four, even if you're smashing the speed limit and I'm not.
c) The police really don't like you. The other day I was just idling along at the speed limit, in my lane, with cars in front and cars behind. A police car coming the other way saw me, indicated, pulled a high speed u-turn in the road, overtook the two vehicles behind me, and proceeded to very obviously sit right on my tail for the next 10 minutes waiting for an excuse to pull me over until I eventually managed to lose them at a petrol station. Other than distracting me and perpetuating a very negative stereotype of police profiling I'm not sure what they were hoping to achieve.
d) People at roundabouts don't seem to understand that a motorbike has the same priorities as a car. I've lost count of the number of times people to my right seemed to assume I'm going to cut them up and people to my left have completely ignored my priorities. I'm a road user just the same as you.
To all intents and purposes my Kawasaki is just a very economical drop-top sports car... so why does everybody see me and assume that I'm an idiot? It's something that I'm very slowly starting to get used to, but it's definitely not easy!
The show must go on, and on it went. In our garden. The opening night of the
Roadwater Players production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" took place on our lawn yesterday evening. The ominous peals of thunder as the evening began were, unfortunately, a precursor to some pretty serious downpours. It may have scared off a lot of the crowd, but the cast performed through (most of) the thunder and rain regardless. The lighting was atmospheric. The acting was brilliant...
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... and the script demonstrated a level of sexual deviance that the walls of the Old Rectory surely haven't seen... well, probably since the place was run as a nudist resort ;)
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(see
more pictures of the Merry Wives of Windsor.)
Something I came to understand doing Artificial Intelligence modules is that the human brain is very clever.
Take for instance the way we organise repetitive daily tasks in our heads; such as the simple act of locking a car door and taking the keys with you when you leave.
After a few years of driving it's now something that I do totally automatically.
So how is that all labelled in my head? (Bear with me, this blog really does have a point). I'm very certain about the use of my car key (to unlock, lock, and start my car). I'm fairly certain I could pick it out of a large pile of other people's car keys (I know fairly accurately what it looks like and how it feel's to hold). I also (in theory) could tell you exactly where my car key was (whether it was in the ignition, in the door, in my pocket, or in the house for example).
Based on those points it'd be easy to imagine that my car key is labelled in my brain with a fairly comprehensive description.
But if such as simple task contained all that detail my brain would get full very quickly, and I'd have to think a lot every time I locked the car. So one hypothesis is that my brain takes clever shortcuts.
Instead, I think my car key routine actually contains lot's of very simple assumptions and tactile or audible checkpoints.
For example; if the car is running the key must be in the ignition, therefore it should not be in the door. I can check this by listening for the sound of a running engine.
Or; if I'm walking away from the car, I must have just locked it so the key should be in my pocket. I can check this my tapping my pocket to feel the outline of my keys.
I (and I'm getting to the point here) only had one vehicle key so "my black key" is the only description I ever needed.
But on Friday night I accidentally left my car keys sticking out of the car door over night, with the door unlocked. Whoops. That little blip in my routine would have certainly resulted in my car being stolen if we didn't live in such a little village.
So what went wrong? Well, I took the Motorbike to Taekwondo and stopped the bike beside my car to get my sunglasses out of the glove box. Because of all the shortcuts my brain was taking I heard the Motorbike engine running when I shut the car door so my brain just assumed that I must have my keys with me. Case closed, I drove away and didn't think twice about it.
My automatic routine just hadn't yet encountered the additional variable that I now have two vehicle keys (on seperate keyrings by necessity) and two engines.
Clever stuff hey? So you see, when I left my car keys in the door over night I wasn't being stupid. My brain was actually being very clever ;)
Did anyone else happen to catch Ricky Gervais doing his bit of filler at the Diana Memorial Concert? He sang his Office classic.
"Free love on the free love freeway,
Love is free and the freeway's long,
I got some hot love on the hot love highway,
I ain't going home 'cause my baby's gone.... she's dead"
Don't get me wrong, I love the Gervais as much as the next person. He's brilliant. But honestly... a split second after Stephen Merchant added his well reherased adlib I had the instinctive reaction to suck air through me teeth and say "Oooo! That's a bit off!".
At the end of the day this was a memorial concert for a woman who died on the highway with her much-frowned-upon lover...
Jonny would have bloody loved it.
No? Ah. Yes. You see this is the problem with listening to American folk and country isn't it? Bugger.
Those of you who have lived with me over the past couple of years might recognise him for doing "that song" about "desperados waiting for a train".
For the record, Guy Clark is very, very, very good. Part poet, part craftsman. He's written songs that have been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash, David Allen Coe, George Strait and Vince Gill.
Still not tempted? Oh.
Nevermind. I'm very much looking forward to hearing him playing one of his hand crafted guitars at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on September 20th... if anybody else fancies an education in Nashville brilliance it'd be really nice not to go alone! ;)
