A follow-up to my first London cycling commute.
I can hear you, fellow cyclist behind me.
You think I can’t. You think you’re going to pass me, and this old guy ahead of me, too (proper MAML, that one).
But you aren’t.
I’m kicking it up a notch — all the way into fourth gear.
I have five gears, just so you know. I can kick it up ANOTHER notch if you challenge me again.
I’m pushing harder. I am riding home after a kick-ass day at the office. I am in a yellow skirt and have a wicking top pulled on over my casual office wear because this is London and it’s constantly hovering somewhere between cold and tepid and I just didn’t care enough about taking all the layers off in order to put them on in the right order, so yes, my skirt is yellow and my shirt is red and there are probably some polka-dots sticking out somewhere between my tuckus and my shoulders, but let’s get one thing straight:
You ain’t passing nobody right now.
Do you see my bike? It is thirty-plus years of steel performance wrapped up in the perfect green paint job, occasionally held together with rubberbands and sometimes just hopes and dreams and you are not passing it.
Do you see these cycle superhighways? They were built for ME. And I was built for adorable, business-casual SPEED. All 1.45 meters of — (er, wait, do they measure height in cm? Or, like, hectares or something or … forget it) — all 5ft 5½ inches of ME, your friendly neighborhood extroverted American flying down the bike lane.
No I’m not stopping for that stray tourist! No I’m not slowing down for that speed hump.
You. Shall Not. Pass.
Not here in this tunnel, and not later … when… we’re not in a tunnel…
That was not another cyclist.
That was my clackety bike chain echoing against the tunnel wall.
Sorry not sorry.
