Anthony Eaton's Blog: Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm - Posts Tagged "roadkill"
25th May, 2009. On Bogans, Bikes and Babies...
Okay, so I'm supposed to be marking at the moment, but I have to vent. Seriously.
Our car went in for some mechanical work this morning (for the fifth time in a month, but that's another rant all together...) This makes for a pretty awful day for yours truly. It goes a little like this:
0630: Wake up. Out of bed. Shower, eat, load bike into car, be on road by 0700 so that I can get in to:
0700: Arrive at work. Drop off bike in office.
0730: Arrive at Car dealership. Find gates locked (Despite assurances that there'd be people there from 0715)
0745: Gates opened. Drop off Car. Wait for the 0800 courtesy bus.
0825: Courtesy bus leaves. Jammed into back seat, hard up against a nice man from the Australian National University.
0825 - 0915: Driven to work via every possible point of the compass while dropping off other commuters all over Canberra. (We even dropped one guy off in a field, for pity's sake, A FIELD!!!)
0915 Arrive at work. Get out of courtesy bus. Get important phone call (more on that later) manage to leave glasses in courtesy bus which drives off, leaving me with only my prescription sunnies.
0916. Torn between happiness at good news from USA (My second niece born in Houstin - hence phone call) and generally high degree of unhappiness at the prospect of spending the entire day trying to work in dark tinted, polarised glasses.
0917: Call car dealership. No way to contact courtesy bus. They'll get onto my car immediately and call when done.
0930: Arrive in office. Squint. Turn on computer. Squint. Can't see anything on monitor. Check power. On. Realise that the polarizing on my sunglasses lenses means that I can only read the screen if I tilt my head to a 90-degree angle.
1030: Neck really hurting, now.
1130: Dealership call. Car ready. Get into cycling clothes, head off for Phillip, which is on the other side of Canberra from my office.
Side Rant: Usually, and for the most part, I enjoy the ride out to Phillip. Most of it is on cyclepaths by the lake, and along the picturesque creeks of the Tuggranong valley. Unfortunately, though, the first five kilometres or so (That's about 2.5 miles, for our metrically challenged American friends) is along the roads. (Or, more accurately, in the laughingly-titled 'cycling lanes' which are, in reality, the poorly sealed, rough-surfaced, broken-glass-littered soft shoulders of the roads.) The good thing about riding in the cycling lanes is that you get to see plenty of wildlife; on this ride alone I saw three kangaroos and a fox. Sadly they were all smeared across the tarmac and in various stages of decomposition.
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is altogether more human.
The drivers.
As much as I love my adopted city (and I really do, Canberra is beautiful: snow covered mountains, lovely lakes, Black Mountain with its iconic tower wreathed in winter fog...) We're sadly afflicted with the largest number of COMPLETE IDIOT DRIVERS in the entire country. I don't know why this is - perhaps it's because we host Summernats here (an annual car festival and our second biggest contributor to global warming after Tony Abbot), or perhaps it's just something to do with the climate. Either way, I've come across more bogan drivers in Canberra than anywhere else in the country. (Again, for our American friends, a 'bogan' is a little hard to define, but Wikipedia comes close.)
This ride alone, I was firstly almost run off the road by a moron in a hotted up Subaru, who passed within about 5 cm of my right-hand handlebar, before overcompensating in the other direction and almost taking out a little old woman an a tiny Nissan, and then, just a moment or two later, abused by the driver of a similarly worked up Skyline, who drove past, hand on horn, yelling at me out of his window. It was hard to make out precisely what he said, owing to the wind noise, road noise, horn noise, and the fact that he was doing about 110, but it sounded something like:
YAAAAAAARGERROFFITYAWANKAICAN'TFINDMYMANHOODWITH BINOCULARSEVENONASUNNYDAY!
Of course, I could be wrong.
When I caught up to him at the next set of lights, oddly enough, the spotty little boy driving (He looked about 15), was strangely reluctant to discuss the matter further. In fact, he wound up his windows and locked the doors. Pity. I just wanted to borrow his binoculars.
/side rant...
1200: Get to dealership. Pick up car. Load up bike. Back to work.
Which brings us to here.
So that's my little outpouring for the day. Apologies for the vitriol, but what's the point of a blog, if not to share the love around?
On a far, far happier note, welcome to the world, Katie Margaret. We're so thrilled to have you here, and can't wait to meet you in person later this year.
Now, I'm going to have my lunch. Then get back to my marking. Thanks for listening...
Our car went in for some mechanical work this morning (for the fifth time in a month, but that's another rant all together...) This makes for a pretty awful day for yours truly. It goes a little like this:
0630: Wake up. Out of bed. Shower, eat, load bike into car, be on road by 0700 so that I can get in to:
0700: Arrive at work. Drop off bike in office.
0730: Arrive at Car dealership. Find gates locked (Despite assurances that there'd be people there from 0715)
0745: Gates opened. Drop off Car. Wait for the 0800 courtesy bus.
0825: Courtesy bus leaves. Jammed into back seat, hard up against a nice man from the Australian National University.
0825 - 0915: Driven to work via every possible point of the compass while dropping off other commuters all over Canberra. (We even dropped one guy off in a field, for pity's sake, A FIELD!!!)
0915 Arrive at work. Get out of courtesy bus. Get important phone call (more on that later) manage to leave glasses in courtesy bus which drives off, leaving me with only my prescription sunnies.
0916. Torn between happiness at good news from USA (My second niece born in Houstin - hence phone call) and generally high degree of unhappiness at the prospect of spending the entire day trying to work in dark tinted, polarised glasses.
0917: Call car dealership. No way to contact courtesy bus. They'll get onto my car immediately and call when done.
0930: Arrive in office. Squint. Turn on computer. Squint. Can't see anything on monitor. Check power. On. Realise that the polarizing on my sunglasses lenses means that I can only read the screen if I tilt my head to a 90-degree angle.
1030: Neck really hurting, now.
1130: Dealership call. Car ready. Get into cycling clothes, head off for Phillip, which is on the other side of Canberra from my office.
Side Rant: Usually, and for the most part, I enjoy the ride out to Phillip. Most of it is on cyclepaths by the lake, and along the picturesque creeks of the Tuggranong valley. Unfortunately, though, the first five kilometres or so (That's about 2.5 miles, for our metrically challenged American friends) is along the roads. (Or, more accurately, in the laughingly-titled 'cycling lanes' which are, in reality, the poorly sealed, rough-surfaced, broken-glass-littered soft shoulders of the roads.) The good thing about riding in the cycling lanes is that you get to see plenty of wildlife; on this ride alone I saw three kangaroos and a fox. Sadly they were all smeared across the tarmac and in various stages of decomposition.
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is altogether more human.
The drivers.
As much as I love my adopted city (and I really do, Canberra is beautiful: snow covered mountains, lovely lakes, Black Mountain with its iconic tower wreathed in winter fog...) We're sadly afflicted with the largest number of COMPLETE IDIOT DRIVERS in the entire country. I don't know why this is - perhaps it's because we host Summernats here (an annual car festival and our second biggest contributor to global warming after Tony Abbot), or perhaps it's just something to do with the climate. Either way, I've come across more bogan drivers in Canberra than anywhere else in the country. (Again, for our American friends, a 'bogan' is a little hard to define, but Wikipedia comes close.)
This ride alone, I was firstly almost run off the road by a moron in a hotted up Subaru, who passed within about 5 cm of my right-hand handlebar, before overcompensating in the other direction and almost taking out a little old woman an a tiny Nissan, and then, just a moment or two later, abused by the driver of a similarly worked up Skyline, who drove past, hand on horn, yelling at me out of his window. It was hard to make out precisely what he said, owing to the wind noise, road noise, horn noise, and the fact that he was doing about 110, but it sounded something like:
YAAAAAAARGERROFFITYAWANKAICAN'TFINDMYMANHOODWITH BINOCULARSEVENONASUNNYDAY!
Of course, I could be wrong.
When I caught up to him at the next set of lights, oddly enough, the spotty little boy driving (He looked about 15), was strangely reluctant to discuss the matter further. In fact, he wound up his windows and locked the doors. Pity. I just wanted to borrow his binoculars.
/side rant...
1200: Get to dealership. Pick up car. Load up bike. Back to work.
Which brings us to here.
So that's my little outpouring for the day. Apologies for the vitriol, but what's the point of a blog, if not to share the love around?
On a far, far happier note, welcome to the world, Katie Margaret. We're so thrilled to have you here, and can't wait to meet you in person later this year.
Now, I'm going to have my lunch. Then get back to my marking. Thanks for listening...
Musings from an Outer-Spiral-Arm
Just some random, probably very sporadic musings on my life in the world of books, academia, and nappies.
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