KarmaCycle: Sometimes you have bad traffic light days, and other times they actively conspire against you ...

Thursday, 13 August 2009

Sometimes you have bad traffic light days, and other times they actively conspire against you ...

Today felt very much like there was a little man sitting in front of 500 screens showing all the traffic lights in London, pressing buttons with a gleeful grin making sure that my journey would be hampered to the full. My worst stretch (and I would strongly recommend never biking down this bit) was going down Praed Street (W2) approaching Paddington Station. It really is a nightmare there with several sets of lights which all take simply ages to turn. On top of that, it's a really dangerous street for buses and lorries turning here and there. Overall, my karma rating for this area is: just say no.

1 comment:

Mark said...: I usually get off and walk across. Depends on the junction, but many have such painfully slow sequences that you have sufficient time to walk your bike across two or three times. Surprises me how few people do it.; Monday, 28 December, 2009

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The Cycle of Karma

When you're cycling around 100 miles a week through London, you develop some strange notions. The one I can't get out of my head is that you build up karma - good and bad - depending on how you cycle. So - if you stop at red lights, wait politely for pedestrians, smile at cars, you get rewarded - the next light turns green for you straight away, someone smiles back at you - you get the picture. Of course this doesn't always work, but it works often enough for me to try to cycle by those rules. Most of the time.