My morning commute.

My morning commute 

 It is not a long ride into work as it is, at most, ten minutes from my home to school. The street I live on has quite a lot of gravel from roadworks done in the summer so the chips flick up. There is a simple left and immediate right and I ride past a secondary school. One striking aspect of this school is that I often see students practising football, some forty minutes before school starts. They are dedicated. Of course, parents are beginning to drop off their teenagers, buses are rolling up and I have to watch out for the pedestrian crossing. I ride up the hill at a steady 50-odd kilometres an hour, keeping within the speed limit, in third gear. The revs are fairly high, but I know that if I click up to fourth gear I am likely to push up to 60 or 70 km/h. I keep in third. 

 Then there is a tricky t-junction; some traffic is pulling in to go down to the secondary school, some traffic is heading straight and there is that irritating regularity of traffic. Either the road I am crossing has minimal gaps, or someone is turning in front of me. I now take a slightly aggressive attitude and I pull out when I see a gap, and then drive in the median, slotting in on the other side of the road. I have not had anyone gesturing to me or honking their horn, so I assume that road users here are not complaining. Soon after I turn, and while negotiating the median strip, and trying to slide in between vehicles, there is a Zebra Crossing. It is so easy to be looking in the rear-view mirrors, glancing at blind spots, trying to slide into place, shifting from first gear to second, and third, that I have to consciously look right and left to see if any pedestrian is crossing. As a pedestrian, I like Zebra Crossings as there is something powerful in just stepping out, knowing that the traffic is obliged to stop. As a motorbike rider, looking left, right, ahead, changing gears and slotting into position, the necessity to see if some pedestrian is claiming their right to cross is a challenge. I have, on occasion, not seen the pedestrian. I feel guilty. 

Then there is a good moment or two. I have my position in the morning commute. I pass some sports fields and a café that I have been to a few times. A traffic speed indicator states 48 km/h or 55km/h, but I have not yet worked out if it picks up the motorbike. There are some traffic lights, and most of the traffic heads up an arterial road leading to the west of the city. I keep straight. Curiously, I often see a young man walking to the high school I passed quite a few minutes ago. He is distinctive as he has a huge head of curly blond hair like some kind of halo. I often wonder about the boys’ hair regulations in his school, because in my own school, that length hair would not be acceptable. We have a bald-headed man who is a stickler on boys’ hair length. It is tempting to speculate on the reasons he is so strict on hair, but I will not do so. At the next traffic light, I turn right. I am usually at the front, as either I filter, or I am one of very few turning right. At this point I have one of my high points of the commute; I can pull right carefully and then accelerate away, from first gear, to second, to third and to fourth. I know that I am exceeding the speed limit as I pass by a football field, but it is great to have wide-open road in front of me for a short while. I slow for the next traffic lights, keeping a little to the right to avoid manhole covers. There are few things more disconcerting to a well-ordered person than skidding on a wet manhole cover. 

At the next traffic lights, I can frequently see students from my school, often heading into a fast-food take-away to get fried chicken and chips. I do not know whether to remonstrate that the students are eating chicken and chips at 8 o’clock in the morning or to accept that teenage boys can have a healthy breakfast at home and then be hungry after a short walk. I also admire the take-away restaurant owner’s acumen; what a great idea it is to fry up chicken and chips at 8 am! There is a gentle curve at this point, giving me a chance to counter-steer and accelerate as I head alongside the school rugby pitches. Then I indicate left and ease down, from fourth gear to third, to second and to first. Frequently, I have to stop as students are ambling across the road without paying attention to traffic. 

Although I have a designated parking place for my vehicle, nowadays I park the motorbike under a set of stairs. This flight of stairs provides some shelter from the rain. The bike is new. I love it. As an adult, I appreciate that it can withstand some rain, but I would still like to protect it as much as I can. So I indulge in some pavement riding, back up with difficulty, inch forward, back up again, and ease the bike into a protected position. My morning commute. The fact that I am on my motorbike makes this great. Unless you ride a motorbike, you will not appreciate the joy of even a simple and repetitive trip.