Cycle

Relying on a bicycle as your personal transport gives a person a new insight into the way traffic works. I was nearly cleaned up by a car this week after a driver yet again decided that I was invisible, even though he was looking straight at me, and that my life was not worth the 3 seconds he would have lost on his journey by actually slowing down for me.

There are too many drivers who think that a giveway sign is only advisory if the other vehicle with right-of-way is a person on a bicycle. It is very strange. It is as though drivers only recognise the existence of other cars on the road and disregard any other road user, including pedestrians. I wonder if there have been any studies about the changes in perception drivers undergo in traffic?

Another case in point is when a cyclist is in the left hand lane (too narrow for a car to get past safely) waiting at the lights to go ahead and a green left turn arrow comes on. If a car behind wants to turn left, invariable the driver goes nuts because a cyclist is impeding his opportunity to save ten seconds on his trip. Replace the cyclist with a car in the same situation and the car behind will calmly wait until the overall green light comes on and the car in front goes ahead before completing his left turn. There is no difference in the actual human presence in these situations, only that a cyclist has less bulk and therefore less status and apparently less worth.

Gym

I continue to go to the gym and even the instructors are commenting on how much weight I have lost. I actually have not physically lost that much lately but I I have definitely developed a lot more muscle mass while shedding body fat. I was going to do a Aqua class on Thursday but there were only two people booked in so we opted to transfer to the deep water muscle tone class which was on in the diving pool. DWMT is like Aqua except you wear a float belt and do all the exercise in a 3 metre deep pool so you don't touch the bottom. It is definitely more intense.

The clincher for me to change to the other class was the group of hunky footballer types who were lined up to do the class. Bliss! Of course they had no idea what they were doing and spent most of the class talking to each other, but I got into testosterone mode and was really competitive. These guys would have had 20 years on me (some 25 years) and I was keeping up with them and probably doing a better job at the exercises. It was very good to check a benchmark and know that my level of fitness is actually pretty good and that all this work is not only making me feel good and look better, but is doing me a lot of good as well.