Commuting - Top ten signs that a bike commuter has gone over the edge

Here is a very funny page: http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~jnoakes/bike/urban.html. At the end of it there is a top ten list of signs of a bike commuter going over the edge. I found it whilst looking for education on urban cycling techniques on a meta search engine. These search engines are much better than regular ones, since they hop around to all the sites. A few are http://www.metacrawler.com, http://www.cyber411.com, http://www.dogpile.com, http://www.askjeeves.com.
The Spike Bike story mentioned on the top ten list turned out to fullfill my need for successful urban cycling techniques. It actually cheered me up and made me gung ho about cycling even after just breaking my ribs and having someone try to bash down my door violently to steal my bike. The pesty bastard was a quick runner, so the police could never catch him. His repetative stints at bashing my door lasted over 3 hours.
Back to Spike Bike.
This has got to be one of the most creative and clever writings I have ever seen!! The writer of this "Spike Bike" fiction piece ( fiction!?- this is actually pretty close to the reality of some of my commutes) has his character develop a 'bikezooka.' Spike converts the top tube of a bike to fire anti tank rockets. He says, "it looked like your ordinary fat tube bike, except your everyday Kleins and Cannondales aren't capable of firing anti-tank rockets out the front and ends." Ha, ha! I don't think things are quite bad enough to take the Spike approach to drivers; the thieves can be pretty bad though. As you know, things are not quite stable in this city, and since whites here are in such denial about climate change, the blacks have no example to follow, and not enough education to be scared.
Here is the original Spike Bike story, which never made it to this Urban Cycling Vocab list. I like it the best though. You can tell this guy is a seasoned commuter who was having revenge fantasies to let off some steam. Fridays are indeed the worst!! http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mjh/spike.html#precursor

WHOOPS. Here is that URL again. Something went wrong before. The other links still work. Here's try #2:
http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~jnoakes/bike/urban.html

Bikideshi,

Well, I guess I'm "over the edge," then! :eek:

Opps, they left one out! While sitting at your desk, someone comes up behind you, and instead of turning to see who it is, you glance to the upper left area of your vision range before you realize you don't have your helmet and attached rear view mirror on!

I may not be over the edge...but I can see it!

I liked the dictionary. I now have names for the things I experience daily, which I could never adequately describe before.

Should make conversation easier. :)

:thumbup: :thumbup:

I especially liked symptom #5 and #6. I find that I now do that a lot. :D

In regards to #1, I don't notice gas stations along my route (except when I see someone using the air machine to put air in his/her bicycle tires :eek: ), but I have to put gas in my wife's car each weekend, so I'm current on gas prices.
For now my wife is a cycling supporter not a cyclist. But I'm working on changing that.

I know of a few cyclists who try the foreplay thing. I gave up on it long ago. I don't think the sensors work with aluminum or titanium. :(

The "foreplay thing" (trying to set off metal detectors- just like foreplay, it isn't always going to have the intended result) works if you lay the bike flat. I opened a security gate to a storage bin just laying a solid aluminum packrack on the ground (I had no other means to exit the facility). Any bike will work if it's flat. I read this in a book, Urban Cycling Tricks and Tips. I highly recommend this book. It gives some of the best practical advice for cycling. It's lightyears beyond the average stupid bicycle safety info-fare (wear your Helmet). This is like a rung below Spike Bike, but a few rungs above Bicycling Magazines guide to commuter cycling. It teaches you how to climb stairs, etc. You can use "foreplay" to activate the metal detector mechanisms at drive thru's. Some restaurants just flat out refused to serve me, even after this. Some do serve me. This works because it's not a magnetism operated device. It's a metal detector. Traffic speed curbing could be achieved by leaving metal sheets over these devices at hardly used intersections.