There’s something special about riding on the road when all the traffic lights line up for you. Sometimes the timing is all wrong. Every set of lights you reach are on red or worse, change to red just as you approach them. I’ve been over enough bonnets and dented enough wings to know not to mess with traffic and in my time in Manchester I’ve seen enough riders taken out to know not to jump the lights in this city. Those boys in their Too Fast Too Furious rice burners are always just around the corner ready to lay down some rubber as they launch off the cross traffic junction.
Other times, like tonight, you just get it right. There are eight sets of traffic lights on the way home from work. Tonight I hit them all on green and for some strange reason it felt good. Like I had one over on some one. As I peeled off the main roads into the leafy lanes of suburbia with nothing more than errant squirrels to consider, it felt that the day hadn’t been so bad after all. I’m still on the mend, but my rasping chest tells me that I’d be a fool to push my luck at the Dyfi this weekend.
Instead I’ll be faffing about with axle stands, trolley jacks and expensive german automotive parts with the aid of a Haynes manual and a socket set. That and I was going to see the attractive old bit of Lamb with someone beautiful, but it turns out the tour has been postponed, so maybe we’ll have to find something else to go out and do instead.
R O T H A R . C O M 