It's been a fairly eventful week, cycling wise. It was pretty warm on the weekend so I thought I'd do a flat ride down to Semaphore rather than hit the hills. In the absence of hills I decided to ride hard and try to get my average speed up a bit. It worked out pretty well - I averaged 27km/h for the 54 km journey, which is the fastest longer ride I've done by a mile.
I signed up to do the 'Feb-fifteen Challenge" on Strava where you basically try and do 15 hours on the bike for the week (25/2 - 3/3). To get some hours up I thought I'd do some meandering on the way home from work. Tuesday's meander was a trip up to Crafers. Given how much I've improved up Willunga Hill last weekend, I was keen to see if I could improve my time from the Tollgate to the Crafers bollards (probably my most frequent climb). I gave it a good solid effort and ended up doing it just under 38 minutes, smashing my previous best by 4:30 which I was pretty excited about. The last time I did the descent from there I gave it a good old crack and did it in a bit over 10 minutes, but I don't think I'll be doing that again soon. The on-road part is okay but it really is too risky to fang it on the narrow bike path bits at the start and finish of the run. So this time I thought I'd try and do the downhill run without pedaling at all. It still only took just over fifteen minutes and I had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, which was an entirely pleasant experience on a balmy summer evening.
It's not all beer, skittles and nice scenery though because yesterday morning I had an accident on the way to work. With the closure of the Noarlunga train line for most of this year, I've been riding every day. It's normally only a short 8km commute because I drop Ruby at school, drive to the nearest tram stop and ride from there, usually taking the bike route that runs adjacent to the tramway. It's a fairly cruisy ride which I've been doing on my flat bar roadie (a Giant CRX2). I don't do the Lycra thing and take it fairly easy because I don't want to get too hot and sweaty before work. I've been really enjoying the commute with the exception of the run along Morphett Street. The worst part is traversing Whitmore and Light Squares where cars and buses constantly cut the corners into the bike lane.
Anyway, yesterday I was cruising along Morphett Street heading north. As I entered the left hand bend at the south-west corner of Light Square, a black SUV (it's always seems to be a black SUV...) went past me. Inexplicably, they decided they needed to suddenly turn left down Waymouth Street and lurched straight across my path. I just avoided a collision, but skidded and came off hitting the deck fairly hard. I ended up with some abrasions and sprains, the worst injury being a bruised rib (I think my rib slammed into one of my bar ends when I hit the deck). By the time I picked myself up, the car had disappeared down the road. I suspect they were completely oblivious to what happened. They clearly didn't see me, despite having my lights on and wearing a flouro jersey. I have trouble fathoming it, but sometimes it doesn't matter how visible you are or how defensibly you ride, some drivers just have a permanent blind spot when it comes to bikes and bike lanes. And the accident could have been far, far worse if the car behind me hadn't stopped so quickly.
There's more accidents in the CBD than anywhere else in Adelaide - I suspect many of them occur because drivers are looking for parks or trying to find streets etc, and are prone to making rash decisions such as turning across the bike lanes without looking. I don't think you can change that behaviour - the solution is to improve the cyling infrastucture by having separated, dedicated bike lanes, reducing the amount of cars in the CBD and limiting right turns at intersections (especially at peak times). I'm sure that there's many other things that could be done but these three would be a damn good start. Anyway I might write to the Adelaide City Council and give them my two cents worth on this subject.
The accident has shaken me up a bit and I've been feeling a bit anxious in traffic since it happened. I'm sure I'll get my cycling mojo back but, for the moment, being in traffic is just a little stressful. The really annoying thing is that I was planning a long hard ride in the hills for this Saturday in preparation for the Velo Adelaide ride in a few weeks, but I think my ribs will still be too sore. Bugger.
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