Fat bottomed girls

As those of you unfortunate enough to be familiar with Queen's work will have realised from the title, this is a companion to the post I wrote a while ago that maybe should have been called "I want to ride my bicycle". I forwarded that to a couple of bike-trainer type people I know, both of whom chastised me gently for my pusillanimous habit of riding on the pavement. Well, hopefully they will be glad to know that these days, I play in the traffic.

I'm cycling more this year. The route in to uni is a lot more agreeable. I'm closer by two miles or so, but more importantly, it's easy to get onto a cycle path. Previously, I had to go half a mile along a six-lane road, then negotiate a maze round a shopping mall, then dodge round some back streets, before finally joining the metropath (a cycle path that follows roughly along the North-South route of the Metrorail). From my house now, though, I have a quick 100 yards or so along a similar road, before I can cross it and join the same metropath. From there, it's a straight 2.5 mile blast to university. The path, admittedly, is far from ideal. The surface is awful in places, it includes chicanes for no apparent reason, and the junctions with roads are all set up for the convenience of motor traffic, meaning frustrating detours. But compared to last year, it's a great ride, the main risk being that one forgets to take it easy, starts imagining oneself as being in the final stages of a Tour de France stage, and arrives at university looking far from elegant; it's impossible to cycle at any speed here without becoming drenched in sweat.

My main ride of the week, though, is to Fairchild. Like last year, I have no other way to get there, public transport to the garden being pretty much non-existent. Unlike last year, it's now almost 7 miles from where I live. The way I take is, in many ways, lovely. I go through Coconut Grove, a pleasant shopping-type area, join the oddly-named Main Highway (nothing Main about it, not much of a Highway), and from there, go along Ingram Highway and Old Cutler Road. All three roads are tunnel-like, arched over with massive tropical trees, and since they're slightly away from the main urban parts of the city, great for wildlife. I regularly see iguanas, snakes, crabs, sometimes turtles. There's two enormous orange iguanas that I see every week, and one day, I'll remember to take a camera and photograph them (in the meantime, there's a picture at the end of this of a dragonfly in my back garden).

However, both Main and Ingram highways have no cycle lanes, no pavements, nothing. Old Cutler Road does have a cycle path of sorts, but it's far worse than the metropath, a humpbacked, bumpy ride over tree roots and through patches of sand and gravel, more like an offroad track than anything else. But the only alternative routes would add a mile or more to my journey, so I brave it. And it did feel brave, the first couple of times. All the roads are narrow - one lane each way - and the traffic is, of course, made up of impatient drivers, mainly of SUVs, 4x4s, hummers, pickups, and the like.

After a while, though, it turns out that the cycle-trainers were right. You get confident, quickly. These days, I'm a badass aggressive biker. If someone in a hurry is behind me, itching to overtake, frustrated by traffic coming the other way, I don't care. I don't huddle myself as close to the edge of the road as possible; I move further towards the centre and make it clear that he is not getting past me until the other lane is clear. I ride with earphones in, at low enough volume that I can hear traffic noise, but I was loath to do that initially. I've even adopted the unspoken rules of Florida driving, along with the codified ones. Amber lights, here, do not mean "slow down and stop".

All this road cycling is seen as somewhat silly by some of my peers. Several cycle, but all are terrified of the roads, and admittedly with some reason. Cyclists do die here, not too infrequently. But most of these accidents happen at night, or on very busy roads, and I feel perfectly safe on the ones I use. The only thing is, the increase in the miles I'm covering on my bike is leading to expensive thoughts. The problems with what I'm riding now are twofold. Firstly, it's too small for me. I didn't really care when I got it, given that it only cost $35, but now that I'm riding it more, it's beginning to grate. Secondly, it's inappropriate for the cycling I'm doing. It has a heavy mountain bike frame and 15 gears; I ride almost entirely on concrete or tarmac, and occasionally, if I'm feeling lazy, I change down from the highest gear to get up the landscaped hump on the uni campus, the only incline I ever encounter. And so, thoughts turn to a nice, lightweight, road bike frame, properly sized to own my gangly, lightweight frame... another item on the ever-growing list of stuff to buy. Sigh.

Anyway, as promised, here is a dragonfly in my back garden.

And here is a plug: There is a great show on, of all things, Aberdeen student radio that you should listen to. It's on Tuesday, 9-10pm. But more excitingly, you can download MPfrees of the thing here, and grab a tracklisting, and listen when you want. What are you waiting for? Show the man some love...