The Caped Crusader

Yes, that's me!  The Caped Crusader!  Last night I set off for home before it got dark, but I realised it would be dusky before I made it back, so I needed to wear my lovely fluorescent orange jacket.  The problem was, it was too warm to do it up, which meant that it flowed out behind me like a superhero cape.  It was all I could do not to take off and fly home (although that would have been more like E.T. than Wonder Woman, given the presence of the bike).

In my superhero state of mind, I still had to learn some important cycling life skills on the way home.  Number one was that on a Thursday night there are nearly as many people roaming around the streets of Shoreditch as on a Friday night (OK, so I knew this already, but the weather was so nice, they were spilling out of the pubs a little more than usual, mostly into the middle of the road).  Number two was that on a Thursday night at about 7.30 p.m., all of the cars in London sneak into side roads (in particular the ones I pass on my route home) ready to jump out at unsuspecting cyclists - you think I'm joking, but one of the cars that I passed in such a manner did appear to actually be lying in wait for someone to come past so that it could knock them down or run them over.  Number three was "beware the fire engine".

There was an episode of Family Guy on BBC3 the other night that had a ferocious fire engine beating up Peter Griffin with its ladder.  The fire engine I encountered last night immediately made me think of this episode.  I had seen the blue lights and heard the sirens of an ambulance and a fire engine from some way down the road.  By the time I was approaching the area they had been in, they had moved on and I presumed that they were long gone.  I was coming up towards a crossroads between two major roads (one of which I was on), and just before the crossroads, there is a junction where a small side street joins the main road from the left.  Just as my front wheel passed the point of no return (i.e. I couldn't stop as there wouldn't be room for anything to turn out of the junction), the fire engine - I presume it was the same one - suddenly appeared with its sirens blaring, wanting to turn right onto the main road, across my lane, to go the opposite way from me.  It wasn't stopping.

This was a do or die moment for me.  James had been on at me for a while to learn to ride standing up so that I could get more power into hill climbing.  Frankly, it's all I can do to cycle along with my derriere on my siege, so the idea of standing up horrifies me.  However, the circumstances were dire - if I didn't get a shift on, I was going to be flattened by an angry fire engine so, without thinking about it (because if I had, it wouldn't have happened) I suddenly and majestically rose from my seat and pedalled like a lunatic until I'd got past the junction.  It is likely that this will never happen again unless there are similar circumstances.