Cowboys, Cossacks and Centaurs

I parked the bike beside Junktique Emporium, 62 Glebe Point Road, to go upstairs for Sam Reyas’ fantabulous exhibition of photograph screens, beautifully painted canvasses, lampshades, covered furniture and other otherworldly objets d’Art. The room is open for the next few weeks

I locked the aforementioned vehicle to an ornate iron rod fence – assuming the terrace dwellers would not object to such historically approved practise. Once upon a time gentlemen callers came on horseback and tethered steeds to railings purpose-built.

And what are cyclists but the horsemen of our time? Cowboys. Cossacks. Centaurs celebrating their Nature in the churchyard. Or Cavaliers defying the wowser Roundheads of Rules and Regulations who shoehorn citizens into wrong sized slippers.

Word on the streets is Surry Hills cops hate cyclists. Well the word on the streets is sillier than those death-defying pedestrians perched on the corner kerbs of our city. Cops hate trouble. Mothers could not love those guys tooling around unlit in the dark, knees up around ears on undersized stunt bikes. This column lamented these Spectres of Death before, these skittering rats across footpaths into laneways.

But your everyday cyclist is a model Sydneysider, assisting traffic flow with original understanding of the intent and spirit of the rules of the road. Not a rigid sticking to the clumsy letter of the law – a Cavalier definition definitely – but never narrower for that.

And our roads in Sydney are wide and getting wider every time a cyclist pedals instead of revving tonnes of motorcar to transport thirteen stone of meat.

Politician-pleasing planning bureaucrats don’t get that the general public do get that the planet is being buggered and that accepting personal responsibility is more effective than government grandstanding.  That is why targets for future bicycle journeys are as foolishly low as proposed tollway traffic projections are fraudulently inflated.

People yearn to be green. We aspire to live sustainably on our planet.
We beseech government [federal, state and local, Clover] to facilitate, not to control.