Road Worries

It doesn't happen often, but then it does it is sudden and not rather comfortable. I’ll be riding my bike, rolling along at 100km/h through a tunnel and then I will suddenly become aware of the fact that I am on a motorcycle.

On an open piece of road the noise from my engine dissipates away from me, but in tunnels the sound is bounced back. In a car it is easy to miss when you have the radio on, but on a motorcycle it is a very obvious increase in volume. The droning whirrrrrrr transforms into a loud and deep bmmmmmmmm in an instant.

A few seconds of this tunneling noise seems to be the regular trigger for me. Where I would normally take it for granted, I will become then become very aware of the road which I can clearly see, whizzing past me at great speed. This awareness also informs me that there is very little between me and the road. The only thing keeping me upright is the physics of spinning wheels, and science does not completely understand how this works. They know it works, they know how to use it, but there is no one accepted theory for why it works. Interestingly they are not really sure why planes stay in the air either. Very comforting, isn't it?

I had it so bad once that I felt like throwing up. It happened to me again this week, but it was not that bad and I got over it a few seconds later. It might have helped that I had to stop at the traffic light Standing still helps settle the stomach, so to speak.

People who have driven in Korea knows that traffic lights take forever to change. The system here is infuriating because it feels like you spend half an hour at one light waiting for your turn. This drives people to take reckless chances then they see the lights turn yellow. The reckless chances are taken not just by the drivers, but also by pedestrians.

We at the red light were all watching the green man to get an indication of how long we still had to wait and, of course, just before it turned red for the pedestrians we all looked forwards and got ready to move.

Wouldn't you know it, an old lady approaching the pedestrian crossing from the other side of the road decided she was not having any of this waiting business. But by the time she stepped onto the road the light had already changed and the cars coming from the opposite direction from us were heading towards a green light. There was enough space for them to notice her, but she still cut a line (direct translation from Afrikaans) diagonally across a three lane road. that is three lanes each way, with traffic. She just closed her eyes and “ran” as fast as she could, little carrier wagon thing in tow. The cars on the opposite side did have enough time to see her so thankfully they slowed down to almost a stop.

By the time she reached our side we had already started moving. She was nearly in our lanes. She didn't even look up to see if cars were coming. She just kept her head down and ran as fast as she could. Good job we all saw this happening because she had no idea what was heading her way. I’m sure even the arsehole bus driver who decided that he was not going to slow down for that “just in case” scenario saw her.

Man, I tell you. You can’t even trust a pedestrian way on the other side of the road in this county.