Chasing Cars

Chasing cars

An activity far removed from those halcyon days of London commuting, where one re-enacted medieval gladiatorial combat in that time honoured battle of over medicated motorists and under armoured cyclists. It reminds me tho of one puce faced, slabby stomach’d, inappropriately entitled fuckwit attempting to rub me from existence by simple application of his shiny porsche to my grimy mountain bike.

I never took time to understand if he’d been denied the dead cyclist he’d asked for Christmas and taken matters into his own hands, or was merely distracted by the reflection of his own ego. Far too busy ripping the keys from the ignition before a one way deposit into the sewers of the Bayswater road*

Back in the room and in that middle aged acceleration of the planet where three years appear to be directly correlated to a single heartbeat, desperate marketing emails insist the blameless car ‘proactively sustaining a customised transport solution”‘** is coming to the end of its useful life.

Or its useful life with me. Being constrained by a financial instrument insisting I punt it back to Skoda early next February. With the advances in manufacturing, the just in time supply chain, the computer controlled assembly lines and the global stock control systems, the salient point appears to be I’d best order something in the next few weeks unless being a poster boy for The Proclaimers approach to sustainable transport forms a major part of my 2018 goals.

Been there. Hated that. Buying bikes is fun. Buying cars is not. My requirements – while simple – are not well aligned to the narrow scripts pedalled by sales people who conflate cost and value. Actually that’s nonsense, they confuse what someone wants with unit targets desperately signed up to at their interview.

Which makes my insistence on inserting a muddy mountain bike into their showroom polished demonstrators a little awkward. Not helped by my dismissive attitude to ‘advanced ride dynamics‘ and ‘performance analytics’ refusing to accept these are nothing more than A to B tools. If I wanted a lifestyle statement, I’ll buy another mountain bike.

I care not for performance or handling. Couldn’t give a flying fuck for marginal gains wrapped up in this years’ colourways. Disinterest overstates my apathy for design intent. All these thing matter for two wheels. Four? Stop talking, hand over the keys.

My purchasing strategy has only two tenets. 1: simple requirements: how do I fit a 180cm mountain bike into that riot of plastics without wearing the front tyre as a novelty hat in the drivers seat. 2: Can it be bought without a clutch pedal and does the brains of our family operation calculate it’s not going to bankrupt us.

Yeah. But. I really wanted a Jaguar F-Pace. Just because I’ve always wanted a Jag. Fails 2: by about a million miles and frankly there’s a question of dignity hovering in the background. So attempted to bypass the social difficulties of interaction with idiots by test driving the bigger version of what I have now.

Expected just to order one of those. Arrived back at the dealer struck somewhere between bored and catatonic. Three years of that particular experience would result in a fair parody of Jack Nicholson in One flew over the cuckoos nest. Social awkwardness it is then. The spreadsheet at the top of this post represents an intersection of a best guess of stuff that might work, and a synthesis of many dull people who apparently enjoy testing cars for paid employment.

We live in a world where our choices tend to the infinite. No one has much truck with regression to the mean. Major purchases are our time to be special. For bikes yep, for cars oh please just fuck off. Still I’m not quite so secure on this moral high ground once I found you there’s a big estate with a zero snob badge hiding what appears to be a nuclear bomb under the bonnet.

That may be the smart buy. I’ve no idea at all. I pretend not to care a jot for the thing I spend far too much time sat inside. Then I look at what that simple functionality costs and wobble a little. But I’m already all-in on the mountain bike equivalent of a red Ferrari. Best to step back from that kind of dangerous nonsense.

So I shall be stoic. And sensible. And given the right environmental conditions measured and calculating. Still a good chance of going postal though if the clip-on tie brigade feel the urge to tout their goods as something other than ‘ a bit better than trains’

If they do, a chubby bicycle tyre may be used to move the discussion on.

Wish me luck, I’m going in.

*explaining this to my colleagues at our rather straight laced London consultancy provoked two distinct responses; one group backed gently away making soothing noises while the other called security.

**these are not my words. But someone at Skoda wrote them, nodded sagely and declared ‘these are good’. The Scorpion Pit cannot come too soon.

2 thoughts on “Chasing Cars

  1. Alex

    Well having re-read it, it’s hard to say. Sometimes I just feel the urge to write things. This tends to correlate to when I’ve had a few beers. It may not be a great combination 🙂

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