A post for which The Pedestrian Council will hate me

What is it with people when they are in a pedestrian role? Is there a sudden brain shift that gives us, walking down the footpath, a sense of total superiority to people driving cars? And makes us exercise that superiority simply because we can?

Like many of us I am both driver and pedestrian as the occasion demands.

When I'm in pedestrian mode, I am aware of people in driving mode, and I am mindful of them.

Let's take a zebra crossing for instance. If the road is clear in one direction, and there is only one car coming in the other, with no other cars in sight, I will NOT simply walk out onto the zebra crossing and make the poor bastard grind to a halt. I'll wave him on or stand back from the crossing.

Why? When I have the right to make cars stop for me?

Because it's polite is why. I can wait another couple of seconds for the car to pass and cross when the road is completely empty. It's easier for me to come to a stop than the car.

Additionally, when that car grinds to a halt for me, it has to take off again afterwards, and cars in low gear use a lot more fuel than cars running in a higher gear at a higher speed. It is a minor bit of karma (or carma) I'm doing for the environment by waving the car on.

I never see any other pedestrians wave motorists on at zebra crossings. Countless times I've been the one car driving down the road who has stopped at the crossing when there is no other bloody car in sight. Anywhere.

Another beef is busy pedestrian crossings. Some of these - in Eastwood, Sydney for example - have signs at the side encouraging pedestrians to wait and cross in groups to aid traffic flow, as Eastwood is super-busy. Do they wait and cross in groups? Do they hell! Nope, you'll sit there while a couple of dozen people amble in single or double file across the road, nice and slowly, while cars bank up in both directions behind them. Once that group has crossed one, perhaps two cars will get to go before the next person strolls out onto the crossing, solo and proud of it. Sitting at the Eastwood crossings reminds me that there is no slower, dawdling pedestrian than a teenager in a school uniform, except perhaps an elderly person. The elderly, however, have an excuse for being slow walkers, as do people with a disability. Able-bodied folk have no excuse for the 1km/h speed over zebra crossings.

Finally, there are the school kids. Here in NSW we have 40 km/h school zones which are active twice a day, even when there isn't a child in sight. 40km/h is a nice slow speed which enables teenagers in particular to play chicken and run across the road in front of you, because they are too lazy/impatient to walk to the nearest zebra crossing or traffic lights. This scares the hell out of me when I'm driving. I was driving down Lane Cove Road in Ryde two years ago when two teenage boys in school uniform decided to bolt across all six lanes of it when traffic was moving at a relatively good peak hour pace, i.e. 30km/h. They ran straight in front of my car. I was shaking afterwards. There were traffic lights only 100 metres behind me, but oh no, the kids couldn't be bothered walking up there and crossing safely. And if anyone had hit them, it would have been the motorist's fault even though the kids had put their own lives at risk with their stupid behaviour.

There is a law in NSW which pedestrians break if they cross the road within 20 metres of traffic lights or a zebra crossing, rather than using the lights or crossing. Every afternoon at my local high school this rule is smashed to smithereens despite a zebra crossing having been installed last year right outside the school gates. Prior to that, it was like dodging Brown's Cows as the teenagers ran or walked, even dawdled, across the road any old how. There is a set of traffic lights 100 metres up from the school and another zebra crossing 200 metres down the hill. But why use those when you can simply run in front of cars?

Seriously, people, think before you cross the road. Don't make one poor sap stop just for you if the rest of the road is clear. When you do cross, walk quickly so cars - on whose territory, the road, you are currently traversing - can get moving again. And at busy crossings, show a bit of consideration and try and cross with others. In short, do someone behind the wheel a good deed.

And it doesn't hurt to give a little wave or nod to people who do stop for you. Yes, I know it's the law that they have to stop, but it's nice to acknowledge that they actually saw you and stopped, particularly if it's that one car on the road, with nothing else in sight, who stopped for you.

Bad carma

You know you're in trouble when a car mechanic or repair professional sucks in air through his teeth with a whistling sound, and shakes his head.

If this is accompanied by an "Ooo," the news is even worse.

We have had a run of bad luck with our cars in the last couple of weeks. On Boxing Day mine got hit by a garbage truck. The ironic thing is that I had driven it over to my mother's as we were staying there for three nights, thinking it would be safer outside her place than parked outside ours. We live in a low socio-economic area and I had visions of returning to a car minus wheels, windscreen wipers and groovy wing mirror covers.

I woke up on 26 December to find the garbo had reversed down Mum's hill, collected my car on the way and pushed it nearly four metres down the hill, up the gutter and up over Mum's low sandstone retaining wall.

The driver had to return later that morning to do the recyclables run and we were waiting for him. He denied doing the damage but seeing we'd found bits of his mudflap on the road at the point of impact, and the dent in my car's poor rear matched the curve of his tyres, there wasn't much doubt. His boss visited the site and agreed his company would take liability. Cue calls to the police, insurance company, panel beaters, towing company etc etc.

This time of year in Australia everything shuts between Christmas and New Year, so it was only yesterday that I was able to get Minerva towed to the panel beater. I followed her up there in my husband's trusty Subaru and was relieved when the panel beater said he thought it would only be panel damage, not chassis damage.  There was no air sucking, head shaking or Ooohs.

That done, and as the mercury was rising steadily, I headed down to the river for a swim in the baths. It was heading for a stinker of a day, so I enjoyed the cool water and shady trees. I swam around slowly, keeping moving continuously for a solid forty minutes before drying off in the sun and enjoying Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt. Nearing lunchtime I decided to head home. I should have really dropped in at my Mum's for a shower and lunch, as she was only five minutes away, but I had some work to do in the afternoon so decided to think about that crisp salad waiting for me at home.

Ten minutes down the road the clutch pedal refused to lift up when I changed gear. Little alarm bells started to ring in my head. I flipped it up with my foot and continued carefully. The Subi was NOT happy and started to judder underneath near the front of the car. When I put the clutch pedal down again I had trouble changing gear so pulled it into neutral and coasted to the side of the road, coming to rest under a huge Moreton Bay Fig. Acrid smoke was billowing from underneath as I turned the ignition off. Bugger! The clutch!!!

I made the call to the road service people and settled down to wait for the second tow truck of the day. The tree was shady, I had a book but I was madly hungry and also penniless. Even if there had been a sandwich shop open in the vicinity I could only have looked and drooled. Thankfully I had a bottle of water with me which kept the hunger at bay a bit.

My driver arrived and I told him what had happened. He shook his head, sucked in air through his teeth and said "Ooo."

By then I'd figured for myself it wasn't a simple clutch cable replacement but something more serious.

We got the Subaru onto the back of the tow truck and headed for the mechanic's.

While my driver unloaded the Subi I went to chat to the booking staff in the blessed cool of the office and explained what had happened.

Shake of head. Intake of breath through the teeth. Ooo.

I have a theory that the slower and longer the shake of the head, the worse the news is. The mechanic is clearly doing a quick calculation of just how expensive the job's going to be.

The mechanic shook his head very slowly indeed and my heart sank.

The Subaru is an all wheel drive, you see; in order to muck around with the clutch you have to take all four wheels off and half the underbelly and it's a sort of double clutch arrangement or something.... not what you get with a two wheel drive car, anyway. I forget the actual term he used but the estimate was $1700 if they had to replace the entire clutch. Hopefully it will just be replacing the clutch plate itself and that may cost less.

The kind tow truck driver gave me a lift towards home as he had to use a loop road underneath the main road to change direction, so in the 37 degree heat I luckily only had about 400 metres to walk. I arrived home sweaty, salty and hungry and just a bit grumpy.

So now we are carless for a while. Apart from public transport we will be totally reliant on our bikes for transportation, not just pleasure rides.

Maybe it's the universe telling us to slow down, as we haven't had a real break these holidays. There have been people, and dinners, and lunches, and car smashes and all the faffing around that involves. My husband has been fixing our boat and messing around rather badly with fibreglass, which has been full on physical work for him; I have been sanding and painting outdoor furniture. We haven't had the time to fulfil our intentions of simply relaxing and doing nothing. Nothing. Just sitting and reading, or drawing and painting. This weekend we'll have no choice as any journeys we make will be very local.

I think it's bad carma.

I just hope nothing goes wrong now with the bloody bikes!

My four wheeled history - a retrospective

I've talked about my old bikes in earlier posts and these days I have two bikes, a new loop frame Pashley and a vintage Raleigh. While I use bikes for local transportation, for exercise and for the simple bloody pleasure of cycling, I'm also a sucker for four-wheeled transport. Cycling purists and advocates probably can't understand me. I have a foot firmly planted on both a bike pedal and an accelerator. Given my work locations and commitment, and my clients, not to mention visiting my elderly Mum, a car is a necessity in my life.

In late October I got a new second-hand car, my first 'new' car in 16 years. She's small, economical and exciting, and you'll meet her soon. But first, a travel through time and bad 80s hair.

This is Herbie, my first car. My Mum received him as a Christmas present in 1963, when he was brand new. I took him over on his 21st birthday in 1984. I learned to drive on Herbie, as well as on a 6 cylinder automatic Ford Falcon - two more different cars you couldn't imagine. Herbie is still going strong. I sold him to a mate ten years ago as he had a lot of rust and I couldn't afford to get it fixed. My plumber friend, a whiz with oxy-acetelene, virtually rebuilt the little chap and he looks lovely these days. As nice as new. 

The Ford years. 1980 to 1989. The Ford on the left is the one I learned on. At that stage I had a horse and trailer, and needed a big car to pull the trailer. I could go into a long story here about divorced parents and a guilty Dad sending a cheque for birthdays and Christmas. The short story is that I saved up those cheques to buy the car and trailer when I was old enough to have a licence. So that's the white Ford. In 1982 I got a job at a Ford dealership and when the pretty silver one on the right was traded in, I nabbed it. It was swish: a Fairmont Ghia with all the bells and whistles you'd expect in a 1984 car. I sold the white Ford to my uncle, who had it for years then sold it to his stepson. I think it's long gone to the car graveyard now.

This is my fave pic of the Fairmont, taken at Palm Beach. By then I was dating a rev head, a Ford fanatic who had convinced me to lower the car and fit extractors. It went very well after that, shall we say. 

Once I'd stopped taking my horses to shows - I had two horses over the years, and sold my ex-racehorse on to someone who could handle him better than I, but that's another blog post - I had no need of a thirsty big car or the trailer. I sold the trailer and traded the car on a second-hand yuppie delight, a car described by Wheels magazine as 'the executive rocket': a 1983 BMW 323i coupe. With, as you can see, sunroof. I was also tired of automatic transmission cars as I much prefer manual, and the Bimmer was a 5 speed as all my cars have been from then on. At this point in time - late 1989 -  I was still dating the rev head and also doing OK in the corporate world. I convinced myself I could afford the car. Buying it wasn't too much of a problem, but it had some mechanical issues as time went on. For example, the driver's seat. The previous owner must have been a biiiiiig man - the driver's seat was buggered from, presumably, a fat arse plonking itself heavily onto it for the first six years of its life before I bought it. Within a year I had to drive with two bricks under it to hold it up and finally relented and bought a new one. Not cheap. I had the Bimmer for eight gloriously fun years until the engine blew up. 

I have fun memories of fast country drives and my friend Phil standing up in the passenger seat one Chinese New Year, sticking up through the sunroof and shouting Gung Hei Fat Choy at startled motorists and passers-by on Burns Bay Road. Happy days!

Looking down the barrel of maintaining an ageing Bimmer and its increasingly expensive parts made me think it was time to buy something new from the showroom floor which would give me several years of relatively cheap trouble-free motoring. Bimmer never went terribly well after the necessary engine rebuild, so while I was still in corporate land and earning okay money I bought Gisela the Golf in 1996. She was the 'poverty pack', the base model and all I could realistically afford as I didn't want to go through finance (I got a bank loan for some, and borrowed from the Ford-owning uncle for some more). I DID miss the sunroof!  I was going to put one in Gisela but, trying to save to buy a house, never got around to it.

Gisela wasn't as fast as the Bimmer, she didn't handle as well and even though she was more economical the particular type of fuel injection she was fitted with was prone to throwing out stinky unburnt fuel. My first love was a VW though and I'd hankered on and off for a Golf since they came to Australia in 1976.  So 1996 to 2011 were the Golf years. I did many country trips in her: monthly trips to Canberra for work for four years, up to Mudgee at least half a dozen times and down the south coast of NSW an equal number or more. Gissy's air-conditioning broke five years ago - the compressor failed - and now I was earning much less than the corporate days, I couldn't afford to fix it. I boiled in summer, especially in peak hour driving when I couldn't go fast enough to get a decent breeze through the windows. Other pricey parts of her anatomy were starting to show their age, too.

Enter the Mid Life Crisis car. Meet Minerva. My husband has recently landed a fulltime job with decent money (glad one of us is earning a proper salary!) and insisted that I replace Gisela with something newer and more reliable. I tossed up between another Golf (cheapish to maintain) or a new MINI (not so cheap to maintain as they are built by BMW but hell, they are just gorgeous!). I test drove this five year old MINI and within five minutes it felt like I was driving my old Bimmer again, with so much nippiness under my foot and handling that was dead flat around tight bends. Not to mention the huge sunroof. I was in love. We did the sums and I have bought Minerva in my business name on hire purchase with affordable monthly payments. The tax breaks are superb. She is also very economical and much kinder on the environment than Gisela. 

Amusingly, all my transport now is British-made: the Pashley, the Raleigh and now the MINI. All beautifully designed, too, and each fulfils its need for a mix of transport and pleasure.