I saw my first tandem bicycle in China while running around the nearby lakes. What an horrendous idea! As if regular bicycles aren't dangerous enough, without making them twice as big, twice as heavy, twice as unstable.
This one was, I imagine, rented out by one of the bike-hire places as an amusing novelty for the afternoon. It was being ridden by two young girls who were woefully short-sighted and had no idea where the brakes were. They very nearly killed me. Really. I had to throw myself sideways into a wall to avoid being mown down. I was furious. I gave them 10 seconds of abuse in Chinese, English, and a couple of other languages as well.
During the rest of my run, I fantasised grimly about having forced them to dismount and then having thrown the wretched über-bicycle into the lake. I would have done this, I told myself, not to vent my own rage, or to punish them for their irresponsibility, but for public protection - they were looking set to leave a trail of casualties in their wake, and somebody should have stopped them. But, with any luck, they will have been flattened by a truck themselves before they completed one circuit of the lakes.
Ah, it's good to have such a vivid imagination. It does save me from actually murdering people like this.
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