Category: Cycling

Moving on from signs that annoy me to ones that just make me smile…

Around here they don’t seem to use a template for some of the road markings; they appear to be done freehand with a brush or roller.  This one means you can walk on this part of the pavement (and, accordingly, that people shouldn’t drive cars or bikes there).  As you can see, there’s a bit of artistic license employed.

This guy has groove in his stride.

This guy needs to stride a bit more often.

This guy, um.  Stopped in a hurry.

The bicycles are a similar story.  There’s no template.  Each bike is a hand-drawn original.  I find this interesting because so many people have no idea how a bicycle goes together and couldn’t draw one to save their lives. These road painters do, whether they like it or not.

You can see that most of the important elements of a bicycle are actually there.  Excepting that apparently some paint has chipped off this one, the bits are connected to the right other bits.  Things do get a little distorted.  Often the seatpost descends into the rear stays instead of the seat tube. They have to be a bit tall in accordance with the idea that you’ll be seeing it foreshortened as you approach.

This one is for people with really short arms.

You can discern the distinctive styles of different artists. By a coincidence, I discovered some newly-repainted ones glowing in the half-darkness on my own route not long after.  This one’s trademark is bikes for people with really long arms.  They stay in this style for quite a few repeats along here.  Some one guy had a lot of bicycles to draw before he could go home.

I’ve been noticing signs a bit lately.  Features on everyday routes can become a bit invisible, but I’ve wandered around a bit in the warmer weather and some of the ones on other people’s routes caught my interest.

Here’s one I’m glad I don’t see every day, because, actually, I think it would annoy me every day.  As far as I can tell, there is no approach to this nice covered bike rack not prohibited to cyclists by one variety of sign or another.  Except, perhaps, across the lawn behind it.  To even get to the lawn from this location (in order to test whether you’ll get shouted at for riding across it), riding the right way around the one-way system, would first require riding a block further away.

Despite the fact that it’s a bit of a walk to any building in the area, these racks are reasonably well used.  Probably the people who use it are more sensible than I am and just ride in instead of fuming at the silly signs.

I admit to occasionally suffering from a temptation to design a sign telling motorists they have to get out of their cars and push,  Mr Bean-style (YouTube), in order to get to their parking spaces (I’d have to learn, or coin, a succinct word or phrase for “get out and push”).  Even more diabolical would be to simply place “no entry” and “one-way” (the other way) signs on every approach to an attractive row of free parking.