What makes you smile and what winds you up

Pretty much everything to do with motorcycling except:

People who ride like nobs, people who drive like nobs, insects.

[fizzwheel]

Good Stuff = Induction Roar, the feeling you get when you tip the bike in on hot tyres. The feeling you get when you make it round a corner that you didnt tihnk you were going to get round.

Bad Stuff = Road Users who make a mistake and then don't think its their fault and start giving you the finger / verbal agro.

Smile: Switching lanes and getting past an idiot who has intentionally (or just through extremely poor observation) persistantly blocked you.

Frown: I could be here all day, so I'll just say: People who throw lit cigarettes out of the window without even looking to see who is there (usually me).

Smile= Day in London Town with glorious sun shine, heavens open and it is the best wet T shirt competition ever

Everything.
Nothing. Why bother? Life's too short and all that jazz. Move on and it's gone.

Sad = realising the blue mondeo you just overtook at 130mph at 6am on a sunday morning is an unmarked police car.

Smile = watching a blue mondeo pull up alongside you and the copper in the passenger seat give you nothing more than a 'slow down' wave due to it being an empty road at 6am on a sunday morning.

They're not all bad.............

Smile: Like others here say, filtering fast (as northwind says, "Nailing a shrinking gap just right"). Riding well in traffic, beating cars costing 5 or 10 times what my bike cost off the line with ease. Getting onto a dual carriageway/national limit after spending 20 minutes stuck behind a 25mph tanker through the twisties, dropping a gear and screaming past. The sound it makes when you get it right. The moment coming out of a corner that went perfectly when you get back on the throttle. The way you can go from quiet, peacefull cruising at low speeds to screaming acceleation and exess of speed in the time it takes you to think about it. Making some dizzy woman on the phone in her 4x4 have a heart attack becasue you watched her not check her mirrors, pulled right up beside her and blipped the throttle. The feeling of superiority over the vast caged masses. Friendly drivers moving over, trucks/coaches waving you past when they can see clear road and you cant.

Frown: I do worse than frown, you should hear the stream of abuse that goes on under my helmet on a bad morning fighting through the traffic. Ignorant drivers, the ones who dont stop to let you out, despite the fact that there's a red light and they're gonna have to stop in front of you. People who refuse to get onto a roundabout unless there a gap a double-decker could fit in. People who think it's ok to pull over on a busy single-carriageway in rush hour to check the map or whatever, and sit there for 20 minutes oblivious of the 20-vehicle queue behind them. People who stop to let a single car out when they have 2 or 3 behind them who will have to stop, and a big gap behind them the car could pull out in. "Speed Limit Zealots" who see it as their appointed role to stop you reckelssly breaking the speedlimit by refusing to get out of the outside lane, and then give you a honk, or lights, or both when you overtake on the inside. ("Yes I know im not meant to overtake on this side, but if you were bloody driving right there wouldnt be a gap here i could overtake in...) And people who are so scared of speed cameras they see fit to drop the traffic speed to 20mph to go through cameras in a 30. And while we're on it, people who dont understand that you drive in the left hand lane if not going past someone. The trucks on the motorway taking up 2 lanes to do a 45-minute ovetaking manouver with 3mph speed difference. Doing something silly because im impatient, then having to abort because it wasnt a well planned manouvre. People who honk/give abuse just because you did something they didnt think of, or forced them to pay a bit of attention to what's going on around them. People who think hatched yellow areas (dont go in if you cant get out...) apply to others only, or more often didnt even notice the bright yellow lines all over the road. Cement mixers and truck driving along shedding a path of gravel/sand accross the road behind them, or just on the apex of corners. Crap road surfaces, and their half-hearted attempts to fix them. New 4x4's (and others) with door posts so big at the back of the driver's door there's a 20-metre section of road they're not gonna see you in even if they look. The feeling of approaching for a good 5-10 seconds and not being able to see the driver's head is scary.

Wow - that's quite a post!!

Forgot the 4x4s. Although not the worst drivers in London, they're just wrong.

Smile:

People who use their TomTom’s on the daily commute – have they forgotten the way since yesterday.


Winds me up:

Cyclists that pass through red lights.

Originally Posted by Rider

Wow - that's quite a post!! :)

Yeah, a lot of things **** me off, and also since i got the sv there's also an awful lot of times im grinning ear to ear under my helmet :D