If my dog would ever talk I would explain to him in detail why our high salt diet with onions and avocado and chocolate would kill him and that giving him more than a lick of whipped cream gives him diarhea. Poor guy doesn’t understand that we deny him because we love him.

For me it is also any advantage I can get to keep up with my boyfriend. No competition, just hoping he feels slightly out of breath when I am panting for air. Unfortunately he is the weaker one in a group of bike friends too, so he also tries to optimize as much as possible.

I’m slightly convinced that for everyone under pro levels this is all just placebo. But I still shave my legs and if I had the money I would buy all the cool stuff.

I’m saying that statistically cyclists endangering pedestrians is a non-issue because it happens so much more rarely than cars endangering pedestrians or cyclists. Bringing it up all the time only fuels carbrains and car lobbies.

No, but I did go to the hospital with by boyfriend who got run over while riding straight on a straight road with right of way by a car turning left without stopping at the stop sign, so if all you want to do is throw around anecdotes be my guest. Statistics say way more people (including kids on sidewalks) get hurt by cars.

So 0.002% of cyclists get a fine every day even though there is a dedicated unit watching them. That sounds like they are behaving quite well.

100 cyclists a month doesn’t sound like a lot when there are thousands commuting through every day. Unless you give comparable numbers for both car commuters and cycling commuters and the number of fines this is saying nothing. For exampe, this week police in the netherlands were doing a traffic stop for cars and handed out 177 fines for 130 cars stopped because of multiple infractions per car, and this was one location one day.

Perhaps it is safer cycling across a crosswalk while the only other traffic is pedestrians, instead of going with the flow of cars when cars turning left or right can run you over.

I live somewhere where half the traffic lights don’t have buttons and don’t respond to cyclists. So when there are no cars to trigger the light I just check if it’s safe and go. Meanwhile I have been nearly overrun by cars speeding through red because it was orange 3 seconds ago and see a car going >50kph in my 30kph street almost daily. A bicycle is not a vehicle (at least in france in collisions we are classified as pedestrians). We are way more vulnerable and less harmful and the roads are often not made for us, so we have to adapt our riding to be most safe. Sometimes that means taking a pedestrian green instead of a car green light because it is safer too.

I read a study that the ideal holiday lasts for more than 8 days. One of the reasons is that if you leave for less there is usually little adjustment made to your workload, whereas if you leave longer tasks are distributed to others for that period. This will depend on your type of work and workplace though.

Belgium! They are all in Belgium.

The woman next to me in the hospital was asked if she could be pregnant right after the nurse checked her birth year at more than 80 years ago. We all had a little laugh at that one.