On the design of bridges
I ride a road bike. I love my road bike because the lack of jumping up gutters is easily compensated for by the extra speed. However last night I wished that I was on a mountain bike.
I was riding along the Yarra to get to the Como in South Yarra with a couple of friends. One of them went to go down a ramp but stopped and asked me if I could go down it because it was a wooden ramp. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be able to?” I asked. “Your tires are too thin” he replied. Nonsense I though, are you challenging my masculinity?
So we’re going down the ramp and I note “which fucken genius designed this bridge, you’d think they would have put the wooden slats perpendicular rather than straight up and down the way they are.” Just then I feel my back wheel slip a bit but we’re getting towards the bottom of the ramp and we’re moving at a reasonable pace. “Oh shit, better be careful,” I think to myself.
Just then I look down and see my front wheel drop down between two planks. My bike stops dead. I don’t.
My whole body hurts.
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why did you not walk the bike?
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Obviously I didn’t think my tire would fit down one of the gaps Terry. I didn’t think they would be stupid enough to have gaps that wide.
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If it’s any consolation we did a high speed version of that in a motorbike trishaw in Cambodia on a wooden bridge, nearly jack-knifing it and us into the river – who the fuck designs wooden bridges with parallel wooden planks I ask you???!!!
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Cambodians and the Victorian Government clearly.