12 BMX BICYCLE

Different pair of fairy wings this time =)
These were a 17th birthday present from my friend Alice. I can't remember who gave me the white ones I was wearing in the other photo. Maybe Alice again? Really not sure.

I should have cleared my windowsill while taking this. I wasn't thinking. It was just a random thought in my head. I wanted to see how the sunlight looked coming through the pink wings.

Aaaaah. Got up at 11 again then went back to bed with a bowl of cereal. Which is an unusual thing. This last week I've been eating breakfast more often than usual. Usually breakfast has this horrible tendency of making me feel sick for 2 or 3 hours afterwards. I then continued reading Eclipse from where I'd left off last night, & pretended to do Spanish revision everytime my Mom came in. I feel horrible about that. I keep thinking I'm wasting the hours, but I also know I don't need the grades I would have needed for Oxford, & I'm not working as hard anymore. That's one of the reasons I got really annoyed when people said not to bother with Oxford anymore, because I needed that motivation to work hard. I just keep thinking "OH, I only need 36 points now, instead of 38-40." So I'm slacking.

Anyways. It's almost 4pm now. Got to go & finish History revision. I'm only just beginning my 3rd section (out of 3) & I've been trying to learn this stuff for over a week now. & I still have 3 other subjects to go.

So yeh. && with regards to this photo - I happen to love fantasy. Always have. When we were up in the attic the other day I saw all these fairy tale tapes I used to listen to, & I'd read my fairytale books, & when other people say that yeh they really liked it too I just think "Yeh, but I doubt you loved it to the extremes I did." It's an escape, ya know. && my teacher when I was 5 years old, Mrs Sleigh, was amazing. She completely inspired me. Everytime someone tells me how creative I am I thank her for it. I mean, of course my parents too. My Mom read to me all the time, & I got armfuls of books from the library when I was tiny, but Mrs Sleigh played her part too. She was awesome. But I write so well because of my imagination (I'm not saying when I write on flickr it's amazing, I just mean my school work). It's easy. I've never really be able to understand why people struggle to write. That's just incomprehensible to me, really.

Oh & btw my brother was super-super mad at me today. I caught him writing on msn so ofc he wasn't revising, & if he didn't get all his work done then he can't go to his friend's house today, & so my Dad said if he got caught on msn again he would have his laptop taken off him. Then my brother got really angry & grabbed me & started twisting & I was screaming in pain because as I've told him before he is much, MUCH stronger than I am. My Dad then gave him a long awaited talk about his use of violence on me, & that I'm supporting him in his work so he needs to lay off. He calmed down & after that & was grudgingly nice to me then.

&& I had a really random dream last night. The moon was really massive in the sky, so close you could touch it & two or three times the size of a hot air balloon. I was looking at it through a gap in the curtains covering the glass doors. The actual sized moon was in its normal place in the sky, & this was some sort of weird science thing that made it like this. I wanted to take a photo of it, but my camera couldn't pick up any of the details, even though it was so close. In my back garden there were 3 boys from my school: Dan, Charlie, & Raj. Dan was screaming at Raj about filming the moon & how he was doing it all wrong, & Raj was getting frustrated, & Charlie was just laughing at Dan's frustration with Raj. Then Dan & Raj walked into the room, not noticing me, & Charlie sat down & started laughing about something funny that had happened with Dan & Raj. It was so odd. That's all I can remember. I don't even really talk to those guys.

84/365

Paint sharrows or white lines on the roadway and it makes no difference if the vehicle out-weighs the cyclist by a factor of 1000. The vehicle is constructed from steel. Guess who wins every time the sharrows and painted lines are ignored? It appears it's only a matter time before we find out using the current mixed-use over the Johnson Street Bridge.

From time-to-time it's nice to read what insightful journalist write. Here's the latest skinny from the real world.

The war between drivers and cyclists

I am not sure when cycling went from a benign, healthy, worthwhile pursuit into some kind of antisocial exercise where the cyclist is seen as a smug, selfish dork who just gets in the way.

“Why do drivers hate cyclists?” was a headline this week in a London newspaper, and the answer here, as in Canada, is that cyclists are seen by many drivers as nothing more than a menace.

I do know that cyclists make drivers foam at the mouth.

Gregor Robertson, Vancouver’s mayor, has been vilified for introducing bike lanes and for wanting to replicate the instant rent-a-bike system now in operation in Montreal, London and other cities.

He is criticized for pandering to a special-interest group — cyclists — and ignoring the needs of drivers, which is basically to own their piece of the road without being impeded by granola-munching airheads on bikes.

Columnist Mark Steel of The Independent notes that drivers shout abuse when he rides his bike in England. There seems to be a growing anger, particularly among truck drivers.

He puts it down to a growing bullying mentality: “There’s an encouragement to think, ‘I’ve got more than you so GET OUT OF THE WAY.’” -- Ian Haysom, Times Colonist, May 21, 2011 Sec.A14

Read Haysom's entire article in the Times-Colonist