I love the smell of napalm in the morning

Ok that’s a lie, I never seen, heard or smelled napalm in my whole life, not even in the morning. I do like the smell of gasoline though, but I’m not sure that’s the same as the napalm. But I don’t like diesel. That sh** is foul, crude, industrial, ...

Talking about diesel and gasoline; one of the first things I noticed when I started to drive my bike into work was this omnipresent stench of exhaust fumes. If you drive a car you just tend to forget all the pollution in the air, don’t you? Pollution mainly caused by cars. Yeah well, helloooo oooh what did you expect? You can’t blame the cyclists or pedestrians. It would take a whole lot of pedestrians and one hell of a curry to produce the same pollution and noise as your average traffic jam in the city center.

So clever me started to Google around for a solution and came across this dust filters developed especially for cyclists. Unfortunately not a single bike shop I knew sold these filters nor could they tell me where to get one. On a recent city trip to London L and I went into this huge bicycle shop near London Bridge (face it, we all have a soft spot; some people are into poultry and small farm animals, I’m into bicycle shops.) Anyway, this friendly bike shop knew immediately what I was talking about and five minutes later we were standing outside again with a little plastic bag with a gasmask and some spare filters.

Let me tell you this, it’s the most stupid thing I ever bought! First of all, the thing works too well, it only took me three days cycling into work and you could already see how the outside of the filters start to discolor with all the diesel fumes and other pollution. Now two weeks later and the filters are looking grey. Sometimes it’s just better NOT to know what you’re breathing in, ‘cause now I always have to wear that bloody mask. Which brings me to my second gripe; if you are breathing very heavily it can feel like your gasping for air thru a straw. This is not a problem when you’re engaged in some activity that requires no mental or physical effort, like listening to a Paris Hilton CD (ok that causes mental and physical trauma), but it surely sucks when your riding your bike up some technical slope.

So am I not afraid to look stupid with that mask on? Hell no, it just adds up to the whole picture, I’m already cycling around in this skintight bicycle Lycra outfit. It really can’t get any worse, can it? And no, just in case you were wondering; I will NEVER EVER, I repeat; NEVER SHAVE MY LEGS.

It’s not like, driving a car at a mind-boggling speed of 10 km/h while being taken over by some grandma on a bike does make you look any better, so bite me.

Ps: Woohooo I just upped my average speed to 24.3 km/h.