As a counterpoint to this week's thread on bicycle road rage, Jon Day waxes poetic over his profession:
It was the solitude I valued; the freedom of the outside; the sounds of the street; the thinking time. … Cycling is a collaborative act, a meditative engagement with the world of material things, and riding a bike encourages you to build up a private map of the terrain you travel over. You learn what it’s like to ride down a particular road when wet (noting the placement of slippery drain covers that wait to catch you on sharp turns), or the specific sequence of traffic lights at a much-crossed junction. For drivers the road is merely, in Iain Sinclair’s words, that “dull silvertop that acts as a prophylactic between driver and landscape,” but for cyclists, like pedestrians, every road has a personality.
The Dish 